Sarah

“There's safety in being locked away in the dark. Other people's dismissal of me, their discomfort around me, their unwillingness or inability to see me as anything other than a walking tragedy— this all absolved me of a certain responsibility. I was free, in a sense, to live outside the realm of people. And I was free to feel superior to people who would exclude me. It is hard to leave the darkness and step out into bright and baring light.”
― Chloé Cooper Jones, Easy Beauty

“I found his disdain exciting. He projected a radical social freedom I felt I could not access for myself. The man did not soften the edges of his actions and felt free to wield his principles like a weapon and, although I was the recipient of the blow, I welcomed it as instructional. I'd be further in life if I'd claimed more freedom and had not so fully absorbed the lesson that my social value depended on my being com-promising, deferential, small.

The man's cruelty brought comfort; it shored up the story I told myself about myself and validated my deepest suspicion: I was invisible. The indifferent man gifted me the satisfaction of being right.”
― Chloé Cooper Jones, Easy Beauty

“I felt shame when excluded, like I'd been singled out for this unique punishment, and I didn't know what I'd done to deserve it. But my shame's twin was my self-righteous repulsion for able-bodied people who did not see me as real, who did not try, who were more comfortable holding me at a distance from real life. In the Republic, Plato separates people into classes, the highest of which are the philosophers, whose obsession with the futile work of narrowing the separation between experience and truth was what made them noble. Through Plato's lens, I could choose to resee my separation from others as a badge of honor. I could twist this theory into the shape of a shield. Not being of the world was precisely what made me better, wiser, a philosopher, my soul gold and the others' iron. These theories contained in them a superiority, and once I embraced it, it kept me aloft, saved me from further descent.
Judgment became a powerful antidote to despair. I thought: If I must exist at a distance, let it be from above.”
― Chloé Cooper Jones, Easy Beauty

“A boat was a place where no one could reach you, a place where some boy couldn't slide into your path to make you a prop in his joke. Even when the boys rowed past us, all we'd do was holler or chant; we didn't have to drop everything to watch them, which was the usual expectation. (Do you remember, for instance, the fake Woodstock that Marco Washington and Mike Stiles set up on the quad? They hauled couches from the dorms, used extension cords for guitars and stand mics. I joined the audience to listen to their terrible playing because it was the thing to do. Just as Open Dorm nights were for girls to feign interest in boys playing video games. Just as the only sporting events with full stands were for boys' teams. At the time, what rankled was the idea that we were supposed to see these boys as the stars, to fall at their sweaty feet. What bothers me now is those boys internalizing girls as audience, there only to act as mirrors, to make their accomplishments realer.)”
― Rebecca Makkai, I Have Some Questions for You