Sickened: The Memoir Of A Munchausen By Proxy Childhood Quotes
"It is undeniable that what a parent says is usually the best guide to what's wrong with the child."
"The best lies are the ones that mix fact and fiction."
"How can a child counter a mother's total self-absorption?"
"Life is not a problem to be solved but a work to be made."
"The words assembled here represent a monument, a genuine triumph of the human spirit."
"How much hair can you have on your chest at twelve?"
"I'm selling Buicks, Sissy. Get it? Selling Buicks?"
"A mother's lies became insidiously transformed into medical fact."
"I cannot believe that incompetent son of a bitch."
"I hope that her putting her life to paper can silence some of the demons of the past."
"My head flies back and lands in his massive palm."
"I am going to shrink and shrink until I am a dry fall leaf."
"We were surrounded by a moat of thick, lush, woods."
"I slide faster and faster, flying down into the core of the earth."
"They were foreigners under our roof and stranger than the old men."
"Mom puts the flyswatter in my hand and shows me how to do it."
"It sounded like torture. And I was the torturer."
"Stepping in became our own choice and was somehow easier to handle than standing passive."
"I alone could save the others from what I knew would kill them, in spirit at least."
"I kept my antennas tuned for any outer stimulus that would throw her off."
"I have a stack of these pictures, the last remaining window of my youth to peer through."
"We have built a garage off the side of the log cabin, a pole barn to stack with hay, a junk barn for Dad's old parts to sit in."
"No little fucking bitch of a slut is going to make me sick picking up her goddamned crusty Kleenexes."
"My mother, arms folded, body now relaxed and loose, is wearing the curly smile of a Cheshire cat."
"I have nowhere to go but to Debbie Miller's son."
"Most foster kids, by the time they reach my age, are hard and mean."
"I'm afraid for you, honey, if you try to come up with some cockamamie child abuse shit on your own."
"It was going on six months since I'd seen a cardiologist, and Mom wasn't even buying me Ensure Plus anymore."
"The concept of Mom and Dad went out with the tooth fairy and Santa."
"Mom and Dad didn't fight. The guns stayed put. No bedroom doors creaked in the night."
"We just acted like a normal family. And I wasn't sick anymore."
"People aren't just influential to me; a thin layer of them fuses onto me like hot cling wrap."
"They suggest underlying spiritual philosophies: That each soul chooses its parents and all its experiences in order to learn the lessons it needs to develop fully."
"We are who we are not despite adversity, but because of it."
"The truth hurts, but the only thing the truth hurts, are illusions."
"TRUTH IS WHATEVER YOUR MIND BELIEVES. And beliefs are erected by those who raise us."
"I bolster myself with platitudes: 'We are who we are not despite adversity, but because of it' and 'They say the truth hurts, but the only thing the truth hurts, are illusions.'"
"I am leaving Ohio. My farmhouse is being torn down; its south side is sliding into the ravine below."
"And with each mile that ticks on my odometer, my memory of my mother falls away just a little more, broken cliffs dropping off into the depths of memory."
"Writing about my life is like pulling a fine hair out the back of my throat. I just keep pulling and pulling and it just keeps coming."