She must be in eighth grade – maybe seventh. She’s old enough to wear make-up, but she hasn’t figured out yet how to wear it well.
Just because it’s better now doesn’t mean that it’s always good.
I’d thought I remembered her perfectly. But it is much better to see her imperfectly, to see something new every time she moves.
Living within the definition of his own truth, just like me. He knows who he wants to be. Most people our age don’t have to do that. They stay within the realm of the easy. If you want to live within the definition of your own truth, you have to choose to go through the initially painful and ultimately comforting process of finding it.
In the long term, I can see how siblings could be helpful in life – someone to share family secrets with, someone of your own generation who knows if your memories are right or wrong, someone who sees you at eight and eighteen and forty-eight all at the once, and doesn’t mind. I understand that. But in the short term, siblings are at best a hassle and at worst a terror.
There are so many words in our language; we get to know so few of them.
You need to love him. I don’t care who you thought he was, or who you want him to be, you need to love him exactly as he is because your son is a remarkable human being. You have to understand that.
I don’t think anything can stay,” he tells me. “Good or bad. So I think the important part is to not get caught up in worrying about whether something will stay, and instead enjoy it for the time it’s here.
I tell him goodbye instead – a kind of goodbye that’s never, ever final.
His “devoted” is italicized by sarcasm, underlined by hurt.
Since Chuck’s a sporting guy, I think it’s only fair that I keep score of his conversation.
We know: An almost certain way to die is to believe you are already dead.
Chuck is a short guy but he works out a lot, so as a result he’s built like a fire hydrant. Most of the time he acts like a fire hydrant, too.
We were walking home late from a bar – and the term walking is used loosely here, because you were doing something between a skip and a stumble – and suddenly you started singing out your love for me. My name and everything, loud enough to reach the top floors of all the buildings. I should have told you to stop, but I didn’t want you to stop. I didn’t mind if your love for me woke people up. I didn’t mind if it somehow sneaked into their sleep.
It was an exquisite irony: Just when we stopped wanting to kill ourselves, we started to die. Just when we were feeling strenght, it was taken from us.
My voice is blind, my hearing is mute, my sight is deaf. Art is science, mathematics is conversation, and music is something that bleeds. I am so far away that I am inside myself. I barely notice colors unless I taste them. Not the yellows or the greens. I taste the deeper blues. The darker reds.
If there’s no feeling of fear then there’s no need for courage.
The whole point of love isn’t to have fun times without hard times, to have someone who is fine with who you are and doesn’t challenge you to be even better than that. The whole point of love isn’t to be the other person’s solution or answer or cure. The whole point of love is to help them find what they need, in any way you can. What we have – it’s definitely not normal. But the whole point of love is to write your own version of normal, and that is exactly what we’re going to do.” -Rhiannon.
I felt there was a piece of me missing, a piece that had become so unnerved that it fell away without me feeling it. I didn’t even know what piece it was-I just felt the gap, and knew that whatever it was, it must have been important.
The best thing to do is to treat all your days well.