Nestlings

Grief is the space between two states of being: who you were and who you are.

I think Healing begins when you finally recognize there is no moving on. Only moving forward. You don’t actually leave anything behind. You carry it with you.

Adulthood was all about compromises, wasn’t it? You decide what you need, what you want, and shift your priorities around until you find the least bad combination. Each compromise was a link in a chain, and if that chain dragged you down to the bottom of the East River? Well … at least you had Netflix and Spotify to distract you while you sank.

There’s so much suffering in the world. So much pain. You get to be a certain age and you gain a collector’s appreciation of it.

A garden of resentment was sown that day. Its hideous plants bloomed at irregular, unpredictable intervals. A sprig of hate. A blossom of blame. Entire teeming hedgerows of depression and alienation.

mothers can handle a lot of sensations at once, can’t they? It’s part of the job: to be torn open and persevere.

How much pain is caused by hiding pain from others?

Healing begins when you finally recognize there is no moving on. Only moving forward. You don’t actually leave anything behind. You carry it with you. That’s why the process of healing can feel so slow: you’re carrying more weight now.

because the nighttime is the right time to cruise the Panic Attack Expressway,

He was going to eat that lunch in the goddamn sunshine, and he was going to start reading his new book.

heartbreak. College. Jobs. Arguments. Slammed doors. Curses. Embraces. Tears. Sharing a drink. Laughing at how hard things used to be. Becoming a friend. A confidante. Rewriting painful definitions of mothers and daughters at long last. All of these: promises that are made, tacitly or not, when a child enters your life and you believe, perhaps against better judgment, that the world will let you have them as payment for those first years of pain and confusion. She would never get these moments.

Motherhood was breakage, was expansion, was depletion, was fulfillment, was creation, and an endless series of goodbyes. Motherhood was contradiction. That was its beauty. That was its horror. And if it drove you mad trying to square its inconsistencies, well, tough luck, because motherhood cared nothing about what happened inside of you. Motherhood had already taken what it needed from inside of you and had given it to the world. Anything else was up to you and fate.

Then a horrible sensation: pulsing, spewing, something was coming out of that tube and flooding, coating, Bizzie’s insides with heat. Thick, awful fluid pumped from the old man into Bizzie.

More than anything, she needed her mind to quiet down. How was it she could spend her days so exhausted and nights so restless?

Mama, I don’t like this music.” Kacey ignored him, working on his jacket zipper, but Ana noticed. No music was playing. Ana filed that away as worth remembering.

Be careful you don’t get taken advantage of. One problem with absurdists is they don’t always know when something stops being funny and starts being corrosive.

What does it mean to be a mother? But that was the trick. There was no one meaning. Motherhood was her, was Cathy, was Reid’s mom, was this monstrosity in the bowels of a Manhattan skyscraper. Motherhood was joy, was pain, was standing over the crib with a knife, was standing over the crib with a lullaby. Motherhood was breakage, was expansion, was depletion, was fulfillment, was creation, and an endless series of goodbyes. Motherhood was contradiction. That was its beauty. That was its horror. And if it drove you mad trying to square its inconsistencies, well, tough luck, because motherhood cared nothing about what happened inside of you. Motherhood had already taken what it needed from inside of you and had given it to the world. Anything else was up to you and fate.

Then when he got home, he would kiss his wife and his daughter—the two jewels of his life (and were they bittersweet sometimes? Sure. But he could push those feelings all the way down, press those grapes into holy wine, baby)—and he was going to write a new song.

He felt like a man spat out after being dragged along by a riptide. Disoriented. Gasping. But also somehow happier than he could remember feeling in a long, long time. Bitter and sweet.

But mothers can handle a lot of sensations at once, can’t they? It’s part of the job: to be torn open and persevere.

God, it was hard, almost impossible, to imagine seeing a view like this every day and not feeling capable of doing anything. It was all about perspective, Ana realized. And hadn’t they fallen off higher cliffs than this and survived?

But Charlie didn’t fly. Reid watched his baby plummet over the railing and the world filled with his screams.

His heart swelled with love. There was no other way to describe it. He loved this goddamn city. And this bittersweetness? This holy wine? This is what it means to be a New Yorker.

And there were streaming services to subscribe to. And then they had gotten married. And then they had tried to get pregnant. And then they succeeded in getting pregnant. And and and. Adulthood was all about compromises, wasn't it? You decide what you need, what you want, and shift your priorities around until you find the least bad combination.

Look beyond the broken bottles Past the rotting wooden stairs Root out the wine-dark honeyed center Not everyone can live like millionaires Look through the air-thin walls Tear up the floorboards, strip the paint Go over every inch of space with the patience of a saint Grab your hat, get your coat The cellar door is an open throat —The Mountain Goats, “The House That Dripped Blood