Funny Story

All those moments throughout the days, weeks, months that don't get marked on calendars with hand-drawn stars or little stickers. Those are the moments that make a life. Not grand gestures, but mundane details that, over time, accumulate until you have a home, instead of a house. The things that matter. The things I can't stop longing for.

You can't force a person to show up, but you can learn a lesson when they don't

Trust people's actions, not their words. Don't love anyone who isn't ready to love you back. Let go of the people who don't hold on to you. Don't wait on anyone who's in no rush to get to you.

I’m a cynic. And a cynic is a romantic who’s too scared to hope.

The same universe that dispassionately takes things away can bring you things you weren't imaginative enough to dream up.

It’s a library, Daphne. If you can’t be a human here, where can you?

Life’s short enough without us talking ourselves out of hope and trying to dodge every bad feeling. Sometimes you have to push through the discomfort, instead of running.

It’s easy to be loved by the ones who’ve never seen you fuck up. The ones you’ve never had to apologize to, and who still think all your ‘quirks’ are charming.

You make the people you care about feel like … He pauses. Like you want all of them. Not just the good parts. And that’s terrifying to someone who’s spent a lifetime avoiding those other pieces of themselves.

And I know I'm not who you pictured yourself with, but I think I could be, eventually. If you'll let me. So don't go. Because I don't want you to. Because you're my best friend, and I'm in love with you.

But no one person can be everything we need.

You're the reason for the word wonderful. It really shouldn't be used for anything else.

Things go smoother if you don’t let people get a rise out of you,” he says. “If you give them control over how you feel, they’ll always use it.

You can’t untell someone your secrets. You can’t unsay those delicate truths once you learn you can’t trust the person you handed them to.

I want to know myself, to test my edges and see where I stop and the rest of the world begins.

Life, I’d learned, is a revolving door. Most things that come into it only stay awhile.

I was never the one just having fun. I was the one anticipating consequences.

So many decisions I made were based on the fear of what could go wrong, instead of my hopes for what might go right.

I don't think there's a right way to feel,' I say. 'And you can't control it, anyway. Feelings are like weather. They just happen, and then they pass.

You, my girl, are whoever you decide to be. But I hope you always keep some piece of that girl who sat by the window, hoping for the best. Life’s short enough without us talking ourselves out of hope and trying to dodge every bad feeling. Sometimes you have to push through the discomfort, instead of running.

Kissing him is so different now that I know him. Now I understand that the breezy, carefree Miles I first met is only his topmost layer, that his nonchalant way of moving through the world is a product of self-control, but beneath that surface, he wants. The last bite of cheesecake. The final sip of wine. The bracing cool of the lake. To be kissed. To be held. To be protected. He wants it all, even the things he’d never let himself ask for, or won’t let himself have.

His hands fly up to cradle my jaw. "I won't hurt you, Daphne." "You don't know that," I whisper. "I know how hard I'll try," he says. "Just stay. I love you. I want you. Stay.

Flags so red, they veered toward maroon.

And you did panic. Even though you didn't want to. And I did expect something, even though I tried not to." "Good!" he half shouts. "Expect something! You want to put me on a hook? Put me on the hook. I freaked out, Daphne, but that doesn't mean I don't love you.

This is my problem. I don’t know how to talk along the surface of things, but I also don’t want to unearth the ugly stuff, over and over again, for people who are just passing through my life. It’s depleting. Like every time I dole out a kernel of my history to someone who’s not going to become a fixture I bc my life, a piece of me gets carried away, somewhere I can never get it back. You can’t untell someone your secrets. You can’t I say those delicate truths once you learn you can’t trust the person you handed them to.

You always assume I’m being so selfless. Like it hasn’t occurred to you I might want to hang out with you. So when you turn me down, I have to figure out if you just don’t feel the same way, or if you think you’re doing me some kind of favor. And I never can.

It makes me feel brave, being loved by him. It makes me feel safe enough to do the things I never could.

Or maybe, he says, eyes crinkled against the sun, everything worth doing comes with some risk.

He loves me. Present tense. And I love him. He knows me, and I see him.

Sometimes complaining about stuff, just having someone to empathize with you takes the sting out of it