Sharp Objects

by Gillian Flynn

There was nothing I wanted to do more than be unconscious again, wrapped in black, gone away. I was raw. I felt swollen with potential tears, like a water balloon filled to burst.

The problem started long before that, of course. Problems always start long before you really, really see them.

They always call depression the blues, but I would have been happy to waken to a periwinkle outlook. Depression to me is urine yellow. Washed out, exhausted miles of weak piss.

When I’m panicked, I say them aloud to myself. I’m here. I don’t usually feel that I am. I feel like a warm gust of wind could exhale my way and I’d be disappeared forever, not even a sliver of fingernail left behind. On some days, I find this thought calming; on others it chills me.

Is this what mothers did, wonder if you might need safety pins?

I always feel sad for the girl that I was, because it never occurred to me that my mother might comfort me.

“I just think some women aren’t made to be mothers. And some women aren’t made to be daughters.”

“You’re so hateful.” “I learned at your feet.”

Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom.

“You’re the only person who understands, I think,” he said. “What it’s like to lose a sister and be expected to just deal. Just move on. Have you gotten over it?” He said the words so bitterly I expected his tongue to turn yellow. “You’ll never get over it,” I said. “It infects you. It ruined me.” It felt good to say it out loud.

“I guess when you’re young, people expect you to accept things more easily,” I said.

“When a child knows that young that her mother doesn’t care for her, bad things happen.”

A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort.