Anna

“I run to my bedroom and hurl myself onto my bed, whipping open my laptop, desperate to chase away this heavy emptiness. To fill it with items that can carry me away, that can lift me into a version of myself who is light and whole and happy and satisfied with what she's got. Who wants for nothing because she has everything she could possibly need.”
― Jennette McCurdy, Half His Age

“I know my job. My role. To make him feel good. To be his escape. To take him out of the pressures of his life, which includes not putting any pressure on him to be a bigger part of mine.”
― Jennette McCurdy, Half His Age

“What is the overgiver getting out of this obviously imbalanced arrangement?

Or at least, what do they think they’re getting?

Because nobody overgives for no reason—even if those reasons are deeply hidden or disguised as acts of pure altruism.

So what is the payoff, exactly?
In my case, the payoff has always been love—or at least, the desperate hope of love.

And how far am I willing to go—how much will I extend myself, exhaust myself, burn myself out, or manipulate, seduce, soothe, manage, and control others—in order to get my own hidden needs and hungers met?

Are you kidding me?
To earn love?
I will give up everything I have.
I will overgive myself right to the edge of annihilation.

But only always.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, All the Way to the River

“I've tried not to ask for much, and to expect even less. I've tried to make them feel funny when they say all the same jokes, feel smart when they all have the same point of view, feel right when a quick Google search confirms that they're not. I've tried to laugh on cue, smile on cue, compliment on cue. I've watered down my personality to a cardboard cutout version of myself, and I thought that was fine so long as my body showed up in 4D with bells and whistles, ready to grab and grope and lick and suck.”
― Jennette McCurdy, Half His Age