Love is needing someone. Love is putting up with someone’s bad qualities because they somehow complete you.
Don’t think or judge, just listen.
There comes a time when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So you’d better learn the sound of it. Otherwise you’ll never understand what it’s saying.
Some things don’t last forever, but some things do. Like a good song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down on the corners and peering in close, hoping you still recognize the person you see there.
Music is a total constant. That’s why we have such a strong visceral connection to it, you know? Because a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. No matter what else has changed in your or the world, that one song says the same, just like that moment.
What did it feel like, I wondered, to love someone that much? So much that you couldn’t even control yourself when they came close, as if you might just break free of whatever was holding you and throw yourself at them with enough force to easily overwhelm you both.
This is the problem with dealing with someone who is actually a good listener. They don’t jump in on your sentences, saving you from actually finishing them, or talk over you, allowing what you do manage to get out to be lost or altered in transit. Instead, they wait, so you have to keep going.
The past did affect the present and the future, in ways you could see and a million ones you couldn’t. Time wasn’t a thing you could divide easily; there was no defined middle or beginning or end. I could pretend to leave the past behind, but it would not leave me.
I don’t get it,? Caroline said, bemused. ‘She’s the only one with wings. Why is that?’ There were so many questions in life. You couldn’t ever have all the answers. But I knew this one. It’s so she can fly,? I said. Then I started to run.
Music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common.
Because this is what happens when you try to run from the past. it doesn’t just catch up: it overtakes, blotting out the future, the landscape, the very sky, until there is no path left except that which leads through it, the only one that can ever get you home.
I knew that in the silence that followed, that anything could happen here. It might be too late again. I might have missed my chance. But I would at least know I tried, that I took my heart and extended my hand, whatever the outcome.
It was so easy to disown what you couldn’t recognize, to keep yourself apart from things that were foreign and unsettling. The only person you can be sure to control, always, is yourself. Which is a lot to be sure of, but at the same time, not enough.
Story of my life.
Sawooon.
I watched my mother do what she did best, and realized there would never be a way to cut myself from her entirely. No matter how strong or weak I was, she was a part of me, as crucial as my own heart. I would never be strong enough, in all my life, to do without her.
There’s something nice about the silence of a car ride in the dark, going home. When you were tired of the radio and conversation, and it was okay to just be alone with your thoughts and the road ahead. If you’re that comfortable with someone, you don’t have to talk.
At the same time, though, I was beginning to wonder if this was just how it was supposed to be for me, like perhaps I wasn’t capable of having that many people in my life at any one time. My mom turned up, Nate walked away, one door opening as another clicked shut.
It was so risky and so scary, and yet at the same time, so beautiful. Maybe the truth was, it shouldn’t be easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It’s the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth.
It’s not always easy being her daughter.? I think,? she said, ’sometimes it’s hard no matter whose daughter you are.