Every Ugly Word

by Aimee L. Salter

People do what they want. They love who they love. No one else can change that.

it isn’t what happens to you in your life that destroys you. It’s what you do about it.”

“You can’t control how other people hurt you, Ashley. But you can control how you hurt yourself.”

I know this is going to sound abstract, but I’ve always had this big gap inside, and I know you do, too. A place that nothing seems to touch and nothing can fill.

“What makes a decision brave, Doc? Serious question. I mean, is it just the fact that it’s something someone else wouldn’t do? Or what?”

I suppose I would define someone—or a decision they made—as brave when they choose a path that could have either serious gains or extreme consequences. When they’re choosing that path not out of recklessness, but out of hope. For something better.”

“I’m saying that what you believe to be true impacts what you do. So, in some ways, your conflicts with others were . . . self-fulfilling prophecy. All completely subconscious, of course.”

“People you love should always be more important than people who judge you.”

“A coward, just like the rest of them. The kind of person who makes the easy choice rather than the right one. The kind who knows that what he’s doing is hurting someone but does it anyway.”

believe that human beings have a tendency to live up to expectations: what we expect of ourselves, what we believe others expect of us.

“Our parents mold us, whether they mean to or not. Your mother convinced you that you were inadequate, that you lacked the necessary value. It’s inherent in you. It colors every decision you’ve ever made.”

You just haven’t grown up enough yet to realize courage isn’t fearless.”

it isn’t what happens to you in your life that destroys you. It’s what you do about it.

My gaps only became inevitable when I stopped believing they could be filled.

So, no, I’d never be a kick-ass movie heroine. But I was real. And loveable. And for now, that was enough.