Home > Work > I Stop Somewhere
21 " I know I wasn’t very good at it. At being a girl. "
― T.E. Carter , I Stop Somewhere
22 " What’s the worst that can happen? I’m a nice guy. "
23 " I don't know what happens, what line gets crossed that transitions a girl from seeing her dad as the entirety of her world to viewing him as an embarrassment. For years, we were best friends. Fishing, the movies he slept through, cooking on the grill outside when he was home in the summers. I was his little girl, and he was everything. And then, he wasn't. I woke one day to realize that to be liked, I had to give up the one person who loved me. That's a pretty shitty way to introduce a girl to growing up. "
24 " Time, when you're young, doesn't pass in the same way. It feels endless. It's hard to keep track of how seasons change, of when days become months, because we fill time until there's nothing left of it. We fill it with parties and bonfires and school and sports and relationships and people, but it's never enough. Because there's so much time, we need to fill it entirely. Boredom frightens us. "
25 " It made sense; I was a periphery girl. "
26 " I had to imagine love and so the absence of it was just something I guessed at. But now, I knew what it felt like to miss someone. To have someone fit into your life and take parts of you for themselves, only to abandon you and those pieces without care. "
27 " Winter broke the trees and now it's breaking all the people, too. "
28 " They never go for the face anymore. They prefer their damage to be hidden, to be in the places you need to protect. They want you to feel shame if you show anyone. They're careful to hurt you only in the places you've been told to keep private. "
29 " She doesn't believe it. She says it's a misunderstanding. That Caleb wouldn't... How does someone misunderstand find a body in a backyard? "
30 " Wishes grow inside of you. They attach themselves to your bones and make you ache when you try to ignore them. "
31 " I kind of liked being terrified. I thought this was what it felt like to fall in love. "
32 " I just want to be a girl. All the parts of me that made me real. Maybe a lot of things make a girl, but I think being alive is the one I miss the most. "
33 " Even the most confused and lost girl, even the most screwed up of us all, doesn’t deserve this. Death isn’t the consequence for making a mistake; it’s the punishment we force on girls because they couldn’t be good. Only girls have to die for wanting. "