Marl

“I still felt the burden of my involuntary role as a mammal dragging me down. In the same way that a night of sleep put wrinkles in a bedsheet, just being alive took a toll. To talk to someone you had to move the flesh on your face. You bathed to get rid of the grime that built up on your skin and clipped your nails because they kept growing. I exhausted myself trying to achieve the bare minimum, but it had never been enough. My will and my body would always disengage before I got there.”
― Rin Usami, Idol, Burning

“I don’t really feel anything. I haven’t felt anything in months. It’s fascinating how busy my friends are with being the center of their own worlds, and my parents have never been very involved or perceptive of my inner life. I get good grades and I don’t act up, so they’ve never needed to understand me. Unlike my brother, who gets mediocre grades and struggles with making friends and therefore gets all of their focus and attention and energy. Decades later my mother will throw out a casual remark about how easy I was as a teenager. And I’ll be shocked anew that she never knew, that she never even tried to know.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“To whom do I owe the biggest apology? No one's been crueler than I've been to me.

-"Sorry to Myself”
― Alanis Morissette, Under Rug Swept

“Phones and TV screens have kind of a grace built into their separation, like the distance between the stage and the audience. It was reassuring to sense someone's presence at a certain remove so that the space couldn't be destroyed by interacting directly, or the relationship ruined by anything I did.”
― Rin Usami, Idol, Burning