Kate Gompert on the psych ward — "I didn’t want to especially hurt…"
‘I didn’t want to especially hurt myself. Or like punish. I don’t hate myself. I just wanted out. I didn’t want to play anymore is all.’ […] ‘I wanted to just stop being conscious. I’m a whole different type. I wanted to stop feeling this way. If I could have just put myself in a really long coma I would have done that. Or given myself shock I would have done that. Instead.’ […] ‘The last thing more I’d want is hurt. I just didn’t want to feel this way anymore. I don’t… I didn’t believe this feeling would ever go away. I don’t. I still don’t. I’d rather feel nothing than this.’
Context
Her typology of suicides, with herself filed under a type the ward doesn't stock: not self-hating, not punishing, just out — suicide as anesthesia when feeling nothing beats feeling this. "I didn't want to play anymore" ties her to the book's whole play-vocabulary, and "I'd rather feel nothing than this" is the exact hinge between It and anhedonia that the scene-135 essay will formalize. ("The last thing more I'd want is hurt" is as written.)