More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
August 21 - September 25, 2025
Hatred, I learned quickly, was the antidote to sadness. It was the only safe feeling. Hatred does not make you cry at school. It isn’t vulnerable. Hatred is efficient. It does not grovel. It is pure power.
It’s okay to have some things you never get over.
But your brain is not trying to be reasonable. It’s trying to save your life.
How much am I willing to pay in order to be happy? you ask yourself. Is it worth spending $1,000 a month? Is it worth going into debt to be happy?
First: Just because the wound doesn’t hurt doesn’t mean it’s healed. If it looks good and it feels good, it should be all good, right? But over the years I’d smoothed perfect white layers of spackle over gaping structural holes.
Feelings are a privilege.
“Smile through your tears. Swallow your pain.”
My family tried to erase this history. But my body remembers. My work ethic. My fear of cockroaches. My hatred for the taste of dirt. These are not random attributes, a spin of the wheel. They were gifted to me with purpose, with necessity.
He explained that Bruce Banner was abused as a child, and as a consequence, he developed a trauma-informed rage. Then he was blasted by gamma rays that made his rage an actual superpower. Ham said the Hulk operates exactly like someone who has been triggered. As his rage grows, his IQ decreases. He can’t speak, he can’t form complete thoughts, he loses self-awareness. All he cares about is what’s in front of him and how he can protect himself. And he can’t turn the Hulk off immediately—it takes time for him to calm down, sleep it off.
But please don’t mistake me for my Hulk.”[1]
“You were okay after, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t okay, because I was holding your pain. Who can I talk to? Who’s there for me? No one!…And I don’t get an opportunity to feel coddled or protected because I’m so busy listening to you. It’s frustrating because I know you want to protect me…but then all the moments I need you to protect me…where the fuck are you?”