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21 " When I set the glass back down, I see the prints my sweaty fingers have left behind. I feel a sense of deep, sudden friendship with that smudge.That is me. My aunts and uncles, my grandparents, my beautiful, beautiful cousins-- I am a smudge on their glass. "
― Claire Legrand , Some Kind of Happiness
22 " Jack thinks it is so easy to do just things: to steal your neighbors' property so they will chase you. To hug your friend because you missed her. "
23 " A baby step. That’s what life is, you know: a bunch of baby steps, one after another after another, and sometimes you fall, but you always get back up, and eventually you get where you’re going. And hopefully, you have people beside you to help you up when you need it. That’s where family comes in. "
24 " That in itself is scary, but I have learned it is important to tell the truth, even if it is frightening. "
25 " I hear whispers, bare feet slapping on wood floors, bodies moving throughout the house... The Harts are a storm and I am its bewildered eye. "
26 " ...another thing I'm not used to, another thing that makes me feel small and bulky at the same time. "
27 " I never want to scare my parents again.I don't want them to look at me like I am broken in a way they don't know how to fix. "
28 " Only fools try to run away from fear," called the snake. "What you must do is learn to walk alongside it. "
29 " But at the time I feared he had sensed my love and had run as fast as he could in the other direction...Every time I thought about it, my throat clenched up and my stomach flipped over, and I wished the world would swallow me up so I wouldn't have to feel that way ever again. "
30 " It's Grandma, in the farthest stall. Grandma, getting sick. It goes on for way too long, and I make myself listen instead of covering my ears, because if she has to feel that, then someone else should have to hear it. It is too lonely otherwise. "
31 " Like is drawn to like, "
32 " Giving up is not an option.And if you keep going, you may as well smile while you're doing it. "
33 " I think I have depression.” I hesitate. “And anxiety, too. "
34 " Dad rubs the back of his head and says nothing. The room is full of secrets-- on Dad's face, hanging in the air like clouds of dust-- but I don't know how to read them. Dad looks smaller than he ever has before. "
35 " Some people might think it's odd that we hardly ever eat dinner together at the table. I like our way, though. It makes me feel grown-up, like Mom and Dad don't have to pretend to care about typical dinnertime rituals.We're all adults here. We eat how we want to eat.But dinner at Hart House is like a dance. Not only do I not know the steps, but I seem to have forgotten how to move my legs entirely. "
36 " All I can see is the open dark path in front of me—train on one side, forest on the other. I imagine following the tracks for days, finding what lies at the end of them. By the time I got there, maybe I would have outrun my sadness, forever.No more blue days.No more fear. "
37 " For a minute she stares out the window in silence, her skin marked with clusters of sunlight. "
38 " When we pull into the driveway, we do not get out immediately. I feel like stepping out of the car will ruin the little world we’ve created in here. "
39 " The air smelled like the underside of things—things that should not see the sunlight and yet had somehow been unearthed. "
40 " The ghostly hand on the queen’s shoulder dripped through her like cold rain. "