Quotes by Leah Raeder

Who fixes broken people? Is it only other broken people, ones whove already been ruined? And do we need to be fixed? It was the messiness and hurt in our pasts that drove us, and that same hurt connected us at a subdermal level, the kind of scars written so deeply in your cells that you cant even see them anymore, only recognize them in someone else.

Part of falling in love with someone is actually falling in love with yourself. Realizing that youre gorgeous, youre fearless and unpredictable, youre a firecracker spitting light, entrancing a hundred faces that stare up at you with starry eyes.

I was so sure this was different, the kind of story they made movies and books about, but in the end it was just a summer to a summer, a dizzying breath of honeysuckle and whiskey and candle smoke, inhaled, held, let go.

Most of the time romance isnt even about love, anyway. Its about escape. Fantasy. Salvation from the mundane. Save me from boredom, from exhaustion, from my undersexed body, from microwave dinners and reality TV, from going to bed alone with a vibrator or a cat. Save me from my desperately ordinary life.

Maybe all you need to pull you back form the ledge is to know someone would miss you if you fell.

Anyone whos happy in a world this fucked-up has some serious psychological issues. You think Im crazy because I see things as they are. Youd rather put on Disneyland goggles and watch TV and pretend its fine. Its not crazy if I see monsters when I live in a fucking nightmare.

Im not over you. I dream about you every night. I watch that fucking video over and over just to hear your voice. Does that make you happy? Is that proof I cared?

I touched his hand, carefully. Not too intimate, but not some half-assed there-there pat, either. Would he understand? Usually the thought process for a seventeen-year-old boy went girl touching me>omg>boner.

If you think you can stand looking and not touching for eight months, youre welcome to try.Try being the operative word, he said, sighing. No, I cant. And I dont want to try.

Suicide isnt really about death, though. Its about change. Release.

Every time I opened my mouth, flame licked up my throat. I could have razed vil­lages, kid­napped princesses.

We looked at each other with that resentment you feel when you want something so much it’s causing you pain, so much you start to hate it a little.

Some girls had mothers who never called them beautiful but swore their love up and down. Its all the same, really. All bullshit.

I couldn’t tear my eyes from the window, wanting to drink in as much of St. Louis as I could, knowing somewhere out there, one of those infinitesimally small lights was him. I wondered if he’d look up and see the planes crossing the sky like shooting stars, knowing one of those lights was me.

Kintsugi is a pottery technique. When something breaks, like a vase, they glue it back together with melted gold. Instead of making the cracks invisible, they make them beautiful. To celebrate the history of the object. What its been through. And I was just... Thinking of us like that. My heart full of gold veins, instead of cracks.

The brain is an incredible multitasker. At the same time that it’s piercing itself with superheated needles of anguish, it’s ruthlessly making plans, contingencies, plotting out a future, giving zero fucks whether it’ll ever see it. On the day I die, it’ll be calculating what to have for dinner as it bombards itself with pain signals from my amputated legs or my clocked-out heart.

If two people could make each other smile and laugh and forget all the pain and darkness in the world for a moment, why should we feel ashamed of it?

But every stroke of the brush, every lyric, every word whispered between human beings resulted from the pain of being alone. In our haunted heads, our imperfect bodies. Islands carved from clay and bone, our skulls like shells full of mist.

If I was gay, I wouldnt need an asterisk beside my name. I could stop worrying if the girl I like will bounce when she finds out I also like dick. I could have a coming-out party without people thinking I just want attention. I wouldnt have to explain that I fall in love with minds, not genders or body parts. People wouldnt say Im just a slut or faking it or undecided or confused. Im not confused. I dont categorize people by who Im allowed to like and who Im allowed to love. Love doesnt fit into boxes like that. Its blurry, slippery, quantum. Its only limited by our perceptions and before we slap a label on it and cram it into some category, everything is possible.

I am not the heroine of this story.And Im not trying to be cute. Its the truth. Im diagnosed borderline and seriously fucked-up. I hold grudges. I bottle my hate until it ferments into poison, and then I get high off the fumes. Im completely dysfunctional and thats the way I like it, so dont expect a character arc where I finally find Redemption, Growth, and Change, or learn How to Forgive Myself and Others.