Ila

“What is harder is stepping back far enough to consider us in the altogether, not the series of pictures but the whole that those pictures represent [...] it is easier, I think, to consider the fact of us in its many disparate pieces, as opposed to one vast and intractable thing. Easier, I think, to claw through the scatter of us in the hopes of retrieving something, of pulling some singular thing from the debris and holding it up to the light.”
― Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

“But she accepted the fact as she accepted all the things that happened to her, expecting to be ill-treated, to be made a victim, ultimately to be destroyed, either by unknown forces or by human beings. The fate seemed always to have been waiting for her, even since time began. Only love might have saved her from it. But she had never looked for love. Her part was to suffer; that was known and accepted. Fatality brought resignation. It was no use fighting her fate. She knew she has been beaten before the start.”
― Anna Kavan, Ice

“I have tried to return to an "untainted" version of myself, one that was oblivious to the visceral natures of pain and loss. I obsess over an imagined place of "purity", where the ghosts of my past do not roam, and I realize that as vital as it is to release my hauntings, I cannot return to a self who is untouched by pain. I do not live in a world without pain, and I cannot pretend that pain does not continue as I continue too.”
― Mimi Zhu, Be Not Afraid of Love: Lessons on Fear, Intimacy, and Connection

“Anger, like numbness, is another sacred protector of our survival. It is a loving act to protect yourself, a loving at to resist harm, and a loving act to allow yourself the sacred breath of anger.”
― Mimi Zhu, Be Not Afraid of Love: Lessons on Fear, Intimacy, and Connection