Quotes from Alison Gaylin

I am capable. I am capable. I am capable.

If you're a karma person, then Ed and Natalie deserved nothing but sunshine and rainbows for the next hundred years. But all they got was enough happiness to know how awful it is to lose it.

I can feel Luke behind me, his weight shifting. "I'm a human being," I tell the waitress quietly. "I am not your entertainment." There may be a change in those eyes, a softening. But I'm not sure. It's probably my imagination. Luke hands me my purse and phone, which is still powered off. I may never turn it on again.

Oh, and I'm dependent on antianxiety meds, the only therapist I ever had died from a fall down a flight of stairs, and there's a viral video of me losing my mind at a public event, taken just before my own arrest. I'm not what anyone would call a reliable witness.

There's a weight to having a destination and a purpose, even if that purpose is saying hi to a stranger as he's leaving a cemetery. It tethers me, the way being a mother used to. It makes me feel as though I'm part of something more important than myself.

Joan once told me she thought compartmentalizing gets a bad rap—especially when it comes to people like us, who have been through something so traumatic; ignoring it for long periods of time can be a means of survival. When you've been through fire, you can't feel that burn every day, she explained. You have to go on with your life.

The hurt's the same. The wound never heals. The details never fade.

They ply us with chamomile tea and sleeping pills and bake us soporific casseroles. They shove us into bedrooms and cover us with heavy blankets and beg us to sleep, to stay out of the way, to remain unconscious so they won't have to endure the discomfort of having to talk to us.

She knows she doesn't. She knows everything her son took from us, because she isn't an idiot. But she survives on delusions, and the more people believe those delusions, the stronger she gets. I'm not interested in helping her feel better. She can fuck right off.

Mount Shady is a lovely town, but it's also homogenous and boring, and boredom dulls your ability to make the right decisions. Boredom creeps up on you slowly, wraps its tendrils around you and tugs at you in such a subtle yet constant way, you'll do anything to escape it. You'll behave recklessly and stupidly. You'll trust the wrong people, with disastrous results. Emily would still be alive if we'd stayed in New York.

It's the price you pay for being dumb enough to feel secure in your life.

Boredom creeps up on you slowly..wraps its tendrils around and tugs you until you'll do anything to escape it.