Laura Wiess Quotes

If not for you or your daughter, then for Nicky? Couldn't you do it for Nicky?' I stop breathing. My mother pales. 'You know what, Mom? You're right. Let me do for Nicky exactly what he did for me.' She wheels and with one savage sweep of her arm, she clears the table and sends everything crashing to the floor.

I started wondering about life stories, how each one of us has one that isn't apparent at first glance, what we tell the world about ourselves and what we deliberately tuck away and never reveal.

Time is not your friend. It doesn't care if you live fast or die slow, if you are or if you aren't. It was here before you arrived and it will go on after you leave. Time doesn't care who wins or who loses, if your life span is full or empty, honorable or shameful. Time is indifferent. It simply doesn't give a shit.

If she'd said she loved me and still did all those cruel and careless things, would my child mind have decided to accept that as the definition of love?
Probably.
Would I have ended up believing that love was manipulative and hurtful and full of pain, gotten use to being shoved aside, sworn at and disregarded, picked up and hugged, and then slapped around for getting in the way, starved and smiled at, neglected and cursed, told I was no good and would never amount to anything, then hefted high and proudly shown off down at the Walmart, introduced as a little pisser and a big mistake in the same breath?
Yes, I would have, because if she said she loved me and then acted that way I would have thought that was how you loved someone, and how someone should love you back.

My mother plants her hands on her hips, peevish. "Is that the best welcome you can come up with? Why don't you come over here and give your father a hug?" Hug him? Touch him? How can she even suggest it?

I don't know how you say good-bye to whom and what you love. I don't know a painless way to do it, don't know the words to capture a heart so full and a longing so intense.

The weight in my pocket nudges my thigh, suddenly becomes my knife. I put my hand to its unforgiving outline and can't stop crying years of tears because if I don't stab my father with my weapon, then he is going to stab me with his.

All emotion receded, pulled out like low tide, leaving my brain an empty ocean bottom

That's what innocence is, you know. A blissful oblivion of what's coming, of what you'll lose and what you'll gain, and what kind of person you'll grow up to be.

It's just that instead of erupting and annihilating our tormentors, we destroy ourselves instead.

Why should I just sit around hoping it happens when maybe I can do something to make it happen?

And while we're talking about being used and abused, you should know that there are some things you tell and some things you handle by yourself, the best you can.

That was the attorney. He said the doctors are very pleased with your father's progress and that his behavior has been exemplary-'
'Well, that's stupid.' My reaction was rude and raw. 'Of course he's been a model prisoner, Mom. There aren't any kids to molest in prison.

Being user friendly doesn't mean you're going to be loved.

Tonight is when the obscene becomes the acceptable.

I would not willingly peel back the scar tissue protecting the deepest chambers of my heart and reveal the bruised hollows pooled with the blood of old wounds – the terror comes just thinking about it – but now, facing darkness I am left with no choice.
I love you, and because of that am going to try and raise the dead. – Louise Bell Closson, How It Ends

Ignorance of the outcome doesn't exempt you from the consequences.

My father's release date was given to all the local cops, school administrators, and youth group leaders.

Meredith's a big girl. She knows how babies are made, don't you, Mer?"
I nod, numb and weary. "'Course I do. Same guy that taught you taught me.

All you really have...is now.

A victim soul is a pious individual chosen to absorb the pain and suffering of others.

Tomorrow belongs to betrayal. Today is mine and I don't want to waste it being afraid.

And maybe love is terrifying. I'm terrified now, but not in the way she would think.
I'm terrified because I hate who she is and what she's done, I do, and yet there is still something strong and powerful between us, some kind of deep, primal bond that won't end, won't snap or break or change, it just remains there inside me, as sold and factual as my blood and bones - she is my mother, I am her daughter - and I don't know what to call it because it doesn't feel like love, not the good kind I felt for Ellie, with all my heart, but instead an instinctual pull that's been there from the beginning, drawing me back to her again and again, the woman who has hurt me like no one else ever could, and now she's dying and the bond is still here, inside me, and I won't call it love or hate because emotions has nothing to do with the fact that she is my mother and I am her daughter, and we will be connected in that way forever.

See, guys freak out. They hit critical mass and blast nuclear, white-hot anger out over the world like walking flamethrowers. But girls freak in. They absorb the pain and bitterness and keep right on sponging it up until they drown.

Oh, baby girl," he says with a sigh. "I am so, so sorry.

But when I looked for good, evil came; and when I waited for light, darkness came. My lyre is turned to mourning, and my pipe to the voice of those who weep. (Job)

What's the point of obsessing over cholesterol or bike helmets or even cigarettes when the biggest threats to our children are being released back into society every day? Yes, maybe 'some' of them have reformed, but what about the ones who haven't? Doesn't anyone realize that one 'touch', one 'time' will destroy a child's life ten times faster than a pack-a-day habit?

So I leave proof of my existence behind me like a snail trail with the small hope that years of talking at me will someday soften her enough to talk with me, that she'll finally pull the knife from my chest and say yes, we are better off without him. That what happened wasn't my fault and from now on she will thrust herself between me and danger, and shout NO.

How can you make someone love you when they won't? How long are you supposed to keep trying?

The law says they aren't allowed to share the info with anyone else, but of course they did - who wouldn't? - so now we're marked for life. His picture is even posted on the New Jersey Sex Offender Internet Registry.

The distant threat of eternal damnation pales in comparison to the immediate gratification of corrupting young skin.

this is no place for miracles

I learned to move silently in the background, a dirty, neglected little kid with no voice, no wants, and who made no trouble so as not to call the wrath of the eight or so tweaking adults who lived there down on me. I drifted, faded, and became a listless, ghostlike scavenger who took what she could get. I lived mostly in my head and for a while actually convinced myself that I was a survivor of one of those catastrophic earthquakes or tornadoes I used to see on the Weather Channel,a dazed, bewildered, and emotionless girl picking her way through an endless landscape of foul and stinking rubble to try and come out on the other side.

We wait to be rescued, but for whatever reason, no one comes. We figure that if no one protects us then we must not be worth protecting so we become prey and are easily picked off. Our wounded, kicked-puppy gazes attract sly predators and we sell ourselves for clearance sale prices, mistaking screwing for caring.

There are only the three of us and our dark, burgeoning desires
I am so afraid of what comes next

In my family, you can rot to hell on the inside as long as you're flawless on the outside, which is really sick, but also hard to unlearn.

I hope someone will be lost without me someday.

What are you doing?" I say hoarsely as he trails a finger from the beauty mark on my rib cage to the one on my hip, leaving a path of goose bumps in his wake.
"Connecting the dots," he murmurs with a wicked look. "Uh-oh, you made me lose my place. Now I have to start all over again ...

I know the grim probability of my own future.
The odds are high that the best of me has already been ripped away and that id I don't keep hold of myself I will lose what's left.

The ache starts in my chest and spreads through my veins. The abuse I can handle; it's the happiness that cripples.

You can't come wandering around in at all hours of the night looking like you've been-"

"Raped?" "Not to worry, Estertown's been safe for three years now, Dad.

How about giving your old man a break here, huh, Chirp?"
"Chirp is dead," I hear myself say and watch the flat words destroy his pleasure. "You killed her, and now you have to deal with me because I'm what's left.

somebody chokes, it's always on a hunk of steak.

I tore the crusts off my grilled cheese sandwich and set them aside to throw out for the birds. Their motives were pure
hunger, thirst, shelter
and they didn't mind leftovers.

No step is a safe one, so it's safer to take none at all.

No," I shout, because my mother doesn't know what I like anymore. "I don't eat things that bleed. Just cheese with lettuce or tomato and mayo. No dead fish or animals, please."

"You see what I have to put up with?" my mother says.

And of how we never really know someone, no matter how much we want to believe that we do.

After school I all but ran to Gran's and it was funny how even with her so sick, being with her could still make me feel safe.

She smiles and slips her arm through his. Her tread is light and bouncy and I can almost see the ghost of her cheerleader's ponytail bobbing at the back of her head.

We mutinied quietly, using every lesson we'd been taught by every person who'd ever used us for their own benefit.

Real life isn't like the movies. The victim doesn't usually win. She just endures.

Oh, there's a wholesome outing.' I say. 'Let's all skip down to the cop shop to register my daddy as a pervert. What fun.

Where is home?
Home is where the heart can laugh without shyness.
Home is where the heart's tears can dry at their own pace.

And I don't want to hurt anymore. I want to be someone who makes it through

Maybe it's true that shared trauma brings people closer together-a common hardship, a battle to survive-because when times are quiet people relax and go their own separate ways. They're lulled into believing they've got everything under control and don't need what they did before.