Skye MacLeod

“I carried on because it was the only thing I could control. I carried on because I just wanted to be happy and everyone knows when you’re thinner, you’re happier. I carried on because, at every turn, society was rewarding me for my self-inflicted torture. I received compliments, I received propositions, I felt more accepted by people I didn’t know, nearly all clothes looked great on me. I felt like I had finally earnt the right to be taken seriously as a woman; that everything before that had been redundant. That I had been foolish to think I had ever been worthy of affection. I had equated love with thinness and, to my horror, reinforcement of this belief was everywhere. My health was plummeting, my stocks were up.”
― Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know About Love

“Love is a quiet, reassuring, relaxing, pottering, pedantic, harmonious hum of a thing; something you can easily forget is there, even though its palms are outstretched beneath you in case you fall.”
― Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know About Love

“To lower your heart rate and drift off on nights when sleep feels impossible, dream of all the adventures that lie ahead of you and the distances you’ve traveled so far. Wrap your arms tightly round your body and, as you hold yourself, hold this one thought in your head: I’ve got you.”
― Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know About Love

“But it would be a lie to say I think I will ever be entirely free of what happened in that time [...] You can restore your physical being to health; you can develop a ratinal, balanced, caring attitude [...] You can try as hard as you can to block it out, but sometimes, on very difficult days, it feels like you’ll never be as euphoric as that ten-year-old licking lurid jam off her fingertips, not ever again.”
― Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know About Love