Shy Girl Quotes

“Women have always been cast as caretakers, peacekeepers, and forgivers. We’re told to endure, to adapt, to rise above. But sometimes, the only way to heal is to rage. Sometimes, justice isn’t quiet or clean; it’s feral and bloody and unapologetic.”
― Mia Ballard, Shy Girl

“Comfortable is dangerous. Comfortable keeps you asleep when the house is on fire.”
― Mia Ballard, Shy Girl

“Sometimes, justice isn’t quiet or clean; it’s feral and bloody and unapologetic.”
― Mia Ballard, Shy Girl

“The slight swell of my belly feels like a clock ticking down, each passing moment narrowing my chances.”
― Mia Ballard, Shy Girl

“I chose the man who wanted not who I was, but who I could become. A pet. A prisoner.”
― Mia Ballard, Shy Girl

“But it’s not the punishments that hurt the most. It’s the absence of everything else. The way the world beyond this room collapses in on itself, shrinking until it feels like it was never real.”
― Mia Ballard, Shy Girl

“I hate myself for it, for the pathetic tremor of gratitude that blooms like rot.”
― Mia Ballard, Shy Girl

“My life, meanwhile, has unraveled slowly, as though it wanted me to feel every thread loosen before it fell apart completely.”
― Mia Ballard, Shy Girl

“wasn’t mad about the kid itself—I didn’t care. I wasn’t trying to meet it, wasn’t angling to be its stepmother.”
― Mia Ballard, Shy Girl

“He sat with me in my storm, quiet and steady, like he believed it would pass if we waited long enough. But I was afraid he’d eventually see through me, past whatever charm or wit I was holding up like a shield, and find out that underneath it all, I was empty.”
― Mia Ballard, Shy Girl

“Sometimes I think I’m carrying someone else’s weight,” he murmured. “Like I stole it by accident, and now I can’t give it back.”
― Mia Ballard, Shy Girl

“You ever feel like you’re too heavy for your own life?” he asked me once,”
― Mia Ballard, Shy Girl

“I used to think about killing myself like it was something I might get around to eventually, like folding laundry or cleaning out the fridge. Not in a big, dramatic way—not the kind that you dangle in front of a therapist to see if they’ll flinch. It was quieter than that, more practical. A passing thought, casual and constant, like a low hum in the background, like a draft slipping under a door.”
― Mia Ballard, Shy Girl

“She exists in sharp, bright colors. Me? I exist in grayscale. I am thirty, alone, and unraveling quietly enough that no one’s noticed. Yet.”
― Mia Ballard, Shy Girl

“My dad stayed, but in pieces, in fragments that didn’t add up to enough.”
― Mia Ballard, Shy Girl

“This is who I am now. A pet. A shape carved by someone else’s hands, a thing devoured piece by piece, until there is nothing left but obedience, the quiet, and the hurt. Until hurt is all that remains.”
― Mia Ballard, Shy Girl

“Time here doesn’t have edges; it drips and folds, days bleeding into years, into nothing at all.”
― Mia Ballard, Shy Girl

“a reminder of what I am: a pet, a thing shaped for looking, for praise, for command.”
― Mia Ballard, Shy Girl

“I used to think about killing myself like it was something I might get around to eventually like folding laundry or cleaning out the fridge. Not in a big dramatic way - not the king that you dangle infront of a therapist to see if they'll flinch.”
― Mia Ballard, Shy Girl