Now, don’t panic,” he said, putting his hand on my arm. “Breathe. And just appreciate, for a minute, the freedom in this chaos.
It meant nothing, this song. All my life I’d let other people put so much weight to it, until it was heavy enough to drown me, but it was just music. But even there, locked in the stall, I could still hear it going, those notes I’d known by heart for as long as I could remember, now twisted and different, with another man I hardly knew who had some claim to me, however small, singing the words.
And suddenly I felt completely strange, like the distance between us was much much greater than what I could see from where I was standing. Like that line, always so clear to me, had somehow shifted, or never even been where I’d thought it was at all.
I leaned into her for once, instead of away, appreciating the pull I felt there, something almost magnetic that held us to each other. I knew it would always be there, no matter how much of the world I put between us. That strong sense of what we shared, good and bad, that led us to here, where my own story began.
When my dad died, it was like everything felt really shaky, you know? And trying to be the best I could be, it gave me something to focus on. If I could just do everything right, then I was safe.
There’s something about dancing that’s like being stripped naked; you have to be very self-confident to thrash around in public, deliberately attracting attention. I’d never been that way, even without the weight that once kept me in everyone’s eyes. Dancers were the lightest and brightest of butterflies, while girls like me stayed low, bellies scraping along the floor, and watched from there.
May you always have the answers to each other’s most important questions.
Everyone is something.
It took a lot to have hope in this world where so little evidence of it existed.
I knew we were together, at least for now. And right then, while I still could, it was exactly where I wanted to be.
It was strange, telling the story from the beginning instead of catching someone up on only the latest awful chapter.
There were lots of ways to love someone, I guessed, both by remembering and forgetting.
So when we met that first night,” I said, “by the fence, you thought I was friendly?” “I didn’t think you weren’t,” he said. “I wasn’t very nice to you.” “You were jumping a fence. I didn’t take it personally.
The past was always present, in its way, and you can’t help but remember. Even if you can’t remember at all.
Me and Ethan, dancing in the dark at the end of the world.
Perhaps because it was nighttime, when things that might have felt odd in daylight instead seemed just right.
Destinations are overrated, as long as your moving, your going somewhere.
I was doing it again, jumping around. But it was so hard to start at the beginning when you knew how it would end.
The thing is, you can’t always have the best of everything. Because for a life to be real, you need it all: good and bad, beach and concrete, the familiar and the unknown, big talkers and small towns. Otherwise, how could I have all these things and still be so close to my own Best After Ever?
You always think you want to be noticed. Until you are.