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“You know how people sometimes say they have to hurt because if they don’t, they’re so numb they won’t feel anything?”
My serotonin levels, so jacked up from the drug the night before, had plummeted, and left me on the dark side.
To refuse has so many more consequences than submitting.
Amma and I were sick just like Marian. It had to be made that obvious to me before I finally understood - nearly twenty years too late. I wanted to scream in shame.
me. I could picture her roaring around town in that SUV, her pretty little girls perched in back, perfectly dressed, ready to rule over the other kindergartners.
It was a town that bred complacency through cable TV and a convenience store.
I’d played her wrong, forgot that down here it was encouraged to openly crave gossip.
Joya would sit next to your momma, strip off her shirt, and peel the skin off in long strips. Joya loved that.”
a beautiful girl can get away with anything if she plays nice.
If you thought your momma was a nice person, you wouldn’t be over here with her best friend asking whether she’s nice.”
“Adora devours you, and if you don’t let her, it’ll be even worse for you. Lookit what’s happening to Amma. Look at what happened to Marian.”
Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom.
guess when you’re young, people expect you to accept things more easily,” I said. “And you’re a guy. Guys don’t have soft feelings.”
And when I was done, I knew for sure nothing would ever be okay again.
He was smashed, swaying heavily, but I would never steer a fellow sufferer from the relief of a blackout.
I’ve always believed clear-eyed sobriety was for the harder hearted.
I didn’t need to hide from someone courting oblivion as ardently as I was.
Your investigation has ruined this boy, Richard. And what’s worse, I don’t even think you really believe he did it.”
You’re crazy to think what you’re thinking. You’re crazy to not think
“Munchausen by Proxy. The caregiver, usually the mother, almost always the mother, makes her child ill to get attention for herself. You
Dealing with an MBP mom - it doesn’t pay to be the favorite. You were lucky your mother didn’t take more of an interest in you.”
“When a child knows that young that her mother doesn’t care for her, bad things happen.”
Will have to really dote next visit (surgery seems likely!).
Hurt as a form of flirtation. Pain as intimacy, like my mother jabbing her tweezers into my wounds.
Was I good at caring for Amma because of kindness? Or did I like caring for Amma because I have Adora’s sickness?
