Destroy Me (Shatter Me, #1.5)

by Tahereh Mafi

I will give no one the satisfaction of my death.

I pretend and pretend and pretend until the world becomes so breathtaking behind my eyelids that I can no longer contain it. But then my eyes fly open and I’m caught around the throat by a pair of hands that won’t stop suffocating suffocating suffocating My thoughts, I think, will soon be sound. My mind, I hope, will soon be found.

Empathy is not an emotion I’ve ever known, but now it’s drowning me, pulling me into a world I never knew I could enter.

People seldom realize that they tell lies with their lips and truths with their eyes all the time.

26 letters are all I need. I can stitch them together to create oceans and ecosystems. I can fit them together to form planets and solar systems. I can use letters to construct skyscrapers and metropolitan cities populated by people, places, things, and ideas that are more real to me than these 4 walls.

I’m left to look around and be alone with my thoughts. It’s a dangerous place to be.