She just couldn’t feel the life she had.

~ Live & Learn

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She wanted so to be tranquil, to be someone who took walks in the late-afternoon sun, listening to the birds and crickets and feeling the whole world breathe. Instead, she lived in her head like a madwoman locked in a tower, hearing the wind howling through her hair and waiting for someone to come and rescue her from feeling things so deeply that her bones burned. She had plenty of evidence that she had a good life. She just couldn’t feel the life she had. It was as though she had cancer of the perspective.

– Carrie Fisher  (Oct 21, 1956 – Dec 27, 2016) from Postcards From the Edge

From The Honesty of Carrie Fisher by Lawrence Downes:

Who would have predicted that this product of Hollywood inbreeding — Ms. Fisher called herself that — would have turned celebrity dysfunction into such a memorable body of writing? Her semi-autobiographical novel “Postcards From the Edge,” and memoirs like “Wishful Drinking” and “Shockaholic,” are hilarious, bluntly beautiful and deserve as much lasting recognition as her contributions to the “Star Wars” franchise…And when she wrote about depression and addiction, she had a humaneness and directness that feel honest. Like her description of bipolar disorder:

“Imagine having a mood system that functions essentially like the weather — independently of whatever’s going on in your life. So the facts of your life remain the same, just the emotional fiction that you’re responding to differs. It’s like I’m not properly insulated.”

And here’s to her honesty: “I heard someone once say we’re only as sick as our secrets,” Ms. Fisher wrote in “Wishful Drinking.” “If that’s true, then this book will go a long way to rendering me amazingly well.”

Notes: Quote Source – Hidden Sanctuary. Photo: ABCnews.com

23 thoughts on “She just couldn’t feel the life she had.”

  2. I saw her one woman show twice – and each time, I left with such a feeling of delight, for she made you feel like you were friends of hers. And her writing? Marked with beauty and candor and honesty…
    There’s just too much sadness these days.

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  5. It is so often true that the people who have what we all want (fame, money, etc.) don’t want what they have. And often they crave what the rest of us are given (anonymity, time for reflection, etc.). As Cheryl Crowe sang “It’s not having what you want. It’s wanting what you’ve got.”

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  7. I get it because I grew up amidst these kinds of people (and, by my own choice, got as far away from it as possible). But I also think she had an outsized craving, as do most celebrities, for being seen large on the largest, most garish stage. I would have have thought with her money she’d have found a wonderful therapist and gone to the most beautiful detox facility and made it stick by moving away from all that, finding any place in the world where she could feel nurtured by her environment so that she could write (which she did well) and try to enjoy life. But she still chose Hollywood. And that’s that. Sorry to be so frank, but honestly, celebrities are only people – not the characters they play. And they’re usually pretty effed up people, at that. Aloha, David.

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  8. I haven’t read any of her books either, but it sounds like that’s something I need to rectify.

    I, for one, cannot imagine being a celebrity. I think they live in a strange ‘nether world’ — often craving the anonymity and ‘simpler fare’ that we ‘mere mortals’ enjoy, yet moved to seek the spotlight incessantly like a moth to the flame. Famous, infamous, unknown–we ALL have our own schtick, that’s what I’m learning….

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    2. and your thought reminded me of:

      what I’m trying to say is that your way of experiencing the world is subtly and vastly different from mine or the strawberry-eating doctor’s or the high-fivers’, and that these alternate realities—the world seen through the muck of billions of different brains—encompass much of the wonder and freakishness of being alive.

      ~ Peter Orner, from “Chekhov’s Way of Dying” in Am I Alone Here?: Notes On Living to Read and Reading to Live (Catapult, 2016)

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  9. I always admired her honest authenticity. It must have been so hard to be real, while others put on celebrity masks and played to the camera. Yet, as Bela wrote, she chose to remain there, rather than getting away. Perhaps she chose addiction as one way to escape, while staying in the eternal .. or infernal .. drama.

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  10. I knew she’d written a few things, and I was going to look them up–thanks for the titles, and I think she described it pretty well as far as being stuck in your own head. I’ll put it down in my to-read list the next time I go to the library (can’t buy any more books–promised myself I wouldn’t, dang it). Now I know what to look for.

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