“Even without him, you can bring down monsters. Believe me. You can still bring down monsters.”

You see, there can be no life without death.

I wonder how I have carried so many regrets without even realising they were there.

If we had no fears to master, how else would we grow?

Forgiveness is easier to give to others than to yourself. But I am slowly learning.

I don’t know how to love people well yet. But I know I can love you the way you deserve, if you let me.

Even with the antidepressants, the grief seeped through the dangerous cracks in the scaffolding holding me up.

Without heartache there are no lessons to gain.

And power, power was so much more important than beauty ever could be.

Remind ourselves that grief may feel longer and more poignant than happiness but it still has an ending.

Perhaps he should have paid attention to the snakes coiled inside me waiting to strike.

It’s how I learn there are a multitude of ways to say I love you. For so many you don’t have to use words at all.

Learn it well. Wear your hair wild, embrace your anger and learn to wield it without fear as a sword against those who hurt you.

It makes them feel a little free, to kiss something dangerous on the mouth.

You are not an open wound, they just want you to think you are.

You have turned your heart into a museum of people you’ve loved to keep them alive inside you.

You smell of death. Everything about is an endless goodbye.

I can see every monster as they come in.

When I was a child, I used to fear monsters under the bed. I have since learned that most monsters are found within. And they are always worth fighting.

I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters.

I learned to play with the monsters under my bed. I gave angel wings to the demons in my head. I asked the voices in my mind to sing sweet lullabies and finally, I found the love and fire in my own eyes.

Maybe those who hurt me in the past were not all monsters, but rather kindred spirits who got lost along the way.

There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.

The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls.

We stopped looking for monsters under our bed when we realized that they were inside us.