rotting charm > Recent Status Updates

still not sure if were supposed to root for the biased mc that treats his autistic brother as a burden but im not appreciating it tbh

"“What’s the difference?” I asked.
“What, baby?”
“If I die, or if I go away. What’s the difference?”
She pushed until I made space for her to lie beside me.
“You’ll be alive,” she said. “It’ll be different for you.”
I remained quiet. I couldn’t hope, but I could let her."

"“I think a bath would make you feel better. You’re getting bad acne.”
“What would make me feel better is you leaving me alone. I have a headache.” Her voice was muffled by the sheets.
I blinked. If a mother takes one step forward, how many steps back does it take to rebreak her daughter’s heart?
(...)
She lifted her head. “I don’t deserve a bath, okay? Leave me alone, please.”"

"Why did she always expect the worst from me? It was the same way she cut my hair before my first day of secondary school because she was sure I would “become vain and, therefore, loose,” the way she bought me packets of that fake slimming tea when I was off to university (...). She was always one step ahead, reprimanding me for a crime that had not been committed, correcting a mistake I had not yet even conceived."

"(...) if she had siblings, maybe a little sister who came home to realize the dress she had asked for and been denied was now free for the taking. But I did not want to know. I shoved the card into my back pocket."

"The card was curved at the corners. I ran my fingers around those corners, rubbing along the edge, waiting to be cut. But the edges were too blunt.
What was not on the card was who she was: lazy, smart, loved, student, smoker, nurse, self-aware, seamstress? Or if her mother, too, was refusing to wash herself, even two weeks later; (...)"

"A house is a pot, a house is a bag, a house is a prison, a house is a supplication, a house is a justification, a house is a child on your back, weighing you down. A house is a house, and you can erase it, wreck it, tear it to the ground. A house is a house, and no, you can never forget, but you can walk away."

"What happens in a house stays in it, he told her, his fingers circling her left wrist—her drawing hand. What happens in the dark must never see the light. His voice had dropped the jokey register, cloaking her protests. His hairy hands traced further, drawing patterns on her skin she would never forget. Architecture is about negotiating borders, he whispered.
She was fourteen."

"There is a scar on Timi’s chin, a small diagonal line hidden mostly by his beard, and I like to rub my thumb against the slight elevation. He says he doesn’t know how it got there. But what would the scar say if it could speak? If the body could tell what it doesn’t forget, doesn’t process? I reach out to touch it now.
“I’m saying I am angry that it was so easy,” I tell him. “I needed to say that to you.”"

"When the doctor tells me that Fikayo has a gastroesophageal reflux, an allergic reaction to the formula, that breastmilk would be ideal at this point, I feel a sharp pain in my breasts. Can guilt be felt physically, like a blade on a finger, like a cramp in the calf, like biting your own tongue?"

"Maybe her professor friend has taught her nose a trick or two. And if so, what emotion is she identifying? Shame? Resentment? Anger? How do I tell my mother, the woman who told me never to stay with a man who disrespects me in any way, that I am doing just that? That not only did Timi disrespect me with this affair, but I couldn’t even flare up in response?"

"But no, I went straight into his arms. Mine was a faltering anger: here, then gone. My mother would be disgusted to see the weakness in her spawn."

"There are YouTube videos of my mother cutting down the governor at a rally organized by her nonprofit for women’s development. The governor had said she should leave politics to men. “Don’t you dare, Mr. Olusegun Adetula!” my mother screamed, spittle gathering in the corner of her Ruby Woo-painted lips. “Don’t you dare belittle the women who carry this society. We carry it!”"

"Why shouldn’t he be seeking protection from me? I want to be the type of woman who would have turned into a pillar of flames when Timi told me about sex with the ex in Abuja. I want to have singed the confession off his tongue until the smell of his own burning choked him, robbing him of oxygen till he was flat on his face, at my feet, melting in my fury. I want to be a woman like my mother."

"Is there a Yoruba name for “this child was conceived in the throes of hurt and anger”? An Egun name for “this boy is a result of your forgiveness sex after your husband confessed his wrong”?"

"A son? My heart broke a little. A son who could grow up to become a man, a man who might hurt other people no matter how well I raise him because a man is a man, even when he is the best man—as Timi has shown me." ok. cis women are saints i forgot sorry.

"A son? My heart broke a little. A son who could grow up to become a man, a man who might hurt other people no matter how well I raise him because a man is a man, even when he is the best man—as Timi has shown me." ok. cis women are saints i forgot sorry.

"She is telling me that she came as soon as she could, that my father would be proud of this feat of mine, bringing new life into the world. And am I glad? Am I relieved? Am I fine? Am I proud?
I am excused from responding to her barrage because (...) I am an exhausted woman who endured earth-shifting contractions, who thrashed through a forest of clawing pain, whose pelvic region throbs as if pounded by a pestle."

"You stumble through, past them, out of that house that is suffocating you. You want to stay, you want to cry, you want to grovel, you want to believe that the stories they told are real, and all your life has not been acting. That they know you."

"This new horrible person is not you, (...) but on the tail of that acknowledgment are doubts in the shapes of laughing hyenas who ask questions like: What about those moments deep within a mundane interaction when you were struck by the realization that your life was a performance? When you were confused about why you were smiling, (...) and who your audience was, who you were trying to convince?"

i just realized i messed up books while reading digital and confussed ghostroots by aguda with parade by cusk fml dude im very stupid

idk why i torture myself reading maria llovet, its like when youd like so much somthings youd wish itd work well but it falls so bad but you still have some love for it

attempt 2 of reading gantz

i havent been able to read a lot bc college, any short recommendation?

that no matter what a woman's politics, be she conservative
or liberal, she too could fit feminism into her existing lifestyle. Obviously this way of thinking has made feminism more acceptable because its underlying assumption is that women can be feminists
without fundamentally challenging and changing themselves or the
culture."