And Then I Woke Up

Maybe we’ll all have to get used to the uncertainty. Maybe that’s what frightens me. The way you can get used to anything if you’ve got nothing better to gravitate toward.

If you’re the sort of person who sees blood and monsters rather than somebody real? What does that say about us, I wonder? What does that say about me? Does it take a certain sort of mindset to succumb to that sort of narrative? A certain sort of vulnerability to look at someone, a group of people and think: monster, zombie, Other.

A story told under duress is not the story ready to be told.

Isn’t it beautiful how stories can work like that? The subtle way they help the teller, the subversive way they reach the listener, how they creep inside you like waking dreams.

the problem with the truth was that it was so poorly written

Relationships aren't scientific, they're not mathematical. They're chaotic, abstract, irrational.

Macey once told me the program with the truth was that it was so poorly written. Given the choice, the pleasantly told lie is always more seductive. That's why religion is so potent, she said. Why history and science are still considered up for debate. Myth is more appealing than verified truth because the grey areas between the facts can still be used against us.

There was a strange and disquieting quality to her silence. It was seductive. Like the patch of darkness you can see through an apen window that you keep staring at because you have an idea something might appear there.

Macey once told me that the worst way a story can end is by someone waking up and realising everything that happened was only a dream.

She once told me when you say you’re going to tell people a horror story, they sit up in their chairs defensively, waiting to see you fail. When you tell them it’s a love story, they relax, they open themselves wide.

When I was a kid, I told myself I would never get married, I would never have kids, I would never work in an office, I would never own a flat or a house or a car. I would live abroad, somewhere tropical. I would get a deep tan all over and I would live in a hut on a beach and every morning I would go down to the surf and swim, which would make me lean and fit and unafraid. I would collect shells and line them up along the wall in my home. I would learn to fish. I would learn to sing. I would watch the stars come out as the day began to fade and I would listen to the curl of the ocean tide long into the night. There would be something about the isolation of it all that I was certain I would find beauty in.

the worst way a story can end is by someone waking up and realising everything that happened was only a dream.

The narrative had focussed her to such an extent she only saw what it needed her to see to sustain itself.

They liked the weapons she had forged herself; they couldn’t stand the way she chose to wield them.

It's only that I don't trust dreams. I don't think it's fair they don't really mean anything.

It had already started. The world was tipping, its weight shifting, and no one had noticed how precarious the ground beneath our feet had become. Every image, every video feed, everything we heard and read seemed to have two sides. Each piece of evidence divided us, and with each line drawn, a wider slice of reality was thrown into question. The truth became slippery, as though the information itself had become a carrier. With each broadcast, the gleam in one person’s eye found a home in a multitude of others. And with enough confusion, enough doubt, well . . . that’s when the believers started to take charge

She nearly spat. “I’m not working in a bookshop,” she said. “Every asshole in my class wants to work in a bookshop. ‘It would be my dream job! I write books, I sell books.’ Please. People who work in bookshops are the worst. They’re . . . I dunno, capitalist librarians.

Night means darkness, darkness means introspection, introspection dredges up all kinds of monsters and my god, do those bastards keep us busy until dawn.

The thing about new people in the group was that it was another opportunity for the rest of us to tell our own stories again. We're hungry for fresh listeners, because the more you tell your own story, the more it makes sense to you...

. . . it’s those differences — even the smallest and most trivial — that scare us the most.

We were monsters once, and although we are not anymore, we know we remain unforgiven.

History is one long string of stories honed to sharpen one side over another.

Put your hand up if you sleep soundly every night. See? Me neither. And no wonder. Night means darkness, darkness means introspection, introspection dredges up all kinds of monsters and my god, do those bastards keep us busy until dawn.

When I say this is a love story, I mean this is a story about someone who believed in something impossible and beautiful and dangerous with such strength of character and devotion that they followed the thread of it all the way to the very end, no matter what the world threw at them. Whichever way you try to tell it, that sounds like a love story to me.