Zoë

“She only felt that the candle would burn better, the packing go easier, the world be happier, if she could give and receive some human love.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“She forced down her resentment, but it only grew heavy inside her, like a thing of substance.”
― Claire Morgan, The Price of Salt, or Carol

“Being traumatized means continuing to organize your life as if the trauma were still going on—unchanged and immutable—as every new encounter or event is contaminated by the past.”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

“The most terrible loneliness is not the kind that comes from being alone, but the kind that comes from being misunderstood. It is the loneliness of standing in a crowded room, surrounded by people who do not see you, who do not hear you, who do not know the true essence of who you are. And in that loneliness, you feel as though you are fading, disappearing into the background, until you are nothing more than a ghost, a shadow of your former self.”
― George Orwell