Feeling sad means having too much time on your hands, usually.
No.” I folded in on myself, ignoring my meal, projecting glumness. That was another of my mom’s words: glum. It meant having the blues in a way that annoyed other people. Having the blues aggressively.
I rolled my eyes and set my head in my hands, as if it was too much for me, and it almost was.
Everyone has a moment where life goes off the rails. Mine was the day Marian died. The day I picked up that knife is a tight second.
I’m not just pretty anymore, I am pretty for my age.
Winter. No one likes winter.” “It gets dark early, I like that.” “Why?” Because that means the day has ended. I like checking days off a calendar – 151 days crossed and nothing truly horrible has happened. 152 and the world isn’t ruined. 153 and I haven’t destroyed anyone. 154 and no one really hates me.
I’d let the words run over my brain and out my ears, like a terrified cancer patient hearing all that coded jargon and understanding nothing, except that it was very bad news.
Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life.
Today I like my first ladies with a little bite.
I can feel a better version of me somewhere in there – hidden behind a liver or attached to a bit of spleen within my stunted, childish body – a Libby that’s telling me to get up, do something, grow up, move on.
I never worked holidays, because holiday hand jobs are sad for everyone.
Please let him look. I didn’t need to hide from someone courting oblivion as ardently as I am.
It sounded artificial, like a beauty contestant pledging world peace.
And I didn’t realize. I didn’t take into account. Just. You know, this is real to you. I mean, I know that, we know that, but we don’t at the same time. We really just never will. I don’t think. Totally get that. You spend so much time discussing and debating it becomes... But. Well. I’m sorry.
I could feel my limbs disconnecting, floating nearby like driftwood on an oily lake.
That’s what I did, though – I had angry, defensive conversations in my head, got mad at things that hadn’t even happened yet. Yet.
Bear gifts if you can’t bear anything else.
Lyle Wirth looked like a serial killer. Which meant he probably wasn’t one. If you were chopping up hookers or eating runaways, you’d try to look normal.
Get all that bad stuff out, sweetheart. Don’t stop till it’s all out.
I finally understood – nearly twenty years too late.