Is This a Cry for Help? Quotes

“I’d rather be me now, than me any age prior. But there is this heaviness to aging. Who I am was built on the shoulders of the person I was last year, and the year before, and before, and before. I’m not just thirty-three; I’m twenty-seven. I’m eighteen. I’m nine. I was just born. And I have to carry all of those versions of myself, the feelings they have, and the mistakes they’ve made, everywhere I go.”
― Emily Austin, Is This a Cry for Help?

“I’m not sure it matters whether life feels
meaningful. I think it matters whether you find it worthwhile.”
― Emily R. Austin, Is This a Cry for Help?

“If I hadn't read these books, or studied what I did, I'd be a different person. It's hard to question things, or expand the way you think, without being exposed to new information, or different perspectives. I wonder who I'd be if I didn't have access to the books and information I've read, and I wonder who I'd be if I had more information when I was younger.”
― Emily R. Austin, Is This a Cry for Help?

“We categorize sexual orientations for the same reason we categorize anything, to better understand what it is and how it relates to other things.”
― Emily R. Austin, Is This a Cry for Help?

“When I think of Ben, I don't just think of him as a person, I think of him as a life I rejected. He represents who I could have been if I’d carried on marking myself as straight. I'd be a book shelved in a different part of the library, connected to the rest of the collection differently.”
― Emily R. Austin, Is This a Cry for Help?

“That means we grew up exposed to the same school curriculum, news, and pop culture. I'm disturbed to think we followed the same steps, in the same world, in the same timeline, and he turned out like this.”
― Emily R. Austin, Is This a Cry for Help?

“When we understand what we don’t believe, we better understand what we do.”
― Emily R. Austin, Is This a Cry for Help?

“I’d sooner defend the image of me as a hideous”
― Emily R. Austin, Is This a Cry for Help?

“She doesn’t understand that I went to college because I wanted to learn something. I’m a lesbian because that’s the hand I was dealt. She has no idea that I considered her”
― Emily Austin, Is This a Cry for Help?