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1 " New dangers, though, coming to the surface like the bubbles of soap. "
― Sophie Mackintosh , The Water Cure
2 " Thinking yourself uniquely terrible is its own form of narcissism. "
3 " Refrain of the man, universal: This is not my fault!See also: I absolve myself of responsibility.And: I never said that. You can't take the actions of my body as words. "
4 " I invite the confessionals of men. I am not a stranger to them. Absorbing the guilt and the sorrow is something the world expects of women. "
5 " There is a fluidity to his movements, despite his size, that tells me he has never had to justify his existence, has never had to fold himself into a hidden thing, and I wonder what that must be like, to know that your body is irreproachable. "
6 " I know that without being touched I will die. I have known it for some time. It has always felt like I need more touch than the others anyway, my hands brushing over their shoulders or the tops of their heads as they shy away, because nobody is assigned to me. I am not anybody’s loved-most, have not been for some time. I have gone days, weeks, without touch and when that happens I can feel my skin thinning, I have to lay my body against grass and velvet and the corner of the sofa and rub my hands and elbows and thighs against anything until they are raw. "
7 " Love...also taught me that loss is a thing that builds around you. That what feels like safety is often just absence of current harm, and those two things are not the same. "
8 " Trauma is a toxin that hooks into our hair and organs and blood and becomes part of us, the way heavy metals do, our bodies nothing more than a layering of flesh around everything ingested and experienced. "
9 " If we were to spit at them, they would spit back harder. We expected that - we were prepared for it even. What we didn't expect was their growing outrage that we even dared to have moisture in our mouths. Then outrage that we had mouths at all. They would have liked us all dead, I know that now. "
10 " Step always with caution. The body is the purest sort of alarm. If something feels wrong, it probably is. "
11 " It's the men who don't even know themselves that wish you harm - those are the most dangerous ones. They will have you cower in the name of love, and feel sentimental about it. They're the ones who hate women the most. "
12 " The forest looms. It is dark in here, dark where I belong, with the wolves and the snakes and the other loveless creatures. "
13 " Do not enter. Viewed from another angle, Do not leave. "
14 " There is a violence to our eulogizing. We are making something of you that you never consented to. We are turning you into something else: a man finally overcome by the world. I know you would not want to be remembered that way. Thinking about you is akin to dragging your bloated ghost to shore. And why would we want to keep bringing that back? "
15 " Part of what made the old world so terrible, so prone to destruction, was a total lack of preparation for the personal energies often called feelings. Mother told us about these kinds of energies. Especially dangerous for women, our bodies already so vulnerable in ways that the bodies of men are not. It was a wonder that there were still safe places, islands like ours where women can be healthful and whole. "
16 " It is Sky who saves us. It will always be a woman who saves us, we know that now. The protections of men are only ever flimsy and self-serving. "
17 " I would take my strange and incapable heart out of my chest if I could, display it, absolve myself of responsibility. "
18 " It used to bother me that we would leave little trace, but now I have never been more glad about anything. I will wake up in the empty mornings with the absence of you, and I will think, Glad, glad, glad, and it will ring like a bell. "
19 " It's important, the knowledge that things could always be worse. Imagining them gone makes the edges of my love sharper. "
20 " It also taught me that loss is a thing that builds around you. That what feels like safety is often just absence of current harm, and those two things are not the same. "