"I feel myself shriveling along with my world, getting smaller and harder. I’m turning into a rock, and in some ways that’s good, because rocks last forever. But if this is how I’m going to last forever, then I don’t want to."

"These days, the anger never left, she realized sadly. The anger was always there, waiting, waiting in the pit of her stomach. Waiting to spread, to radiate through her entire body until she chocked by it, strangled by her own anger."

"After that, I don’t know, I was pretty messed up. Not physically. But mentally, it’s like I went down a deep hole for a long time. I just gave up. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep more than a few hours a night, and there were times when I couldn’t stop crying."

"I’m really cracking. No, I’m beyond cracking, I’m shattered. I’m lost. I’m fragmented. Everyone belongs, knows where they’re going but me."

"It’s in these moments of tender ridiculous nostalgia that I know something inside me is still broken."

"After a certain point, a heart with so many stress fractures can never be anything but broken."

"She didn’t understand that. “How can anyone be afraid of love?” “How can they not?” His face was completely aghast. “When you love someone…truly love them, friend or lover, you lay your heart open to them. You give them a part of yourself that you give to no one else, and you let them inside a part of you that only they can hurt—you literally hand them the razor with a map of where to cut deepest and most painfully on your heart and soul. And when they do strike, it’s crippling—like having your heart carved out. It leaves you naked and exposed, wondering what you did to make them want to hurt you so badly when all you did was love them. What is so wrong with you that no one can keep faith with you? That no one can love you? To have it happen once is bad enough, but to have it repeated? Who in their right mind would not be terrified of that?"

"I feel like I should be taking some poetic discourse to describe all of the ways I’m crumbling. I feel like there should be words for this, but all I really feel is defeated."

"Sometimes patience has nothing to do with it, and sometimes, no matter how much you tough it out, you’re not supposed to, and the pieces will absolutely not fall where you want them to."

"There are those hearts, reader, that never mend again once they are broken. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves in a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman."

"How I cracked. How at work one morning, standing on the pig line, I felt something break open in my chest. I don’t know what it was. I’ll never know. But it was real, I know that much, it was a physical rupture—a cracking-leaking-popping feeling."

"Along the way, I’ve learned that you can’t let anyone in too far and you can’t trust endlessly. The biggest mistake you can make is to care or love someone more than yourself, because then you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Boundaries are necessary so that you can protect yourself, because once you’re broken, you’ll never fully be fixed."

"Here’s to the girls. The girls that keep a smile even though they’re going through hell. That keep their head high, even though they’d rather be elsewhere. That give amazing advice, but can’t seem to follow it themselves. That can make anyone laugh, but herself. Here’s to you."

"This is my broken heart talking. This is my weak head, my shaky fingers and wet eyes. My loss of faith in love, my aching stomach and lack of sleep at night, saying I miss you."

"When your heart is broken you plant seeds in the cracks and you pray for rain."