Thrown Away Like Trash Quotes

Because I don’t feel broken when you look at me. (Acheron) How could you feel broken? (Tory) I was shattered as a child and thrown away, like a piece of trash no on wanted. But you don’t treat me like that. You see in me the human bit and you touch that part of me. You make me feel whole and wanted. (Acheron)

IT’S A TRUTH universally acknowledged that when rich people move into the hood, where it’s a little bit broken and a little bit forgotten, the first thing they want to do is clean it up. But it’s not just the junky stuff they’ll get rid of. People can be thrown away too, like last night’s trash left out on sidewalks or pushed to the edge of wherever all broken things go. What those rich people don’t always know is that broken and forgotten neighborhoods were first built out of love.

What kind of dog do you want?” “I don’t know, Ari. One that comes from the shelter. You know, one of those dogs that someone’s thrown away.” “Yeah,” I said. “But how will you know which one to pick? There’s a lot of dogs at the shelter. And they all want to be saved.” “It’s because people are so mean. They throw dogs away like they’re trash. I hate that.

Reminiscing about our friendship suddenly seems like the sun casting a fake specialness on a pile of trash. But I want to find the nice memories that were thrown away.

Shit and piss and trash were thrown from windows to the distant street until rain came to wash them away, and like plants in rich soil, the unstable, unreliable buildings rose, driven by the deep human desire to be the one least shat upon.

American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash -- all of them -- surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered with rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much. The mountains of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use. In this, if no other way, we can see the wild an reckless exuberance of our production, and waste seems to be the index. Driving along I thought how in France or Italy every item of these thrown-out things would have been saved and used for something. This is not said in criticism of one system or the other but I do wonder whether there will come a time when we can no longer afford our wastefulness -- chemical wastes in the rivers, metal wastes everywhere, and atomic wastes buried deep in the earth or sunk in the sea. When an Indian village became too deep in its own filth, the inhabitants moved. And we have no place to which to move.

I was not allowed to rest. How could I rest? I formed the habit of taking promenades quite late—at sunset. For some reason I felt compelled to find the stream of water, the cypress tree, and the lily plant. I had become accustomed to these promenades in the same way that I had become addicted to opium; it was as though some force compelled me to them. All the time along the way I thought only about her, recalling my initial glimpse of her. I wanted to find the place where I had seen her on the Thirteenth day of Farvardin. If I could find that place, and if I could sit under that cypress tree, I was sure some tranquility would appear in my life. But, alas, there was nothing there but refuse, hot sand, the ribcage of a horse, and a dog sniffing the top of the trash. Had I really met her? Never. I only saw her stealthily through a hole, through an ill-fated hole in the closet of my room. I was like a hungry dog that sniffs and searches the garbage. When people appear with more trash, he runs away and, out of fear, hides himself. Later he returns to seek his favorite pieces in the new trash. I was in a similar situation, only for me the hole had been blocked up. To me she was a fresh and tender bouquet of flowers thrown on top of a trash pile.

On the eve of my move to New York, my parents sat me down to talk. “Your mother and I understand that we have a certain responsibility to prepare you for life at a coed institution,” said my father. “Have you ever heard of oxytocin?” I shook my head. “It’s the thing that’s going to make you crazy,” my mother said, swirling the ice in her glass. “You’ll lose all the good sense I’ve worked so hard to build up in you since the day you were born.” She was kidding. “Oxytocin is a hormone released during copulation,” my father went on, staring at the blank wall behind me. “Orgasm,” my mother whispered. “Biologically, oxytocin serves a purpose,” my father said. “That warm fuzzy feeling.” “It’s what bonds a couple together. Without it, the human species would have gone extinct a long time ago. Women experience its effects more powerfully than men do. It’s good to be aware of that.” “For when you’re thrown out with yesterday’s trash,” my mother said. “Men are dogs. Even professors, so don’t be fooled.” “Men don’t attach as easily. They’re more rational,” my father corrected her. After a long pause, he said, “We just want you to be careful.” “He means use a rubber.” “And take these.” My father gave me a small, pink, shell-shaped compact of birth control pills. “Gross,” was all I could say. “And your father has cancer,” my mother said. I said nothing. “Prostate isn’t like breast,” my father said, turning away. “They do surgery, and you move on.” “The man always dies first,” my mother whispered.

Alternatives to time-out Isolating children for a period of time has become a popular discipline strategy advocated by many child psychologists and pediatricians. However, newly adopted toddlers seem to be more upset than helped by time-outs. Time-outs are intended to provide an opportunity for both parents and children to calm down and change their behaviors, but it isn’t effective for children who do not have self-calming strategies. Isolation can be traumatic for a toddler who is struggling with grief and/or attachment, and so perceives time-out as further rejection. If the child becomes angrier or more withdrawn as a result of being timed-out, try another strategy. One alternative is for parents to impose a brief time-out on themselves by temporarily withdrawing their attention from their child. For example, the parent whose child is throwing toys stops playing, looks away, and firmly tells the child, “I can’t continue playing until you stop throwing your toys.” Sitting passively next to the child may be effective, especially if the child previously was engaged in an enjoyable activity with the parent. Another alternative to parent enforced time-outs is self-determined time-outs, where the child is provided the opportunity to withdraw from a conflict voluntarily or at least have some input into the time-out arrangement. The parent could say, “I understand that you got very upset when you had to go to your room yesterday after you hit Sara. Can you think of a different place you would like to go to calm down if you feel like getting in a fight?” If the child suggests going out on the porch, the next time a battle seems to be brewing, Mom or Dad can say, “Do you need to go outside to the porch and calm down before we talk more?” Some children eventually reach the level of self-control where they remove themselves from a volatile situation without encouragement from Mom or Dad. These types of negotiations usually work better with older preschoolers or school-age children than they do with toddlers because of the reasoning skills involved. As an alternative to being timed-out, toddlers also can be timed-in while in the safety of a parent’s lap. Holding allows parents to talk to their child about why she’s being removed from an activity. For example, the toddler who has thrown her truck at the cat could be picked up and held for a few minutes while being told, “I can’t let you throw your toys at Misty. That hurts her, and in our family we don’t hurt animals. We’ll sit here together until you’re able to calm down.” Calming strategies could incorporate music, back rubs, or encouraging the child to breathe slowly. Objects that children are misusing should also be removed. For example, in the situation just discussed, the truck could be timed-out to a high shelf. If parents still decide to physically remove their child for a time-out, it should never be done in a way or place that frightens a toddler. Toddlers who have been frightened in the past by closed doors, dark rooms, or a particular room such as a bathroom should never be subjected to those settings. I know toddlers who, in their terror, have literally trashed the furniture and broken windows when they were locked in their rooms for a time-out. If parents feel a time-out is essential, it should be very brief, and in a location where the child can be supervised.

If I’m ashamed of anything, it’s the way their laughter makes me feel: alone. Like I’m trash. Like I’m nothing, no one. Just a toy. Something to be used and thrown away. A punchline instead of a living, breathing human being.

Jay got up and walked to the trash to scrape off his plate, but when the trash can popped open, he stopped and reached in. Mae got cold inside. Shit. That was where she had put everything from her satisfying clear-out earlier in the day, and she hadn't covered up the things she was discarding with other trash, as she usually did. Damn it! She knew exactly what was coming. Jay stood up with a ratty stuffed chicken in his hand. "You can't throw this away. Ryder loves this." He did, but Mae hated it. The little stuffed chicken---a gift from her sister when Ryder was born---had grown gray and smelly and was beyond washing, and Mae had been able to slip it away from Ryder's bed for several nights running. With the trip, she figured he would forget about it, although she'd felt a tiny twinge of regret as she'd stuffed it into the trash can. It was just that it was so gross now, and there were so many stuffies. If she didn't get rid of them, they'd take over. "He doesn't care about it. Not really," she said. It sounded weak, even to her. "It's so filthy, Jay. He's little. He'll like other things. It's just junk, anyway." Jay turned on her. "You don't always get to decide what's junk, Mae. You don't get to pick and choose everything we have and everything we do and everywhere we go." "I don't. Just---some things. And it's not the same." Throwing away a toy was not the same as making all their life decisions---and how could she not make decisions right now, when everything Jay wanted to do felt so precarious? Couldn't he see that they wanted the same things, for the world to stay nice and safe and solid around Madison and Ryder and around themselves? She knew Jay had moved around a lot as a kid, and that at least once his dad had handed him a shoebox and told him if it didn't fit in there, it couldn't come. But sometimes you had to get rid of those things, even things you once loved, to make room for better things. And sometimes you made mistakes. Don't bring up the baseball glove. Don't bring up the baseball glove. She hadn't known the baseball glove was a perfectly worn-in classic Rawlings. Or that Jay had been hoping Madison or Ryder might use it someday. All she'd seen was that it was old. And kinda moldy. She honestly hadn't thought he would notice it was gone.

The first item on the list referred to a cough drop. As I read it, I asked her about it. “Oh,” she answered, “that is about a cough drop someone left on the dashboard of our car. The other day I saw the cough drop and thought, I’ll have to throw that away. When I arrived at my first stop, I forgot to take the cough drop to a trash can. When I got back into the car, I saw it and thought, I’ll throw it away at the gas station. The gas station came and went and I hadn’t thrown the cough drop away. Well, the whole day went like that, the cough drop still sitting on the dashboard. When I got home, I thought, I’ll take it inside with me and throw it out. In the time it took me to open the car door, I forgot about the cough drop. It was there to greet me when I got in the car the next morning. Jeff was with me. I looked at the cough drop and burst into tears. Jeff asked me why I was crying, and I told him it was because of the cough drop. He thought I was losing my mind. ‘But you don’t understand,’ I said, ‘my whole life is like that. I see something that I mean to do and then I don’t do it. It’s not only trivial things like the cough drop; it’s big things, too.’ That’s why I cried.

Nevaeh- When you toss something or someone away, where does it go? It is just the same as not missing a family that I have never had- I guess. I was left to be buried under more useless substances, in a heap of forgetfulness, yet I dug myself back up, and out of the burial ground, they put me on top of, time and time again. Just for them to track me down and cover me over once more with their dirt as if I am trash. Besides, society just wants more matter to throw away, instead of embracing what they once had. This reminds me of the fact that a lot of girls out there are used and then thrown away when the boys are left to go on as someone new and do it all over again. As well as, break yet another girl's heart. I should know it happened to me! Just like they can keep trying to kill me, yet I know I will stay thriving! Just when I thought, all was lost completely and everything was helpless, while I have hit rock bottom once more.

One girl she had grown like a cyst, upon her thigh. Other children she had made out of things in her garden, or bits of trash that the cats brought her: aluminum foil with strings of chicken fat still crusted to it, broken television sets, cardboard boxes that the neighbors had thrown out. She had always been a thrifty witch. Some of these children had run away and others had died. Some of them she had simply misplaced, or accidentally left behind on buses. It is to be hoped that these children were later adopted into good homes, or reunited with their natural parents. If you are looking for a happy ending in this story, then perhaps you should stop reading here and picture these children, these parents, their reunions.

I know better than to interfere with the natural order, but I couldn't let you die. I didn't want to watch you suffer." "Why would you do that?" He led her hand to his face so that she was touching his cheek as he stared at her. His eyes and the pain in them burned her soul deep. “Because I don’t feel broken when you look at me. " Those words brought tears to her eyes. "How could you feel broken?" He rubbed his face against her palm and when he spoke, his breath scorched her skin. But it was his words that branded her heart. "I was shattered as a child and thrown away, like a piece of trash no on wanted. But you don’t treat me like that. You see in me the human bit and you touch that part of me. You make me feel whole and wanted.” Tory pulled him against her and held him close as her tears finally fell. "I love when you hold me," he whispered against her shoulder.

It was a sweet little cup—the green glass where her car keys waited patiently on the ticket booth counter. She’d gotten it from her brother, part of a set he’d received on his wedding day. The handle had cracked off, and he’d been about to toss it away when Fen had rescued it from the rubbish. It only needed a new life; for someone to see its potential. Would it miss her, her little cup, after all this was over? Would someone else adopt it? Or would it be thrown away? Lost to a trash heap somewhere, where no one would hold it again? Like my body will be.