Emily

“It was actually more like this: Nina would get up and her head would hurt because she drank wine that was at least 30 percent sulfites or whatever it is that causes headaches. Her mouth would feel like the inside of one of those single socks you see on the street sometimes, and her hair would be depressed. She would stand slightly crouched by the coffee maker and shiver until the coffee was done. Sometimes her glassy eyes would rest on her visualization corner and she would resent the steady way the planet whirled around the sun without consulting her at all. Day after day, night after night, rinse and repeat. Basically, until the first slug of caffeine hit her system, she was essentially in suspended animation, and she’d been known to drool.”
― Abbi Waxman, The Bookish Life of Nina Hill

“began to wonder if my panic attacks were, in fact, the side effects of exorcism, Satan’s desperate claws around my rib cage. I wanted to die. The irony haunts me to this day: my father’s love, the very force that should’ve saved our family, was ultimately the thing to destroy it.”
― Jonathan Parks-Ramage, Yes, Daddy

“It was as if religion had been rendered powerless by commerce—holy shrines removed by enterprising architects and replaced with rows and rows of new things to worship. Things to buy. Things much easier to obtain than God’s forgiveness.”
― Jonathan Parks-Ramage, Yes, Daddy

“This was the thing about being an ex-Christian: like that, your life expectancy went from eternity to seventy-odd years. A death sentence on you and on those you loved. He tried not to think about it; he thought about it all the time.”
― R.O. Kwon, Kink: Stories