Anna

“Before we begin, I need you to know: We no longer exist for them, you and I. We are no longer a mirror reflecting their anxieties, their desires. We are not saviors, or seductresses, or symbols. We exist only for ourselves. Tragic and sublime, ordinary and animal, in the mold of all humans, long before and long after us. They will tell you you’ve done the right thing. They will tell you you’ve made a grave error. Pay them no mind. Talk to me instead… Tell me about the time you looked up at the moon when you were a child and imagined it was looking back. Tell me about the moment your body first fit against the curves of another’s, and you felt at home. Tell me how you’ve ached to be bigger than this mortal life could grant, bigger than they would allow, how you’ve carried that ache in the center of your chest every hour of your life, the pain like a festering wound, a shrine to the bittersweet agony of being alive. Tell me these things, and I will tell you I know you. Let’s show each other our pieces, and tell each other we understand. It’s the strongest power we possess, the transfiguration of the unfathomable into something we can recognize, something that bridges the gulfs between us.”
― Ashley Winstead, The Last Housewife

“You weave and you weave, until you can no longer tell if you are the storyteller or the story being told. And when he craves it, your paper thin skin, when he wants to drink your blood ,your living stories, do you not let him lick up every spoonful? Do you not swirl around the look in his eyes like a cup of tea, desperate to read the leaves, to parse who you are to him, who you will be to history? After all, names like yours are never etched into the books unless men like him allow it.”
― Ashley Winstead, The Last Housewife

“Don had almost destroyed me. Him, and the rest of the ravenous men, hungry since I was young. All my life, they’d shaped my fears and desires, determined when I felt safe and when I was afraid. That was a fucking life sentence. When would they ever stop?”
― Ashley Winstead, The Last Housewife

“this: when I’m outside, there’s always a hum in the back of my mind. A little thread of anticipation. I think most girls are the same.”
― Ashley Winstead, The Last Housewife