ash > Recent Status Updates

“I can do this… Be nice. Comforting.
The feeling fits like a too-small T-shirt, cutting into me in all the wrong places.”

“It’s that bitter laugh that all women understand. The one that’s born out of years of fear, of waiting, of what-iffing, until it finally happens. Some man takes his anger out on you”

“This isn’t about freedom.
This is about power. Everything is.”

“He gives, thinking it’s the start.
I take, knowing it’s the end.”

“Daddy handles me differently because I’m a girl. He’d never admit it, but proud as he is, he underestimates me. Mo says he can’t help it. That it’s the way fathers are.
Sometimes I think it’s just the way men are.
It used to annoy me. But then I realized it was a weakness.
And I’ve been taught to exploit weaknesses.”

“I speed up. He follows.
All he ever does is chase. And all i ever do is run… but thinking about home always brings me back to him”

“Sometimes you’ve got to save people from themselves. Even if they don’t want it or know it”

“She’d been wild, searching for the kind of free most girls never even touch”

“I realize I’ve just scraped the surface. Of the evil in the world. Of the good.
Of the strength in every woman.”

“‘Hell is what’s waiting for you,’ he says, like it’s some sort of condemnation…
‘Any heaven that lets in men like you, I don’t want anything to do with’”

“Jayden looks down at the money, and I know the private war going on inside her. You’re not supposed to take too much charity. You’re supposed to hold your head high. Stay proud.
It’s bullshit, those lines our parents fed us.
You survive. Any way you can”

“I’d asked her once, what had drawn her to work at the Ruby, and she’d raised her eyebrow and asked me if she needed a tragic backstory to do the right thing. I’d turned red at being called out and apologized, because it was where my mind had gone”

“The Ruby had belonged to Momma, and it’s the one safe place in North County where a woman can go if she’s in trouble. Momma had a soft heart for strays. That’s the way people always put it, with this rueful smile. Like she was silly for caring. Like what she… did wasn’t fierce, protective, womanly instinct”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready… If I’ll ever be able to harden my heart enough for it not to break when I see bruises [on] throats… wrists, on tiny rib cages that haven’t finished growing… I start to wonder if maybe hardness isn’t the answer. Maybe the horror, fresh and present with each woman… bruise and tear, is what I should feel. Maybe hardening a heart is the problem. Not the solution”

“it’s wonderful, not to know anything without dreading the feeling”

“‘you were the type of girl who didn’t let anything stand in the way of loving someone… it’s a good thing… being able to love someone that much. It makes you brave.’”

“‘She keeps acting like things are going to go back to normal.’
‘Well, that’s stupid… Things are different. But it doesn’t mean they have to be awful’”

“I’d loved her. The real her. The half version she’d shown to the world and the scared parts that ran from me as much as they reached for me. Every part, every dimension, every version of her, I knew and loved”

“she’d existed half in this world and half in her own”

“[he] wouldn’t know what to do if loving me wasn’t wrapped up with some form of guilt”

“Mina hides behind her secrets and I wither away my soul with pills, and we are Just Fine, Thank You. Reckless girls dancing down dirt roads, waiting to be saved from ourselves.”

“I understand.
I just can’t forgive…yet”

“Later, I will draw this place like a fucking Norman Rockwell painting. It makes me oddly nostalgic for something I’ve never had”

“‘Everyone works at our house’… ‘Benny’s job’… ‘to brighten our days’”
Benny is NOT helping the youngest child has it too easy allegations

“it was difficult for her to talk, even casually, to another person without self-consciousness and an awkward inability to find words”
oh she’s me

“if you believe that your destiny is decided, then most likely, it’s decided. if you believe that nothing is decided, then most likely, nothing is decided”

“everything that happens in a person’s lifetime has meaning”

“there is no such thing as coincidence in this world”

“she’s deliberately tormenting me. but to be fair, i did sleep with her husband”
i mean, real

“this job would be so great if not for my boss”
a sign to RUN