Something in the Walls

I don’t subscribe to a lot of what Oscar refers to as “new age nonsense” but the idea that grief gets heavier the longer you carry it alone is one that has helped me.

if there’s a load of girls from my school there. I don’t want to be carried out to Rod fucking Stewart.

She is as cold and distant as Venus.

Do you know what the word ‘tricoteuse’ means?” She shakes her head. “It’s French. It means ‘knitter.’ Historically, it was used to describe the women who would sit beside the guillotine and knit to keep their hands busy while heads rolled during the Revolution.” “Urgh.” Alice pulls a face. “Why?” “For many reasons, but mostly for sport. They would often sit so close they would get splattered with the blood of whichever unfortunate aristocrats had met the blade.

Sometimes I wonder how our many-chambered hearts can stand the loss all these years, why it doesn’t simply stop beating. I wonder how the grief can still twist inside you like a stitch in your side when you least expect it.

a flicker of movement catches my eye. My heart ratchets up, throat tight. My head turns toward the fireplace where I could have sworn a clutch of pale fingers has quickly withdrawn into the black throat of the chimney; nails dirty and rimed with soot, skin limpid and gray. My pulse ticks at the back of my eyeballs, my breath fish-hooked in my throat. There is nothing there. No. No. I’m tired. My mind is playing tricks on me. Still, though. Still. It’s as if my synapses have been deadened and cauterized. I stare at the fireplace and when Alice turns her head stiffly and looks at me I wonder if she knows just how frightened I am. “Did you see her, Mina?” she whispers. “No,” I say. “I didn’t see a thing.

We choose how much power we give others over us, Alice. Right now, you're handing over all the power to nothing more than broken glass and bad intentions.

I wonder what it must be like to watch the person you've spent your life with - your love, your comfort - fading away. It must be a soft pain, slowly blooming. Flowers and thorns.

The idea that grief gets heavier the longer you carry it alone is one that has helped me.