Sarah

“She opened her mouth, and the words flooded out. "I'm sorry, Dr. Jerry. I shouldn't be here. I should've never come back. I'm a horrible person. I don't deserve your help. Or your trust. I've been stealing from you and I'm
9つ
"My friend," he said. "That is what you are.
You're my friend, as you have been since you were seventeen years old."
She shook her head. She wasn't his friend.
She was a leech.
He asked, "Do you remember that first time you knocked on my door? I'd put out a help wanted sign, but I had secretly hoped that the help would come from someone as special as you."
Callie couldn't take his kindness. She started crying so hard that she had to gulp for breath.”
― Karin Slaughter, False Witness

“No." Callie's tone was as firm as it had ever been. "Listen to me, Harleigh. What happened is what happened. We were both his victims. We both forgot how bad it was because that was the only way we could survive."
"It wasn't—" Leigh stopped herself, because there was no counter-argument. They had both been children. They had both been victims. All she could do was go back to where she started.
"I'm sorry."
"You can't be sorry for something that you couldn't control. Don't you get that?"
Leigh shook her head, but part of her desperately wanted to believe what Callie was saying was true.
"I want you to hear me," Callie said. "If this is the guilt you've been carrying around for your entire adult life, then set it the fuck down, because it doesn't belong to you. It belongs to him."
Leigh was so used to crying that she didn't notice her own tears. "I'm so sorry."
"For what?" Callie demanded. "It's not your fault. It was never your fault."
The twist on her familiar mantra broke something inside of Leigh. She put her head in her hands. She started to sob so hard that she couldn't hold herself up.
Callie wrapped her arms around Leigh, taking some of the burden. Her lips pressed into the top of Leigh's head. Callie had never held her before. Usually, it was the other way around.
Usually, it was Leigh providing the comfort, because Walter was right. From the beginning, Phil had never been their mother. It was only Leigh and Callie, back then, and it was only Leigh and Callie right now.”
― Karin Slaughter, False Witness

“What follows is my best effort to shed as much light as possible on events that have not simply been forgotten or left in the dark, but relegated to the attic, or the ash can, or the metaphorical darkness of fear and shame, and to reignite Plath's fire in the parlor where her fans squint to read by flickering gaslight; above them, the man searches the attic for the jewels he hid too well.What follows is my best effort to shed as much light as possible on events that have not simply been forgotten or left in the dark, but relegated to the attic, or the ash can, or the metaphorical darkness of fear and shame, and to reignite Plath's fire in the parlor where her fans squint to read by flickering gaslight; above them, the man searches the attic for the jewels he hid too well.”
― Emily Van Duyne, Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation

“This is not to disavow the agency, maturity, or intelligence of my students. Even the youngest ones, at eighteen, are (mostly) legal adults. Practically grown-ups. Some truly are, already, grown-ups. But still. They're also teenagers.
Most have never lived alone, and still don't, living in dorms with roommates. Many have never paid rent, cooked a meal for themselves. They have not legally bought alcohol. Many do not have credit cards. They have never had a full-time job and bills. Now, at thirty-six, I feel like they are children.
When I talk to the ones who stand out the most-the girls who are sad and talented and looking for help without ever actually saying that—I realize: when I blossomed under the attention and care of my teacher, I was asking for the support I desperately needed. I wasn't asking to be fucked.
After I had been teaching for a few semesters, I reread my high school journals. I had already begun writing about what had happened to me in classrooms in high school, hotel rooms after that. I had already begun to try to capture it on the page.”
― Alisson Wood, Being Lolita