Dark Places

I was not a lovable child, and I'd grown into a deeply unlovable adult. Draw a picture of my soul, and it'd be a scribble with fangs.

I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it.

The truly frightening flaw in humanity is our capacity for cruelty - we all have it.

It was surprising that you could spend hours in the middle of the night pretending things were okay, and know in thirty seconds of daylight that simply wasn't so

I am not angry or sad or happy to see you. I could not give a shit. You don't even ripple.

I was raised feral, and I mostly stayed that way.

I am, I guess, depressed. I guess I've been depressed for about twenty-four years. I can feel a better version of me somewhere in there - hidden behind a liver or attached to a bit of spleen within my stunted, childish body - a Libby that's telling me to get up, do something, grow up, move on. But the meanness usually wins out. (2)

I felt something loosen in me, that shouldn't have loosened. A stitch come undone.

Don't be discouraged - every relationship you have is a failure, until you find the right one.

Everyone who keeps a secret, itches to tell it.

There are few phrases that annoy me more than I won't bite. The only line that pisses me off faster is when some drunk, ham-faced dude in a bar sees me trying to get past him and barks: Smile,it can't be that bad! Yeah, actually, it can, jackwad.

I should just listen to my gut and then do the opposite.

Glum. It meant having the blues in a way that annoyed other people. Having the blues aggressively.

I assumed everything bad in the world could happen, because everything bad in the world already did happen.

Sometimes he felt like he'd been gone his whole life--in exile, away from the place he was supposed to be, and that, soldier-like, he was pining to be returned. Homesick for a place he'd never been.

You think you know the answer, you’re going to find peace? Like knowing is somehow going to fix you? You think after what happened there’s any peace for you, sweetheart? How about this. Instead of asking yourself what happened, just accept that it happened.

The Days were a clan that mighta lived long But Ben Day’s head got screwed on wrong That boy craved dark Satan’s power So he killed his family in one nasty hour Little Michelle he strangled in the night Then chopped up Debby: a bloody sight Mother Patty he saved for last Blew off her head with a shotgun blast Baby Libby somehow survived But to live through that ain’t much a life —SCHOOLYARD RHYME, CIRCA 1985

I'm not someone who can be depended one five days a week. Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday? I don't even get out of bed five days in a row-I often don't remember to eat five days in a row. Reporting to a workplace, where I should need to stay for eight hours-eight big hours outside my home- was unfeasible.

I've had the blues for twenty-four years.

When I was fourteen, I thought a lot about killing myself—it’s a hobby today, but at age fourteen it was a vocation. On a September morning, just after school started, I’d gotten Diane’s .44 Magnum and held it, babylike, in my lap for hours. What an indulgence it would be, to just blow off my head, all my mean spirits disappearing with a gun blast, like blowing a seedy dandelion apart. But I thought about Diane, and her coming home to my small torso and a red wall, and I couldn’t do it. It’s probably why I was so hateful to her, she kept me from what I wanted the most.

The actual stuff my family owned, those boxes under my stairs, I can't quite bear to look at. I like other people's things better. They come with other people's history.

I have a meanness inside of me, real as an organ.

Do you understand this is serious?" "I understand you think it's serious.

A veces sienta bien joder a alguien. En vez de que siempre lo jodan a uno

It seemed like a joke, how much all of these dudes looked alike, like living was so hard it just erased your features, rubbed out anything distinctive.

I felt hollowed out. My mom's death was not useful. I felt a shot of rage at her, and then imagined those last bloody moments in the house, when she realized it had gone wrong, when Debby lay dying, and it was all over, her unsterling life. My anger gave way to a strange tenderness, what a mother might feel for her child, and I thought, At least she tried. She tried, on that final day, as hard as anyone could have tried. And I would try to find peace in that.

Whenever I see news stories about children who were killed by their parents, I think: But how could it be? They cared enough to give this kid a name, they had a moment—at least one moment—when they sifted through all the possibilities and picked one specific name for their child, decided what they would call their baby. How could you kill something you cared enough to name?