It’s always seemed stupid to me that none of the pain I’ve experienced has left a visible mark; sometimes, without a way to prove it to myself, I began to doubt that I had lived through it at all, with the memories becoming hazy over time. I want to have some kind of reminder that while wounds heal, they don’t disappear forever – I carry them everywhere, always, and that is the way of things, the way of scars.
Why do you have this expectation that life will make concessions for you?′ She scowled. ‘We are not promised ease, comfort, or fairness. Only pain and death.
Tell him I didn’t want to leave him.
Maybe we’re strangers no matter where we go. Or maybe we’ll make a home somewhere inside ourselves, to carry with us wherever we go.
The word ‘pretty’, and it all it represents, seems so completely useless right now that I have no patience for it.
Pity, I knew, was just disrespect wrapped in kindness. I had to address it early, or it would grow unwieldy in time.
I can’t imagine it’s easy to like someone, hate them, and then lose them before any of those feelings are resolved.
I have done bad things. I can’t take them back, and they are part of who I am.
It wasn’t pretending I wouldn’t get knocked down that protected me, but the knowledge that I would get back up as many times as I had to.
You’re always exhausted and you sleep like a corpse.
Well, you can’t love everything equally,” she said. “You just can’t – and if you did, then it’s the same as loving nothing at all. So you have to hold just a few things dear, because that’s what love is. Particular. Specific.
Suffer the fate, for all else is delusion.
So we were tangled in a web together, cause and effect and choice and fate all intermingling.
I thought that when I spilled one secret, the rest would come tumbling after, but openness is a habit you form over time, and not a switch you flip whenever you want to, I’m finding.
When she’s close enough, she extends her hand. “Hello, my name is Natalie. I’m Beatrice’s mother.” Beatrice. That name is so wrong for her.
Honor,” I said with a snort. “Honor has no place in survival.
Pity, I knew was just disrespect wrapped in kindness.
Just because something is difficult doesn’t mean it’s worth doing.
A harsh crack followed the rumble of thunder, a lightning strike. With that, the other musicians began to play, bringing in the tinkling sounds of light rain, the deeper thrum of thicker droplets. The others played the crashing waves, the lapping of water against a nonexistent shore. All around us were the sounds of water, dripping from faucets, gushing from waterfalls.
It’s over,” I say, wincing- she punches harder than she realizes. I ignore the pain and run a hand over her hair, because I’m stupid, and inappropriate, and stupid...