Elle

“I’m trying to hold back my emotions, but I can feel my face contorting. That strange heat moving to my cheeks. I always thought it was magic moving through me, but now I know it to be rage.”
― Kim Liggett, The Grace Year

“It will get easier’ is probably the most offensive thing you can say to someone in the grip of pain. You are borrowing from a future that isn’t promised, a future that depends entirely on their endurance of the pain. You are taking for granted a well of strength within them that they may not possess, fast-forwarding through the ugly bits that you don’t want to watch but they must live through, nonetheless. ‘It will get easier’ is not a helpful thing to say to someone for whom only the present moment can exist, so vivid, so intense that it’s not possible to imagine a moment beyond it. The future doesn’t matter to someone enduring an unimaginable pain, so let’s not entertain that childish fantasy. All that matters is the pain that is consuming you in this moment, that you grit your teeth and try to survive it. You invalidate the pain and the damage it inflicts when you hasten to skip past it to a brighter tomorrow. Sometimes things are just unremittingly shit and the only respectful thing to do is to stand next to the person going through it and scream along with them.”
― Evanna Lynch, The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting: The Tragedy and The Glory of Growing Up

“Even if you do initially start out with a keen intention to 'fight' your disorder, to fight for your health and your life, it's not a decision you make once and for all, but thousands and thousands of smaller decisions throughout the day.”
― Evanna Lynch, The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting: The Tragedy and The Glory of Growing Up

“and for many years after, we all paid for his transgressions against God by sacrificing our Sunday mornings to the mind-numbing ritual of Mass.”
― Evanna Lynch, The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting: The Tragedy and the Glory of Growing Up