Top highlights from Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory
And I thought about how, actually, if you wanted to, you could say the same thing about life. That life is terrifying and overwhelming and it can happen at any moment. And when youre confronted with life you can either be cowardly or you can be brave, but either way youre going to live. So you might as well be brave.
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You had every intention of being depressed forever, but as it turns out, there's work to be done, meals to eat, movies to see, errands to run. You meant to be in ruins permanently, your misery a monument, a gash across the cold hard earth, but honestly, who has the time for that? Instead, you survived - apparently, you both did - and things are shockingly okay.
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A statue isn't built from the ground up -- it's chiseled out of a block of marble -- and I often wonder if we aren't likewise shaped by the qualities we lack, outlined by the empty space where the marble used to be. I'll be sitting on a train. I'll be lying awake in bed. I'll be watching a movie; I'll be laughing. And then, all of a sudden, I'll be struck with the paralyzing truth: It's not what we do that makes us who are. It's what we don't do that defines us.
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You deserve someone who will love you in all your damaged glory.
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And when the Sadness catches up, tracks you downwhen you return home one day, arms full of groceries, to find the Sadness sitting at the kitchen table, casually reading a paper as if it never left, eating a muffin as if this were all perfectly naturalwhen the Sadness looks up at you and says, What did you think, buddy? What did you think was going to happen?when the Sadness smirks at you and says with a wry insistence that unravels you in an instant, This is the real love story here, buddy, you and mewhen the Sadness reiterates that, sure, certain smaller sadnesses dull, but this Sadness, the Sadness, has seen you through it all; this Sadness, the Sadness, has never strayed from your side, not really, and why would you want it to now, this epitome of stability in an inconsistent world?when that happens, you can put your groceries down and walk back out the door and close the door behind you.
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The normal reasons. Like, I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Its all the dumb clichs about how even when Im mad at you I love you and how every day the best part of it is waking up next to you. And it kills me that this is all the normal, typical people-in-love stuff, because I want to believe our love is specialthat its bigger and more interesting than any love that anyone else has had beforebut the heartbreaking truth is my love for you is so consistent and predictable and boring.
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There are two kinds of people, he thought: the people you dont want to touch because youre afraid youre going to break them, and the people you dont want to touch because youre afraid theyll break you.
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I fell in love with you a little bit, in that stupid way where you completely make up a fictional version of the person youre looking at and fall in love with that person.
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And youll smile at this man and wonder if he too, like all those who came before him, will someday be a bittersweet memory, will someday be felled by the same foolish blunder of knowing you a little too well and yet also somehow not enough.
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You can write it all down, you can put it in your book of facts, but the truth is no one can ever really understand the tangle of experiences and passions that makes you who you are. It's a secret collection, a private language, a pebble in your pocket that you play with when you're anxious.
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He had this really amazing party trick where sometimes he could go a full hour without even once being suddenly reminded of the paralyzing truth that his life was finite and unrepeatable.
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Move across the country and hope the Sadness wont find you, wont follow you like a stray dog from coast to coast. Hope the Sadness isnt just a fog on a leash, shadowing you always. Hope the Sadness cant be as fleet as you are, hope the Sadness is more rooted. Perhaps the Sadness has friends, a family, and cant just pick up and go. Look at all this stuff the Sadness has here in San Jose or Chapel Hill or wherever youre currently leaving. Hows the Sadness going to survive without all this stuff? Hope this isnt one of those any-place-I-hang-my-hat-is-home-type situations where the Sadness hangs its hat on you. Hope that you are not the Sadnesss home, anywhere you go, no matter how far, no matter how quicklythe Sadness lives in you. Hope to God its not that.
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Sometimes I feel like I dont have to tell you things, because I feel like when you look at me, you can see everything.
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People out grow me," he said, in the same blase tone one might say, "That is a tall building." He picked up a stick and chucked it into the water. |Everyone who ever loves me one day outgrows me.
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... in that way that you love something when youre at a place in your life when youre ready to love something and theres a thing there that you can love.
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Its okay, said Debbie. You know, I used to be super-bummed, but the truth is you can get over anything with enough time. That was the other part of the idea behind the watch, the first part being the thing about you not having to look at your phone. The other part was so that you could remember that time was passing. For most things, really, the only thing to do is just let there be time.
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The things that are the most important arent shared; they are important only to us.
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we will laugh about how there was a time, not even that long ago, when we hadnt even met, and what were we doing not meeting, who were we fooling, whose time were we wasting?
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I think you and I share the same disillusionment, sprouted from long-buried hope.
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Move across the country and hope the Sadness wont find you, wont follow you like a stray dog from coast to coast.
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What happened to our society to make it so we view damaged things as somehow incomplete? On the contrary, I, for one, believe it is damage that makes us whole.
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But if there's a silver lining here (and you're not sure there is one), it's the assurance that what you had, whatever it was, had weight. It made an impact.
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And I imagined that if I were in some other, better universe, there'd be someone who could tell me, it's okay, or you'll get 'em next time, tiger. Someone would tell me that all the stupid things I'd done, all my mistakes, they didn't matter. This someone would say that, no matter what, she was proud of me, that I filled her heart with warmth, and that that's really the most you could hope for in life - to just for an instant make somebody else just a little bit happier. She would tell me that - guess what, - everything was going to be all right.
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Science will live on after we're all dead. Science will survive with or without our attempts to understand it; science doesn't care.
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And youll smile at this man and wonder if he too, like all those who came before him, will someday be a bittersweet memory,
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The way your mother rolls her eyes at you, your sudden decision to stop eating red meat, the immediate unexplainable sadness you felt when you saw your fathers shirt draped over the back of a chair. You can write it all down, you can put it in your book of facts, but the truth is no one can ever really understand the tangle of experiences and passions that makes you who you are. Its a secret collection, a private language, a pebble in your pocket that you play with when youre anxious, hard as geometry, smooth as soap.
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Most important, though, is the unspoken understanding that both of you are peopleweak, wounded, fragile, forgivable people doing the very best you can under the impossible circumstance that is day-to-day existence.
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we realize that Friday 18 July, like every day in history before it, was a moment, a twenty-four-hour trick of the light, a thing that happened once and never again. And that sad truth will just about swallow us whole. Sorry for any inconvenience.
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Per-haps every can of cashews has a fake snake lurking, but you keep opening them, stupidly, because in your heart of hearts you still believe in cashews.
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and the man now listed in your phone as DO NOT CALL HIM were ever so foolish as to refer to as home.
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You can put to rest the fear that you were a blip in this other person's life, a footnote. What you did was important. You hurt somebody, and somebody hurt you.
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Even that shared experienceit's true significance anyway, what it really meansthat belongs to you alone.
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One night at a bar late, you pick up a hobby of a person that somehow grows into a habit
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I think you're afraid of putting yourself out there because you're afraid of getting hurt, because your areand I believe this is the clinical terma fucking coward.
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Hope that you are not the Sadnesss home, anywhere you go, no matter how far, no matter how quicklythe Sadness lives in you.
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I dont think you really love me; I think youre just terrified of being alone,
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a person who gets to know not just the you you sometimes show, but the you you truly are; a person whowhen you werent lookingslipped a naked, wounded heart into the pocket of your jacket with a bow and a note that said, handle with care.
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And I thought about how amazing it is that you can know somebody for sixty years and still not really know that person at all.
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You're really going to try this time, you swear it, this time you'll do everything not in shades of beige and gray but in bright, bold, brilliant, beautiful color.
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The memory of whatever spark you had is rusted, corroded, hardly maintained, and scarcely revisited. This was no great affair, this thing. This was no tragic heartbreak. This was just another thing that happened in a long series of things that happened. Here's your stuff back. Have a nice life.
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Hope this isn't one of those any-place-I-hang-my-hat-is-home-type situations where the Sadness hangs its hat on you. Hope that you are not Sadness's home, anywhere you go, no matter how far, no matter how quickly - the Sadness lives in you. Hope to God it's not that.
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People outgrow me, he said, in the same blas tone one might say, That is a tall building. He picked up a stick and chucked it into the water. Everyone who ever loves me one day outgrows me.
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One night, you will wake with a start in this person's bed, you will discover yourself in this person's arms, and you will disentangle yourself for the hundredth time and dress yourself for the hundredth time and try to leave this person's apartment, but when you get to the door there will be a sticky note over the knob that says, 'but what if this time you stayed?
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After all, what were you hoping for, really? What was this ever going to be, realistically? Isnt this the best thing that could have possibly happened, for it to have ended now, before somebody really got hurt?
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You had every intention of being depressed forever, but as it turns out, theres work to be done, meals to eat, movies to see, errands to run. You meant to be in ruins permanently, your misery a monument, a gash across the cold hard earth, but honestly, who has the time for that?
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You thought about how one day you would change; you would wake up one morning and all of a sudden everything would be different and all the things that used to make you cry would make you roll your eyes and all the things that used to make you roll your eyes would make you cry.
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We hope you enjoy your visit! Maybe if things were different, maybe if one of you werent about to leave the city for good, you could come here again sometime. Maybe this could become something special, something bigger than just a thing you tried once because, hey, why not? But on the other hand, its probably best not to think about it too much. Just enjoy this for what it is. Youve still got the boat ride back to Manhattan to look forward to, and if you load yourself up with too many might-have-beens, the ferry will sink under all that weight.
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You would have thought there'd be more to say to each other this night before you said good-bye forever, but it turns out you'd already said everything.
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A statue isnt built from the ground upits chiseled out of a block of marbleand I often wonder if we arent likewise shaped by the qualities we lack, outlined by the empty space where the marble used to be.
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You can write it all down, you can put it in your book of facts, but the truth is no one can ever really understand the tangle of experiences and passions that makes you who you are. It's a secret collection, a private language, a pebble in your pocket that you play with when you're anxious, hard as geometry, smooth as soap.
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I fell in love with you a little bit, in that stupid way where you completely make up a fictional version of the person youre looking at and fall in love with that person. But still, I think there was something there.
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Settle somewhere fertile, plant a new you and watch you blossom. You can barely remember that old you now, the you who lived in that other place and was Sad. That old you wasnt you; this is you. This is the you you want to be.
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ManMonster makes many noises, and part of my job as Companion to ManMonster is to decipher noises and discern meanings. At first I did not care to discern meanings of ManMonster noises, because why should I bother? I am creature with rich interior life; I should waste time trying to discern meanings of grunts and whines from ManMonster? But now I see that ManMonster is very unable to discern meanings of my noises, so if we are to understand each other at all, I am the one who must discern meanings, and since we live in same House, it is better for everyone if someone understands someone. So, fine. We are companions and I discern meanings.
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I never thought I could be this happy, she imagined one day saying to someone.
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You know, it's like whenever you get lost, just remember to keep your feet on the ground.
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She'd climbed in his heart without thinking, the way that a kid idly tongues a loose tooth.
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You can paint a dead herring purple, and you can hang it on the wall, but hard as you try, you can't make it sing.
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But if there was another me, an opposite, someone who did do all the right thingswell, I figured, that guy could really be something.
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Carlos will clear the two cereal bowls, part of the brand-new set you bought when you moved here and on the way to the sink, he'll kiss you gently on the forehead, the very forehead that's been so gently kissed by so many men, a marker amid thousands in a graveyard of kisses
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The emptiness was normal. The harsh incinerating boring awful raw barren obsessive numb five-hundred-volt nothingness now completely consuming her was so totally average.
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