Rock Bottom Girl

by Lucy Score

“You can either wallow in disappointment—which is a legitimate choice—or you can embrace this change as a reboot of sorts.”

“I’m going to take that license and my future boobs, and when I graduate, I’m going to drive out of this hell hole with both middle fingers flying out the car window.”

“I can see the summer didn’t bring you bitches new personalities.”

My desire to be liked and accepted was equal to Vicky’s desire to call assholes assholes. I admired her tremendously for it.

“Don’t get sad. Don’t give these dumb fucks the ability to hurt you,”

“Get mad. Get even.

“For being a shitty team player and having a craptastic attitude. Newsflash, you want to act like a jerk, do it at home to your parents who made you this way. Now, run.”

“Think of this as a do-over,” he suggested. “Remember everything that you hated about high school and see if you can do anything about it from this side of things.”

“We study history so we don’t make the same mistakes over and over again. So we can grow. Do better.”

Our strength comes from our diversity, our willingness to change, to fight inequality, to explode scientific advancement.”

“Come on.” Vicky nudged me. “You’re enjoying this. You don’t have to be all Droopy the Clown.”

“You’re operating on the assumption that there’s a standard adulthood that we all subscribe to. You think it’s grown-up to go tattling to the boss over a co-worker relationship? Is it grown-up to throw your weight around and steal some other team’s practice field? We’re all just overgrown teenagers running around trying to be happy.”

“What if none of those things were right for you?” “What if I wasn’t right for any of those things?” she shot back. “What’s the difference? If a job or a guy didn’t fit you or you didn’t fit them, the problem’s the same. The fit was wrong.”

4. Learn the difference between venting and asking for advice. Hint: We’re very rarely asking for advice.

“Do you know where you’ll be in five years? Sitting in a divorce lawyer’s office because your $50,000 wedding was the beginning of the end to some poor idiot who thought he loved you. But you can’t hide mean forever. And that’s what you are. A sad, mean girl whose only joy in life comes from inflicting misery on others. I feel sorry for you.”

It’s like I’ve developed this radar. As soon as there’s the tiniest hint of trouble, my clock starts ticking down. Waiting for the inevitable. I’ve never been important enough to keep. I’ve never survived the first round of layoffs. I’m dispensable. Replaceable. No one misses me when I’m gone. I want to see what the other side is like.”

You don’t make an effort for other people. You do it for yourself.”

Guys don’t notice whether you have a smokey eye or the right shade of lip liner. They notice when you’re confident. Which serves a two-fold purpose,” Natalee instructed.

“If you’re confident, you’re not an easy victim.”

“You know there’s two kinds of people in this world,” I began.

There are people who take too much responsibility for everything and the people who don’t take responsibility for anything.”

“My point is, none of us are who we were at eighteen.

got into the guidance counselor thing so I could tell kids like me that, usually, life after high school is a lot better.”

It felt like…poetry. The perfection of my body welcoming his, embracing his. I was better because he was inside me.

It was like worship, obsession.

“But there’s the family you’re given and the family you choose. They don’t have to be sitting home alone on Thanksgiving if you’re not around.”

“But I’m really, bone-deep happy. You know?” No. I didn’t know. Nothing I’d ever done in life had given me that feeling. I’d been chasing it since forever. And the harder I ran, the farther away it seemed to get.

“I’m just pointing out that we all made mistakes, and we all survived them. And just because you’re bearing some adolescent scars doesn’t mean that you have to avoid Culpepper forever. I’ve missed you.”

But I was too busy falling deeper in love to do anything about it.

“There’s no point in aiming low. You think you’re protecting yourself from disappointment, but what you’re really doing is setting yourself up to never have the best.”

“But seriously. Not everyone needs to have a baby. What’s right for someone else doesn’t make it right for you. You know that, right? You don’t have to feel guilty for not doing what everyone else is doing.”

“Losing is never the end of the world. Losing is where the learning starts.”

tonight was the beginning of healing a whole lot of old wounds. It was a new beginning, a fresh start, and a redo all in one.

didn’t mean to fall in love with you, but I did, and here we are.”

“Exactly. That’s a highlight reel. Social media is how you fantasize your life should be. Not the reality of it.”

“No one actually wants to know how you really feel.”

“But when you’re a mother, the only thing that matters is how well your kids turn out. They are a direct reflection of who you are as a human being. My kids are dumber than a box of rocks. All they have are their looks and their popularity.”

“They don’t understand how hard it is. Being a mom and a wife and working. I am hanging on by my damn fingernails here!

love you,” she said. “So much. So big and wide and more. You’re the ‘more’ I’ve been looking for my entire life. And I love you, and I hope you still love me even though I was a jerk and told you that you didn’t know what love was.”