Such Quiet Girls

by Noelle W. Ihli

I wasn’t calm inside. Not even a little. There was a feeling in my stomach like I was falling down a flight of stairs. Sick and spinning. But I pushed all of that down deep for my sister.

And really, that was the best any of us could do now. Accept the shitstorm, curl up in a ball, and take it until it was over.

“I know you don’t want to be coddled right now. But maybe what you need is some tough love.”

when there were enough bad things all around you, the only choice was to move to the least bad thing.

Sometimes, the only choices are awful, with little hope that anything will ever be okay again. And you pick one anyway.