"The entire time, he'd only ever looked at my body, never at my face, his empty eyes hungry, never seeing me at all. I wasn't the presence of a person, but a body. I could have said anything, he wouldn't have heard me. He'd never responded, not by stopping, not with his words."

Trauma, Silence, Pain, Truth

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"The entire time, he'd only ever looked at my body, never at my face, his empty eyes hungry, never seeing me at all. I wasn't the presence of a person, but a body. I could have said anything, he wouldn't have heard me. He'd never responded, not by stopping, not with his words."

Exlpore more Trauma quotes

"You've never had someone you love snatched, I shot back, annoyed by her ignorance. 'Any sense of safety kind of bites it after that. You watch your back because no one else can."

Katherine McIntyre, American Novelist

Trauma, Loss, Security, Fear

"I learned how to stop crying.I learned how to hide inside of myself.I learned how to be somebody else.I learned how to be cold and numb."

Sherman Alexie, American Writer

Trauma, Defense, Survival, Identity

"I had no evidence. No physical signs of my rape existed anymore. My body had already purged them. That was the irreversible reality."

Aspen Matis, American Author

Trauma, Reality, Loss, Evidence

"His abusemakes her an anvilwithout spark."

Munia Khan, Bangladeshi Poet

Trauma, Abuse, Pain, Suffering, Darkness

"Her body was a prison, her mind was a prison. Her memories were a prison. The people she loved. She couldn't get away from the hurt of them. She could leave Eric, walk out of her apartment, walk forever if she liked, but she couldn't escape what really hurt. Tonight even the sky felt like a prison."

Ann Brashares, American Author

Trauma, Prison, Hurt, Memory, Isolation

"She'd taken care of me in all the ways my body needed, but the devastation of my rape had made me feel the weight of the essential way she had neglected me: she hadn't nurtured the potential of my strong and healthy independence."

Aspen Matis, American Author

Trauma, Neglect, Independence, Healing

"I tried writing fiction as a little kid, but had a teacher humiliate me, so didn't write again until I was a senior in college."

Janet Fitch, American Author

Trauma, Education, Expression, Shame

"I'm afraid it will never be perfect again. I am indelibly stained. Forever redefined, but blurred around the edges."

Ellen Hopkins, American Novelist

Trauma, Loss, Identity, Pain

"Shock is a merciful condition. It allows you to get through disaster with a necessary distance between you and your feelings."

Lisa Kleypas, American Novelist

Trauma, Disaster, Feelings, Distance, Emotion

"As Jess watched in numb horror, the man tore a page from the book and stuffed it into his mouth."

Rachel Caine, Canadian Actress

Trauma, Horror, Fear, Emotion, Violence

Explore more quotes by Aspen Matis

"And the idea of light unexplainably produced out of nothing was haunting, it shook me. A flat drab mountain could produce its own light, no one in this whole world knows why, and if that was possible then of course there must be other things that seemed impossible that weren't, and so anything-great and terrible-felt possible to me now."

Possibility

"I was able to pitch a tent and carry a backpack twenty-five miles a day through mountains-I'd mastered a thousand amazing physical feats-physically I'd become undeniably confident and capable-but physical weakness had never been the problem that I had. My true problem had been passivity, the lifelong-conditioned submission that became my nature."

Transformation

"I realized that the most empowering important thing was actually simply taking care of myself."

Empowerment

"I had no evidence. No physical signs of my rape existed anymore. My body had already purged them. That was the irreversible reality."

Trauma

"My path, beyond doubt or denial. I just hadn't looked toward it. I wasn't lost. I'd always known the way. If I'd only allowed myself to look. I had never been lost, only scared."

Destiny

"I wanted him to declare in shock how overlooked and underestimated I had been ever since I was a child. How lucky he felt to be the one to have discovered me, to have me. I wanted him to look at me like maybe I was magic."

Self-Worth

"The bravest thing I ever did was leave there. The next bravest thing I did was come back, to make myself heard."

Courage

"In lovesickness we had found a common language."

Connection

"Because I feared I couldn't walk to Newton Centre without her, I needed to hike through desert, snow and woods alone.Childhood is a wilderness."

Independence

"We aren't afraid of what we can explain. But the truth is stranger than an aimless road, it always was. The world was full of blinding mysteries, and I was blind to truth of what they were. There were things about the world I couldn't understand."

Mystery