Amber Smith > Quotes

“I don't know who I am right now. But I know who I'm not. And I like that.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“Because whatever he thinks I am, I'm not. And whatever he thinks my body is, it isn't. My Body is a torture chamber. It's a fucking crime scene.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“I feel these forbidden thoughts creep in sometimes without warning. Slow thoughts that always start quietly, like whispers you're not even sure you're hearing. And then they get louder and louder until they become every sound in the entire world. Thoughts that can't be undone.
Would anyone care?
Would anyone even fucking notice?
What if one day I just wasn't here anymore?
What if one day it all just stopped?
What if? What if? What if?”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“All these maybes swimming around my head make me think that "maybe" could just be another word for hope.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“No, can’t cry. Because there’s nothing to cry about. Because it was just a dream. A bad dream. A nightmare. Not real. Not real. Not real. That’s what I keep thinking: NotRealNotRealNotReal. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Like a mantra. Like a prayer.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“I don’t know a lot of things. I don’t know why I didn’t hear the door click. Why I didn’t lock the damn door to begin with. Or why it didn’t register that something was wrong, so mercilessy wrong when I felt the mattress shift under his weight. Why I didn’t scream when I opened my eyes and saw him crawling between my sheets. Or why I didn’t to try to fight him when I still stood a chance.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“I don’t know how long I lay there afterward, telling myself: squeeze your eyelids tight, just try to forget. Try to ignore all the things that didn’t feel right, all the things that felt like they would never feel right again.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“His hands, his arms, can hold the pieces in place temporarily, maybe even for a long time, but he can never truly put them back together. That's not his job. He's not the hero and he's not the enemy and he's not a god. He's just a boy. And I'm just a girl, a girl who needs to pick up her own pieces and put them back together herself.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“There's a brief moment of silence for what we've lost. And in that moment, it ends. Finally. The past of us officially comes to an end.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“I'm scared. Really scared he's about to leave me. And more scared because I don't want him to.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“It was like she was the only thing in color to me, everything else in my life felt so grey.”
― Amber Smith, The way I am now

“All you have to do is act like you’re normal and okay, and people start treating you that way.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“So as I stare at the ceiling, I’m thinking: I must have some serious issues if I’m dreaming like that. Horrible stuff like that. About Kevin. Kevin. Because Kevin is my brother’s best friend, practically my brother. My parents love him like everyone else does, even me. And Kevin would never… could never. Not possible.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“I try to stand without looking like everything is broken.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“I was just a kid.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“I close my eyes again, but it’s all I can see, all I can feel, all I can hear. His skin, his arms, his legs, his hands too strong, his breath on me, muscles stretching, bones cracking, body breaking, me getting weaker, fading. These things. It’s all there is.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“But I'm not her anymore. I don't even want to be her anymore. That girl was so naive and stupid--the kind of girl who could let something like this happen to her.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“To you. To every you who has ever known the feeling of needing new ways to be.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“As I look around at everyone in their little groups, I wonder if they're all pretending to be having fun or if they are really are and there's something wrong with me that I can't be that person anymore.”
― Amber Smith, The way I am now

“I went to bed happy. I went to bed thinking of him. But the next thing I remember is waking up to him climbing on top of me, putting his hand over my mouth, whispering shutupshutupshutup. And everything happening so fast.

If it could be all a dream, just a dream that I could wake up from, then I would still be safe in my bed. That would make so much more sense. And nothing will be wrong. Nothing will be different. I’ll just be in my bed and nothing bad will ever have to happen there.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“But maybe we can only accept the love we think we deserve.”
― Amber Smith, The way I am now

“I cover my eyes. I'm crying with my whole body and all I want to do is disappear. I feel his hand hesitate, hovering over my back, then rubbing awkward circles, and then his fingers in my hair. If he's saying anything, I don't hear.

All can I hear is my blood rushing and my heart drumming in my ears. A pulsing in my throat, like there's a big jumbled ball of words stuck in there dying to get out. He puts both arms around me, but I feel suffocated.

Don't want to be held. Don't want to be touched. Not by anyone ever again in my entire life. I crunch my teeth together to keep myself from screaming.

Screaming in general, screaming at him to get his hands off me, screaming for help, screaming because I can't make sense out of anything that is happening, has happened, will happen.

Screaming because I still feel like I'm back there, always back there, in my heart I'm still that girl.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“And around the time the moon and sun are coexisting in the sky, turning the room inside out with that eerie, yet calming pale glow, I have a terrible thought: I like him. I really, really like him. Like, love-like him. Like, with my metaphorical heart. Like, if I had an x-ray, it would show an arrow lodged right into the center of that bloody, bleeding mass of muscle in my chest. And I know, somehow, that things have changed between us.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“I try to stand without looking like everything is broken. I kick the Tuesdays under the bed so she won’t find them and wonder. I take my robe. Take the tie. And as I look back at my mother, watching her collect the soiled sheets in her arms, the evidence, I know somehow if it’s not now, it has to be never. Because he was right. No one would ever believe me. Of course they wouldn’t. Not ever.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“This is you. It keeps playing in my head. This is me. It's inevitable.”
― Amber Smith, The way I am now

“Life just goes, just happens, continuing as always. Normal. And I can't shake the knowledge that life will just keep on happening, regardless if I wake up or not. Obscenely normal.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“Because I am this, and someone needs to protect him from this, even if it has to be me.”
― Amber Smith, The way I am now

“Ignore the taste in your mouth, the sticky dampness of the sheets, the fire radiating through your thighs, the nauseating pain. This bulletlike thing that ripped through you and got lodged in your gut somehow.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“And me, well, before it was like you had the girl and then you had the rumors about the girl, but now there's only the girl, because the rumors aren't just rumors anymore, they're the reality - they are the girl.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“To You.
To every you who has ever known the feeling of needing new ways to be.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be