Half Empty, Half Full (quotes from Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn)

How do you keep safe when your whole day is as wide and empty as the sky?

They always call depression the blues, 

As dark as my big blue eyes 

Too perfect 

Too delicate to be real 

My features change by the day

As if clouds float above me 

Casting sickly shadows on my face.

Blank contentment 

Twisted with defeat, and a tiny sliver of hope. 

Paradoxical. 

I would have been happy to have woken to a periwinkle outlook, 

But instead I awake in a fog 

Wrapped in a woolen nightgown,

Despite the heat of the heavy world. 

Your voice sounds wet when you speak, 

Dripping with truth

I can tell you meant what you said- 

That you care. 

But you chiseled off all the thorns to my delicate yellow roses.

And deposited my hazards in plastic containers

To disintegrate into thin air. 

You tried to fix me

And you lost me 

To a face made of plastic 

A change far too drastic. 

I was the pretty girl

And so I was popular 

People loved me

Everyone but me. 

An incredible flirt 

In any mirror I could find

Now the sight of myself 

Out of the corner of my eye 

Sends chills 

Down my bony spine

Leaving me queasy with neglect 

A loss of oneself-

The hardest one to face.

Problems always start 

Long before you really see them.

It’s impossible to compete with the past.

Nostalgia-

Misrepresentation 

False recollections 

I was always happier back then. 

And when today is no longer present,

I’ll miss it the way I miss her now- 

Oh, how she laughed 

How she soaked up the world.

She smelled of purple flowers 

Unmistakably beautiful.

But purple turns to black decay,

Wilted and crumbled on the bathroom floor. 

She was so different from this lost girl.

I wonder when I began to notice such things. 

I began writing 

Compulsively scribbling 

On the back of old take-out menus

On the corner of my bedroom walls 

On my smooth, untouched skin. 

I had to capture my emotions

To know they were real 

To remind myself I’m human 

Before I slipped away. 

A tangible-

Physical representation of existence.  

It was crucial to see these letters

And not just see them, but feel them.

The truth, stinging, on the page. 

The pen purged my pain. 

My self-hatred. 

I learned not to turn on myself 

I almost learned to love myself 

I cleaned my wounds 

With silky baths 

Milky thoughts

And blue ink.

As bright as my big blue eyes.

The sun painted the wide sky pink.

Clouds covered the horizon 

Filling the emptiness of the pale blue air. 

The summer heat 

Became my blanket

I threw my nightgown in the attic 

And woke up that morning to a periwinkle outlook- 

A different shade of blue than I was used to.