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21 " We are crayons and lunchboxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds. "
― Laurie Halse Anderson , Wintergirls
22 " Do I want to die from the inside out or the outside in? "
23 " I failed eating, failed drinking, failed not cutting myself into shreds. Failed friendship. Failed sisterhood and daughterhood. Failed mirrors and scales and phone calls. Good thing I'm stable. "
24 " Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest. "
25 " Who wants to recover? It took me years to get that tiny. I wasn't sick; I was strong. "
26 " I knew how much it hurt to be the daughter of people who can't see you, not even if you are standing in front of them stomping your feet. "
27 " Be careful what you wish for. There's always a catch. "
28 " I want to go to sleep and not wake up, but I don't want to die. I want to eat like a normal person eats, but I need to see my bones or I will hate myself even more and I might cut my heart out or take every pill that was ever made. "
29 " I believe that you've created a metaphorical universe in which you can express your darkest fears. In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves, and sometimes we do such a good job, we lose track of reality. "
30 " You’re not dead, but you’re not alive, either. You’re a wintergirl, Lia-Lia, caught in between the worlds. You’re a ghost with a beating heart. Soon you’ll cross the border and be with me. I’m so stoked. I miss you wicked. "
31 " I lift my arm out of the water. It's a log. Put it back under and it blows up even bigger. People see the log and call it a twig. They yell at me because I can't see what they see. Nobody can explain to me why my eyes work different than theirs. Nobody can make it stop. "
32 " For one moment we are not failed tests and broken condoms and cheating on essays; we are crayons and lunch boxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds. "
33 " Smoke gunpowder and go to school to jump through hoops, sit up and beg, and roll over on command. Listen to the whispers that curl into your head at night, calling you ugly and fat and stupid and bitch and whore and worst of all "a disappointment." Puke and starve and cut and drink because you don't want to feel any of this. "
34 " The stuffing/puking/stuffing/puking/stuffing/puking didn't make her skinny, it made her cry. "
35 " This girl shivers and crawls under the covers with all her clothes on and falls into an overdue library book, a faerie story with rats and marrow and burning curses. The sentences build a fence around her, a Times Roman 10-point barricade, to keep the thorny voices in her head from getting too close. "
36 " Here stands a girl clutching a knife. There is grease on the stove, blood in the air, and angry words piled in the corners. We are trained not to see it, not to see any of it. . . . Someone just ripped off my eyelids. "
37 " He doesn't see my breasts or my waist or my hips. He only sees the nightmare. "
38 " We held hands when we walked down the gingerbread path into the forest, blood dripping from our fingers. We danced with witches and kissed monsters. We turned us into wintergirls, when she tried to leave, I pulled her back into the snow because I was afraid to be alone. "
39 " I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through. "
40 " I wish I had cancer. I will burn in hell for that, but it's true. "