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Where Sleeping Girls Lie

Lindsay

I write to young girls who feel so much anger, and need desperately for someone or something to tell them their rage is important, and that the capacity to heal from deep wounds is not at all impossible. While writing this book, I kept thinking of Oluwatoyin Salau and women like her who deserve so much more than this world gives them.

My motto: Do the bare minimum necessary to keep your scholarship as well as your sanity

There was no instruction manual for ridding yourself of your own self.

Her aunt used to say that the rain had the ability to wash away your sins. It was funny, living in England most of her life, she’d have thought all that rain would have already done the job by now.

“They say terrible things are done in darkness, but terrible things are also done in a light too blinding for anyone else to look at directly.”

There was something awkward about studying in the presence of others. It felt like they’d judge your methods and finally see through you. See that you were mediocre and not as smart as they might’ve thought.

but I’ve been told that was a lie, so I guess

I’m still stumbling around that dark room, searching for that switch.

I don’t sleep anymore, and my heart hasn’t beaten in years.

But the thing about grief was that even one hundred good days were sometimes weighed down by an overwhelming guilt of forgetting.

Keep swimming. Or if that’s too hard, at the very least, float.

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