It’s a dark place, not knowing. It’s difficult to surrender to. But I guess it’s where we live most of the time. I guess it’s where we all live, so maybe it doesn’t have to be so lonely. Maybe I can settle into it, cozy up to it, make a home inside uncertainty.
There are no scenes in life, there are only minutes.
I know that I am always alone, even when surrounded by people, so I let the emptiness in.
It sucks to lose your best friend, even if only to distance. Even when it isn’t really losing her at all.
There’s nothing stupid about wanting to be loved. Believe me.
Tragedy,” she says. “Heartbreak.” She stops and then she makes sure that I’m looking at her. “Betrayal.” Her eyes bore into mine... “These are all things that change a person. If we endure them and we aren’t changed, then something is wrong.
But sometimes two people have a deep connection. It makes romance seem trivial. It isn’t about anything carnal. It’s about souls. About the deepest part of who you are as a person.
Then, without really realizing it, I start to think of one thing I did wrong for each tree I look at. Wide oak- I didn’t tell anyone when Ingrid cut herself. Baby oak- the time I told her I was getting sick of hearing about Jayson’s arms and his blue shirt... Then I look out to where there’s this huge group of trees in the distance, and I count those for all the times I called her some name, or told her she was being stupid- because even though I was always joking, it might have hurt.
There are degrees of obsession, of awareness, of grief, of insanity.
I listened to the same heartbroken song the entire bus ride home, because it was still a summer when sadness was beautiful.
There’s something fairy-tale-like about it, which is perfect, because fairy tales are all about innocence and ill will and the inevitability of terrible things. They’re all about the moment when a girl is no longer who she once was.
Friendship is about more than facts. It’s about knowing what someone is thinking, or knowing enough to know that you don’t. But I guess it’s also about not letting too much time go by without asking them questions, so you don’t end up looking at them one afternoon, the sun so bright you have to squint, realizing that you hardly recognize the person they’ve become.
I just want all my friends to be happy. And sometimes you have to do that one friend at a time.
From the top of Castro Street, it looks like a river of people. It looks, I realize, like a march – rows and rows of people, gathered to exert their power. Only this time we aren’t marching. We don’t need to show our numbers to show our worth. This time our power comes from staying in this space, from walking the hallowed ground of our history and bringing it to life. I am alone, yes. But I am a part of everything. I feel it – I’ve been living in a world, but what I have is a universe.
As much as I had wanted a love story out of a movie, I know now that movies can only hope to to capture this kind of love.
Is it possible to get over a voice like this? Someday, I’d like to be able to hear her speak a sentence on the phone with out it making me want to hang up, get in my car, and drive as many miles as it takes to kiss her.
That girl she was trying to reach- she must have been running from something. She must have been someone special, for her friend to keep trying so hard. Too bad she was gone now.
No one will know if you stay in bed all day. No one will know if you wear the same sweatpants for the entire month, if you eat every meal in front of television shows and use T-shirts as napkins. Go ahead and listen to that same song on repeat until its sound turns to nothing and you sleep the winter away. I.
When you’re friends with someone for such a long, it’s easy to feel like she belongs to you, like the version of the person you became friends with is the only version.
You get close to people. You get farther from them. You learn how much you love them, and then you say good-bye, believing that you will be together again, someday, when your lives curve back into one another’s.