Reasons to Stay Alive - Kayla Albers by Kayla Albers https://padlet.com/20albersk/kaylamaryalbers Matt Haig en-us 2018-11-16 17:35:35 UTC 2025-12-18 05:56:14 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/icons/Xmastree.png Why did I choose this book? 20albersk https://padlet.com/20albersk/kaylamaryalbers/wish/305370154 I chose "Reasons to Stay Alive" by Matt Haig because I have personal and familial experience with depression and mental illness. I am interested in learning about and understanding the struggles and obstacles overcome by someone with a mental illness through their own eyes. I want to experience the journey the way it happened, with no sugarcoating and no lies, just the truth as it is and how it was. I've read many reviews and heard this book is an inspiring story along with advice for self-help and ways to be okay. I want to be able to better understand those with these illnesses and expand the normalization of along with getting rid of the negative stigma associated with mental illness. By week one I will have read pages 1-120 by the first checkpoint, 121-190 by the second, and 190-264 by the third.]]> 2018-11-16 17:39:48 UTC https://padlet.com/20albersk/kaylamaryalbers/wish/305370154 "Depression didn't used to be depression. It used to be melancholia, ..." (page 53) 20albersk https://padlet.com/20albersk/kaylamaryalbers/wish/307907033
Term - Melancholia (noun)
- Deep sadness or gloom; melancholy.

Original Sentence - 
- The fogginess outside brought a feeling of melancholia to the students, who were stuck indoors and longed for a sunny day to heighten their spirits.


 ]]> 2018-11-26 17:25:09 UTC https://padlet.com/20albersk/kaylamaryalbers/wish/307907033 "Medication is an extremely attractive concept. Not just for the person with depression, or the person running a pharmaceutical firm, but for society as a whole. It underlines the idea we have hammered into us by the hundred thousand TV ads we have seen that everything can be fixed by consuming things. It fosters a just-shut-up-and-take-the-pill approach, and creates an "us" and "them" divide, where everyone can relax and feel "unreason" - to borrow Michael Foucault's favorite word- is being safely neutered in a society that demands we be normal even if it drives us insane." (page 30). 20albersk https://padlet.com/20albersk/kaylamaryalbers/wish/307911791 In this quote, Matt Haig is addressing society's belief that anything and everything can be solved by taking a pill, to "solve our issues." I agree with this because society today believes that people need to be "fixed" when some of the time they are perfect the way they are. We live in a society where being different has been frowned upon for so long that people have adapted to hiding their differences, and medicine is the perfect mask for doing so. Meds are seen as a solution to anything remotely different within people. This highlights the stigma against mental illness and how being different or needing help is a "problem" that can be "fixed."]]> 2018-11-26 17:33:00 UTC https://padlet.com/20albersk/kaylamaryalbers/wish/307911791 "Adding anxiety to depression is a bit like adding cocaine to alcohol. It presses fast-forward on the whole experience. If you have depression on its own your mind sinks into a swamp and loses momentum, but with anxiety in the cocktail, the swamp is still a swamp but the swamp now has whirlpools in it. The monsters that are there, in the muddy water, continually move like modified alligators at their highest speed. You are continually on guard to the point of collapse every single moment, while desperately trying to keep afloat to breathe the air that the people on the bank around you are breathing as easily as anything." (page 48) 20albersk https://padlet.com/20albersk/kaylamaryalbers/wish/308407951 In this quote, Matt Haig uses a simile to compare the similarities between adding anxiety to depression and adding cocaine to alcohol, along with the metaphor of a swamp and the monsters (alligators) within it. The monsters are also metaphorical and represent the darkness and evils within someone toward their own self. He describes depression as "your mind sinks into a swamp and loses momentum," which is interesting as it portrays depression from a perspective which has generally been unexplored. In his description, depression and illnesses similar are about overcoming and destroying the monsters within oneself out to inundate and drown that person to the point of no return. Anxiety along with depression is a whole new obstacle and a much harder one, as Haig describes the swamp (a metaphor for his own brain) now having "whirlpools." This section has incredible imagery, as a reader can clearly picture the "muddy water," and a person struggling to stay afloat within the whirlpools present.]]> 2018-11-27 17:27:31 UTC https://padlet.com/20albersk/kaylamaryalbers/wish/308407951 "People say "take it one day at a time." But, I used to think to myself, that is all right for them to say. Days were mountains. A week was a trek across the Himalayas. You see, people say that time is relative, but it really bloody is." (page 84) 20albersk https://padlet.com/20albersk/kaylamaryalbers/wish/308923496 Matt Haig writes this extremely personal passage about his struggles through his mental disorder.  Once again appealing to pathos, he uses imagery to create a picture of rough, rocky mountains, and a hiker struggling up to the summit. He continues this metaphor, describing his life as a "trek across the Himalayas." This puts emphasis on how much he suffered from his illness. Haig also seems to almost make fun of the fact that the most common advice people gave was to "take it one day at a time" and how that advice is so relative and usually not helpful to someone who finds getting out of bed and keeping up with their hygiene hard. The description and comparison of living as a hike in the Himalayan mountain allows Haig to put his illness into perspective for others who have never experienced anything like it. ]]> 2018-11-28 17:29:43 UTC https://padlet.com/20albersk/kaylamaryalbers/wish/308923496 "I stacked the days up like Jenga blocks, imagining I was making progress, and then - crash- along would come a five-hour panic attack or a day of total apocalyptic darkness, and those jenga days would topple back down again." (page 85) 20albersk https://padlet.com/20albersk/kaylamaryalbers/wish/308926474 In this passage, Haig uses a metaphor to compare his recovery to the game Jenga. Using vivid imagery skills, he appeals to pathos in which he paints a picture that the readers can create in their minds. Haig uses negatively connotated descriptive language in this passage such as "apocalyptic darkness" and "topple" to demonstrate the hardships he faced and fought through. This description allows Haig to put his illness (and others) into perspective and allow people who have never experienced anything like it to have a chance to understand how it feels to face a hardship such as a mental illness. ]]> 2018-11-28 17:34:27 UTC https://padlet.com/20albersk/kaylamaryalbers/wish/308926474 "And low self-esteem isn't exactly conducive with getting out there in the world." (page 87) 20albersk https://padlet.com/20albersk/kaylamaryalbers/wish/308928058
Term- Conducive (adjective)
- Making a certain situation or outcome likely or possible

Original Sentence- 
- Studying is conducive with higher grades, as the more you study the chances of being successful skyrocket,]]> 2018-11-28 17:36:47 UTC https://padlet.com/20albersk/kaylamaryalbers/wish/308928058 "It was totally inconsequential. In face, there was not much to write about." (page 121) 20albersk https://padlet.com/20albersk/kaylamaryalbers/wish/314857004
Term- Inconsequential (adjective)
- Not important or significant.

Original Sentence-
- During a murder trial, information on puppy sales is inconsequential and serves no purpose.]]> 2018-12-15 02:04:42 UTC https://padlet.com/20albersk/kaylamaryalbers/wish/314857004 "the Nazis were not much more than a raucous expression of German nationalism." (page 167) 20albersk https://padlet.com/20albersk/kaylamaryalbers/wish/314857145
Term- Raucous (adjective)
- Making or constituting a disturbingly harsh and loud noise.

Original Sentence-
- Chaos ensued in the house ad the kids ran around screaming; Hannah contributed to the raucous below by banging pots and pans together.]]> 2018-12-15 02:07:10 UTC https://padlet.com/20albersk/kaylamaryalbers/wish/314857145 "People place so much value on thought, but feeling is as essential. I want to read books that make me laugh and cry and fear and hope and punch the air in triumph. I want a book to hug me or grab me by the scruff of the neck. I don't even mind if it punches me in the gut. Because we are here to feel. I want life. I want to read it and write it and feel it and live it. I want, for as much of the time as possible in this blink-of-an-eye existence we have, to feel all that can be felt. I hate depression. I am scared of it. Terrified, in fact. But at the same time, it has made me who I am. And if- for me- it is the price of feeling life, it's a price always worth paying. I am satisfied just to be. (pages 219-220) 20albersk https://padlet.com/20albersk/kaylamaryalbers/wish/314859606 This quote uses polysyndeton many times to speed up the reading of the words and create a breathless feeling within the readers. Haig is using this strategy to allow the readers to understand how it felt for him to heal and get better with his anxiety disorder; one big mess of struggling to breathe and to forgive himself. In this passage, Haig allows himself to understand that although he suffered greatly, he overcame these faults and wants to feel again. Despite, for the longest of times, not wanting to feel a thing. He describes in detail the feelings that reading a book give, and the satisfaction of merely existing on this planet we call home. Haig is beginning to wrap up the message of his story with this passage, as he highlights the differences between the beginning words of his book "I can remember the day the old me died," and the changes to the end of this quote "I am satisfied just to be."]]> 2018-12-15 02:55:02 UTC https://padlet.com/20albersk/kaylamaryalbers/wish/314859606