The Final Girl Support Group

by Grady Hendrix

Men don’t have to pay attention the way we do. Men die because they make mistakes. Women? We die because we’re female.

The line between being too careful and not being careful enough is a line you only get to cross once.

Sometimes we have to follow our guts. That’s why we survive.

Each of us has a monster we must confront, a monster designed to test our personal weaknesses. And in the end, they bring about our deaths. Not literal death, but death as the conclusion of this phase and the beginning of another.

We tend to die, women who’ve been through the fire. Sometimes we choose obvious ways, suicide and overdoses; sometimes we’re more subtle, marrying someone who likes to use his fists, or we drink too much and keep getting behind the wheel until we run out of luck.

Adrienne was right: there’s more to life than staying alive.

Dying isn’t the important thing. It’s nothing more than the punctuation mark on the end of your life. It’s everything that came before that matters.