atria

“Sometimes it feels like I'm gonna explode, like everything I'm feeling is the first time anyone's felt it, ever, in the history of the universe, and then I get so angry when people don't understand that I'm walking around feeling like this and still doing everything I'm supposed to do and making As and getting into NYU and putting up with all of the Willowgrove bullshit. I—I can't even explain how I feel, and it feels wrong to say it without the right words, so I don't say it at all, but then nobody knows, and I'm mad that nobody knows, even though I don't even want them to know.”
― Casey McQuiston, I Kissed Shara Wheeler

“Depends if you don't mind that they're all about you.”
― Casey McQuiston, I Kissed Shara Wheeler

“There are things that don’t make sense about me. I don’t know if I belong here. How can that be possible, to feel estranged from a place where everyone loves you? To owe your life to a place and still want to run? I’ve been trying and trying to figure out what it is about me that makes me feel this way and why it feels so deep and so big that it must be most of me, the skin stretching between my knuckles and across my shoulders and then the bones under them too.
Knowing that I couldn’t have you if I wanted to—that stings almost the same. It’s almost the same feeling. They’re right beside each other. What do they have in common?”
― Casey McQuiston, I Kissed Shara Wheeler

“It’s fucked up how they make us feel about ourselves, and we put up with it because we don’t think there’s anything we can do about it. We put up with it for so long that we don’t even know who we are, only what they want us to be. And I don’t want to put up with it anymore.”
― Casey McQuiston, I Kissed Shara Wheeler