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Certain viruses, not getting enough nutrition before you’re born, and other things play a role in turning on the genes.
Many creative and smart people throughout history have had schizophrenia. Scientists are even looking into links between genes that may be related to both psychosis and creativity.
It twisted and crawled, slithered with creatures too scary for most to imagine. My monster, my demons, the shadows that skidded off the walls and took on humanoid shapes. They would paralyze people with fear.
It has always been better to remain quiet than risk speaking words no one believes.
Smiling to myself as the stars winked at me, as if mischievously saying, You’ll never know all our secrets, but you can admire our truths.
My bed I’ve had since freshman year of high school is too soft. There is always too much sun, and everything is loud. Food doesn’t taste like anything but sustenance, and joy has become a dream just out of my reach. Life isn’t supposed to be this hard.
But it’s nice to be alive and not okay. To have someone to talk to, to know there is someone out there who knows I’m battling for every breath. After this, I’ll have to go back to being cold, numb, and unfeeling just to get through the day.
But there is only so much preparation you can make for death. You can plan the funeral, buy the plot, and read the grief books, but in the end, it doesn’t matter. Death still has a way of sweeping the rug out from under you every time.
When do parents realize that, after a while, we start analyzing them, too?
If she doesn’t learn to demand what she wants from life, it will take from her until she has nothing left.
Silas’s iconic 1970 slate-gray Dodge Challenger.
If I die from cardiac arrest, the cause of death is either the way he’s looking at me or the way he says wife.
The space inside me, the one reserved for Rosie, aches. It’s not a choice; it’s an unwavering fact.
Mostly, not realizing sooner that healing from her loss wasn’t me trying to forget her. It was a way of honoring her. A way of maybe helping her find peace in the afterlife, knowing I’m okay here without her.
In the beginning, breathing hurt without her. Waking up, knowing she’d never open her eyes again, made it physically impossible to inhale and exhale. Like oxygen was a reminder that I was alive and she was not.
It’s often forgotten that we weren’t just in a relationship. When she died, I lost my friend.
That it would kill him if I took what I wanted.
But the memory comes flooding back, the flash of needles and ink as it was etched into my flesh. That’s exactly what this moment feels like with Silas.
My isolation from people was from fear, the fear I saw in the mirror every morning when I woke up. It lived beneath my skin, roaches burrowing into my flesh, and only I could see it. Fear that I was not deserving of anything good, because I’m not good.
I admire their strength to still love and trust this world after what it did to them.
The way he says my name is like sinners who plead hallelujah. It rolls off his tongue, a prayer that he savors, letting it linger on his lips.
That an outcast riddled with mystery lets his voice be heard by someone like me.
He’s carved from granite, built for wars in the name of the Roman Empire, but carries the heart of a Greek poet, dripping tragic love with every split vein.
“You’re kind, and your heart was made to give. You’re fiercely protective, more afraid of hurting others than you ever are of wounding yourself. You are allowed to let love in, Cora.
Her eyes glimmer in the sunlight, like molten gold. Melted honey in coffee. My fucking favorite.
Neither of them is in the wrong, but I know one day Caleb will regret not seeing Dad more before he dies.
“We’ll live, we’ll remember him, and we’ll be happy because that’s what he wants for us. All he’s ever wanted. It won’t be easy, and there will be days you struggle more than others, but learning to love the memory of someone you’ve lost helps. It just takes time.”
Nothing good is ever real. Not for me. Not forever.
My mouth tries to seal itself; if I had glue, I’d force it to shut to keep back the venom that is coursing through my veins, threatening to spew from my throat toward anyone who comes too close, who tries to help.
No one can help me. No one will understand that I hate myself for the way I want to hurt other people because of the way I was hurt. Not because it makes me feel better or more powerful; it makes it feel like shit afterward, but it gives all this anguish somewhere to go.
And there is nothing I love more than turning a headstrong woman into a needy whore.
The veins beneath his skin rise up like a miniature mountain range, running across his knuckles and trailing past his wrist to his arms.
It’s not like I want to be this way. Guarded and mistrusting. But it’s hard when person after person lets you down. I want to believe their intentions are good, but I can’t help but feel suspicious.
It’s a fun little game we play. Her pretending she doesn’t like me, me letting her think I believe that.
Like a little tiny kitten who thinks she’s a big bad panther.
He makes me feel loved.
Loving Coraline Whittaker is worth inevitable death.
This was no longer a white gown that marked the start of a lifetime commitment, but a parting dress that symbolized the end of a horror novel I'd been caught between the pages of for years.
He was the person life left me empty for. To give it room for him to fill.
He makes me feel important, even when I don't feel that way myself.
I've slowly learned that the past doesn't matter when you give the rest of your life to someone like Silas. When you know he'll have the start and end to all of your days. Everything before him? It doesn't exist, he won't allow it. The pain, the hurt, the misery. None of it matters when I'm with him.
From the second I saw her, I chose Coraline. Today, tomorrow, and every day after. I will choose to love her, to give myself to her.
Love is wicked that way. It's all consuming and full of so much hope it makes you believe you can outrun death, that you can catch forever if you hold on tight enough.
a shadow that cannot exist without a little light.
It's a blessing to witness his burning, his inferno that consumes and releases the embers of the ones he loves.
He's the reminder that our family's history does not determine our future. That love is action and never words.
I am more than words no one believes. I'm a voice to someone who needs it.
