133 quotes found
“She told me that women who wore makeup had bad values. Putting on makeup would have been a statementa rebellion. I didnt try it. I grew to feel guilty for wanting to feel attractive.”
“It was suddenly Technicolor clear: the only thing holding me from giving myself vision this entire time had actually simply been me.I saw how in the fall and winter of my childhood, I'd walked thro...”
“Water was liquid silver, water was gold. It was claritya sacred thing.”
“After twelve years of trying, I just decided to stop missing.”
“Children believe they are immortal, death is an empty word like the name of a country theyve never been to on a time-faded map. I wasnt a child anymore.”
“I realized that no, no one would actually come to save or even stop me, I had absolutely no choice. The scale tipped: the moment not doing it became more difficult and unbearable than just doing it.”
“The night Junior stayed, my right to myself was taken from me in a way that had felt more final than ever before. Then the school had denied my rapemy word. The subsequent silencing and exilemispla...”
“Because I feared I couldn't walk to Newton Centre without her, I needed to hike through desert, snow and woods alone.Childhood is a wilderness.”
“She had wanted me to hold rape inside me like a dark pearl, keep it in there, as it grew, as I grew cramped, as it overtook me as hidden things do. Secrets become lies. I'd carried in every step I ...”
“It was heartbreaking to realize how we can fail the people we most love without even trying.”
“Absolutely devout in her complete care of my body, she had only taught me to be weak and voiceless. But I had unlearned that lesson. Our enmeshment no longer felt to me like proof of love. I was no...”
“I'd have to be impolite, an inconvenience, and sometimes awkward. But if I could commit, all that discomfort would add up to zap predatory threads like a Taser gun. I'd stun them. They'd bow to me....”
“I made a conscious effort to name my needs and desires. To carefully listen to and accurately identify what I felt. Hunger, exhaustion, cold, lower-back ache, thirst. The ephemeral pangs: wistfulne...”
“I had no evidence. No physical signs of my rape existed anymore. My body had already purged them. That was the irreversible reality.”
“If I could mark clearly, convincingly and consistently what was good for me and also what was badif I could say yes and also no, as if it were the lawit would become my law.”
“I had once again proven that again alone, I was again enough.”
“In the power of my newfound strength, I saw clearlyeven though Id been empowered to have my old college finally address my horrific trauma, make me finally feel heard, this event would never have h...”
“Water was liquid silver, water was gold. It was clarity—a sacred thing. Drinking was no longer something to take for granted. I’d never needed to consider water before.”
“I’d believed I needed to be steady in myself before I could function with others—but surviving alone no longer felt like a good way either.”
“I'd crossed a border—Speaking openly, exposing the weak girl I'd been, I was no longer her.”
