Before You Knew My Name

The thing is. When the dead speak back, we are seldom loud enough to be heard over the clamour of all that living going on.

We think in years ... but it's really the hours that change us.

What happened to her makes me so mad. The entitlement of these fucking men who destroy lives, just because they can.

How many times does politeness keep us rooted to the spot? We stand on the brink, making a choice whether to tip over into trust or disgust, and we remember all our training, the lifetime of it. The doctrine of nice, the fear of hurting someone’s feelings.

Turns out the past sticks to whatever it touches. You cannot simply wash it away.

We think in years—How was this year, What’s your New Year’s resolution, I’m so glad to see this year gone—but it’s really the hours that change us.

Maybe the people who appear brave are merely doing the thing they have to do. It’s not a matter of courage, then, to pack up and leave a life. Just a lack of any other option, and the sudden realization you probably don’t have anything left to lose.

(Are we ever the same person with someone else? And if we’re not, what happens when one of you leaves, where does that version of you go? This is something I have thought about a lot since my mother left me.)

For the first time, I understand it's not only the dead who have lives they don't get to live out. The people left behind have as many versions of themselves unexplored, as many possible paths that close off.

I know what it's like for the horror to follow you home.

If I leave again, would anyone miss me when I'm gone?

For the first time, I understand it’s not only the dead who have lives they don’t get to live out. The people left behind have as many versions of themselves unexplored, as many possible paths that close off.

How easy is it, Ruby will think later, back in her studio, to assume you are the cause of another person’s discomfort or disdain, when the reality is, we all show up with our night befores, our midnight hours and too-early mornings.

When a star dies, the dust and gases left over can form a nebula. Which is truly one of the most beautiful things you’ll ever see. But nebulae get even more interesting, because they also signify regions where bright, new stars are formed. Stellar nurseries, they call them. Stardust, then, is both the end and the beginning of things. A galactic reminder that birth and death are not so very different.

She wonders at how long it's taken for her to contemplate this notion. That being seen and known is better for you than being someone's enduring mystery.

The people who knew me remain distant from one another, they each carry around their own unshared memories of Alice Lee, as if I was many things, or nothing, depending on who you asked.

Anger, despair, disbelief, resignation; all the tools it takes to survive.

It's not as if the place remembers you

Every riddle has an answer. No matter how long it takes to solve, the answer was created at the exact same time as the question.

I mean, can you imagine? That a place can feel like a person? That a place can comfort you and sing to you and surprise you. A place where simply stepping up out of the subway onto the street can give you that fizzing-under-the-skin sensation you get right before you kiss someone?

Sometimes it is surrender, not struggle, that saves a life.

When you get caught in a rip, you have no choice but to give in, to go where the water wants to take you. The force of the rip will eventually dissipate, but only if you let it carry you far enough out to sea. Safety comes from moving with the current until you are free of it, and then, only then, can you turn and swim like hell for the shore.

What neither of us said, what none of us say: You took up all the space. I didn’t know how to say no and you never waited for my yes. I need you to leave me alone now. We swallow the words and the warning bells, so that we take on the doubt, dismiss what we know to be true. We demur, placate. Say just enough and smile just enough and let them touch us just enough, hoping the moment will pass.

She’ll reach out if she needs me, she told herself, and that’s it, isn’t it. That’s how a person slips out of your life so easily. Sometimes forgetting is simply waiting too long.

How easy it is, Ruby will think later, back in her studio, to assume you are the cause of another person’s discomfort or disdain, when the reality is, we all show up with our night befores, our midnight hours and too-early mornings.

It was fascinating to watch, how quickly she could put herself back together again.

Ruby will think later, back in her studio, to assume you are the cause of another person’s discomfort or disdain, when the reality is, we all show up with our night befores, our midnight hours and too-early mornings.

we all exist in our own little worlds, our own private universes. We don’t have to see a person in the flesh to think about them; it’s enough that they’re there in our heads, which is where we do most of our looking, anyway.