“My stomach is in instant pain and I feel that terrible adrenaline again. I hate the crowd even more than the fighters and I see myself learning that proximity to pain is a particular pain of its own.” SchoolPainFightingChildhoodEmpathyMemoryAdrenalineFights Book:Handsome Vanilla Source: Handsome Vanilla
“It was important for me to understand that I was only a very small part of her picture. She was a person before she was my grandmother, and that was something I had never precisely considered.” LifeFamilyChildhoodEmpathyMemoryGrandmother Book:Handsome Vanilla Source: Handsome Vanilla
“When I fell, I instantly had my "Oh, That's Why" realization and I would have known not to rollerskate through the house again, even if I had been alone. There is a loss of dignity that a child experiences when they've just suffered the consequences of something they were warned against by the Wiser One while the Wiser One gloats for being wiser, especially when the gloating is packaged as anger. But I was too young to examine gloating or anger or wisdom and she, the mother of a timid child who rarely got hurt, had not had many opportunities to consider the vulnerable state of an injured kid. We were both green and hurt and scared in this new way, together. As an adult, it helps me to view my mom as a singular woman beyond her role in my life, but also, as a child herself who does not, in fact, possess knowledge of all things. Our mother-daughter relationship was this huge, life-altering thing that we are both experiencing for the first time, at the same rate and we don't have answers, we only have things that we're trying out. This was true for my grandmother too; she was learning to be alive for the first time.” LifeMotherFamilyChildhoodEmpathyDaughterMemoryMotherhoodGrandmother Book:Handsome Vanilla Source: Handsome Vanilla
“No, you're not numb. In fact, you are quite the opposite. You feel things so extraordinarily with the very power of your imagination that by the time they occur in real life, the tangible event simply cannot compare to the feeling you made with your mind.” RealityImaginationEmpathyFeelingNumb Book:Handsome Vanilla Source: Handsome Vanilla