Tara

“No one ever loved you like him.
And no one ever took it away so completely.
But it's here.
Look around.”
― Emma Forrest, Your Voice in My Head

“I’d always thought it was a silly question, why I wanted to stay here, in this house. This house was everything I’d ever wanted. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, but sometimes it actually was. Or at least as close as anything could come to perfect in this life, which admittedly was not very close. It wasn’t horrible every single day—so few things ever are—and when it wasn’t horrible, it was almost lovely. I knew how to survive here, and I always had the sense that if I just survived long enough, if I just played by the rules well enough, I could make it into a perfect home once and for all. I just needed to work a little harder. I loved this house. And you didn’t give up on the things you loved.”
― Carissa Orlando, The September House

“Half an hour from now, when I shall again and for ever reindue that hated personality, I know how I shall sit shuddering and weeping in my chair, or continue, with the most strained and fear-struck ecstasy of listening, to pace up and down this room (my last earthly refuge) and give ear to every sound of menace. Will Hyde die upon the scaffold? or will he find the courage to release himself at the last moment? God knows; I am careless; this is my true hour of death, and what is to follow concerns another than myself. Here, then, as I lay down the pen, and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

“Don't you do that.
Don't you look at what I had for you and call it weak.
Not when you were the one afraid of it.
I stood there with my hands open,
my mouth bruised tender with supplication.
Don't you dare treat me like a victim of my own emotions,
like being moved to my knees by love
was a mistake that I regret.
I will go to my grave with the memory of the bravery in my bones.”
― Caitlyn Siehl, What We Buried