You are turning me into what I never have been and never wanted to be, a nag, because you are not living up to your end of a very basic contract. Don’t do that, it’s not okay to do.
We Got Llamas!” Odd words to see in neon.
I was a man of jagged risings.
I just want to live until I can’t anymore.
I was lying in bed thinking of killing myself, a hobby of mine.
It embarrassed me. Marrow-deep embarrassment, the kind that becomes part of your DNA, that changes you.
Amy knew that was what I had loved most about us back when I loved us: not the big moments, not the Romantic with capital-R moments, but our secret inside jokes.
You know how people sometimes say they have to hurt because if they don’t, they’re so numb they won’t feel anything?” “Mmm.” “What if it’s the opposite?” Amma whispered. “What if you hurt because it feels so good? Like you have a tingling, like someone left a switch on in your body. And nothing can turn the switch off except hurting? What does that mean?
It was kind of romantic. Catastrophically romantic.
The X had released its first wave of chemical optimism, I could feel it float up inside me like a big test balloon and splatter on the roof of my mouth, spraying good cheer. I could almost taste it, like a fizzy pink jelly.
I drank the rest of the sours and had dark sticky dreams. My mother had cut me open and was unpacking my organs, stacking them in a row on my bed as my flesh flapped to either side. She was sewing her initials into each of them, then tossing them back into me, along with a passel of forgotten objects:.
She had an invisible friend, a giant stuffed bear she called Ben. What kind of kid has an imaginary friend that’s a stuffed animal? She collected hair ribbons and arranged them in alphabetical order by color name. She was the kind of girl who exploited her cuteness with such joy you couldn’t begrudge her.
Tears ran down my mother’s cheeks and dripped loudly onto the leather purse she held in her lap. The woman next to her patted her hand. I slipped my notepad from my jacket pocket and began scribbling notes to one side until my mother slapped her hand on mine and hissed, “You are being disrespectful and embarrassing. Stop or I will make you leave.” I quit writing but kept the pad out, feeling stabbingly defiant. But still blushing.
Sometimes my scars have a mind of their own.
Camille, non hai mai la sensazione che stia per accadere qualcosa di orribile e che tu non possa fare niente per evitarlo? La sensazione di poter solo aspettare?
Sick and sicker and sickest. What was real and what was fake? Was Amma really sick and needing my mother’s medicine, or was the medicine what was making Amma sick? Did her blue pill make me vomit, or did it keep me from getting more ill than I’d have been without it?
I don’t know that anything would be any good anywhere, so it’s hard to gauge if this is better or worse, you know what I mean?” “Like: This place is miserable and I want to die, but I can’t think of any place I’d rather be,” I offered. He turned and stared at me, blue eyes mirroring the oval pool. “That’s exactly what I mean.” Get used to it, I thought.
I feel very sad about those girls,” I said, but it sounded artificial, like a beauty contestant pledging world peace. I did feel sad, but articulating it seemed cheap to me.
I know women whose entire personas are woven from a benign mediocrity.
I took a cue from your beloved Mark Twain: “What ought to be done to the man who invented the celebrating of anniversaries? Mere killing would be too light.