aqeelah ❀༉˖

“There's something rattling around in my chest, a hollow discontent, but maybe no one ever gets rid of that; maybe that's just the pain that lets you know you're alive. How could I want any more than this? I'm fine.”
― Brent Weeks, Night Angel Nemesis

“That's what love is; love means showing up, even when you can't fix anything. It means being there.”
― Brent Weeks, Night Angel Nemesis

“You ever go to that place where melancholy feels good? Where you feel you've attained some sort of purity of suffering, a blackness of mood so deep and unrelieved that it's aesthetically pleasing? Where your self-punishment becomes self-abuse?”
― Brent Weeks, Night Angel Nemesis

“You’re a woman, and it’s your job to fade into the background. It’s your job to make sure your children love their father and never know what a fucking idiot he is, or how little he is capable of accomplishing without you. You’re a woman, and it’s your job to have it all but never complain about how heavy it is to carry. You’re a woman, so you must strive to achieve, even if those achievements will drive the envy that means you will always be disparaged and never be embraced. You’re a woman, and you were put here to suffer and feel pain, or so people will say, and so they will act, and so you will never be properly treated and your borne-in aches will never be taken for the fatal blows that they are. You are a woman, and so the transgressions against you will always be justified in some way by what you wore or what you said or who you are, and everything bad that happens to you will always somehow be deserved. Unless you die a martyr, for your children, which is the only sure way to be a Good Woman. Because then, when you are dust and unexamined, important only for the act of ending, you will finally have the honor of being a saint.”
― Olivie Blake, Girl Dinner