She’s an excellent presenter and would have succeeded in advertising, is what I think. She generates a sense of excitement in the room and I become aware that my hands are moist with sweat, but not from fear. From needing to know what happened next. I like the drama. I glance around the room and other people look rapt as well. And I feel like, That’s the reason to go to a gay rehab. People appreciate the drama.
Whenever you lose something of great value, it’s important to focus on its value to you and not on the loss of it.
Even though I am wary of Nature. After all, where do most manhunts for escaped serial killers begin? Exactly. In the woods.
When Group is over, we all pile into the same elevator and nobody says a word. That’s the strange thing about elevators, it’s like they have this power to silence you. I’ve just been in group therapy where people will reveal the most intimate details of their lives to complete strangers, yet in the elevator nobody can say a word.
Basically, he liked anything until it harmed him and then he was wary. All creatures in life had an equal chance with my brother, from terrier to psychotherapist. Those that impressed him with an especially keen mental ability, an amusing trick or had a large portion of food to offer would gain his favor. If my brother could find nothing of value to the person, he would dismiss them entirely.
I think out of seven billion people, there is probably more than just one soul mate. Surely, the paid employee in charge of each person’s love life has taken into account the possibility of fatal snake bites and heavy falling objects.
I felt ignorant, self-deprived, incredibly isolated, deeply and profoundly lonely and missing people, absolutely starved for affection, physically weary from alcohol, very depressed about my physical appearance, my weak muscles. Hurt and angry and sad.
I can no longer read a magazine and throw it on the floor. In exchange, I get unlimited access to the one person I have met in my life whom I automatically felt was out of my league. My favorite human being, the single person I cherish above all others. This is the person I get to share the oxygen in the room with.
Dennis asked, “Do you enjoy jazz? Because I love it, and I know of a place downtown where we could go.” “And then we can have broken glass and arsenic for dinner!” I felt like replying, because I barely tolerated jazz when I encountered it in elevators or dental offices. But I considered that when you meet somebody who really loves something, the high-road thing to do is to try to love it, too, so I wrote back, “That sounds great!
Shame is the landfill emotion. It’s not organic, like joy. It was dumped there by somebody else.
Avoid self-pity by taking responsibility for everything that happens to you, even if somebody else is at fault. By taking responsibility, I don’t mean play doormat. I mean, repair yourself. Move forward. Move on. Then, only then, see if you can wrangle some empathy.
Usually, they started with just two people bickering over something small. Like what to watch on TV. Then a third person would enter the room and see two people screaming over the TV and they’d decide to moderate, only they’d end up taking a side. Eventually, someone else would get sucked in.
By engaging with the person you’re with. Which means, not thinking while they’re speaking and not forming your answer as they are in the middle of asking the question. Engaging with the person means following carefully what they say, going for the full ride of their dialogue. So that you don’t skip over a nuance by mistake. This is what’ll keep you from zoning out, avoiding eye contact, looking at the wall like a freak, or sweating too much.
It was time to leave. He was insufferable, had toilet problems, looked demented to begin with, and now he was the accomplice to a cat killer. Yet did I leave? No, I sat there. And I thought, What has happened to me? Why am I not rising up off the sofa? Why am I not leaving?
Normal people hadn’t been molested or reared by a clinically psychotic mother, an alcoholic father, or a perversely mad psychiatrist who wore a Santa hat and performed toilet bowl readings. These were normal people, and I lived among them now. I thought, This must be what I want.
No matter how awful something is, you can always sell tickets.
Because the minister’s wife refused to leave the minister, and because my mother required a worshipful companion, she was forced to break up with Fern and secure herself a new mate. As luck would have it, Dr. Finch had recently begun seeing a suicidal eighteen-year-old African-American girl who had taken a leave of absence from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her name was Dorothy.
Sometimes, I wrap aluminum foil around Cream’s middle, around her legs and her tail and then I walk her through the house on a leash. I like it when she’s shiny, like a star, like a guest on the Donnie and Marie Show.
I like the bad one better,′ I said. ‘She had flying monkeys, and the good one was tacky and seemed kind of dumb.
And possibility was my fuel. It was the One Thing that prevented me from slitting my wrists on any given horrid day. The fact that at any moment, everything could change.