Some Kind of Happiness

I suppose most things in a person's life are good for a while, even if that doesn't last very long. Maybe that is why, even after something has gone wrong, we spend so much time trying to fix it. Because we remember when it wasn't broken.

I start to worry that I should be saying something. Most of the time I think I could be perfectly content without saying a single word, but no one else seems to function that way. There is so much talking in the world, and so much expectation to talk, even if you do not feel like talking. I find it overwhelming.

How can the world look so perfect when I feel so broken?

We all carry secrets' said the fox. 'The more we ignore them, the heavier they become.

That's what life is, you know: a bunch of baby steps, one after another after another, and sometimes you fall, but you always get back up, and eventually you get where you're going.

I feel like we are playing the Quiet Game. When you're tired of playing and want to shout out all the words you've been keeping inside you, but you absolutely cannot lose. So instead you sit, and bite down on everything screaming inside you, and wait.

Right now is all that matters, because right now is what we know. The future is wide open, and the world is full of people who get scared and lie and are sad and happy. That is how it is supposed to be.

How wonderful a thing it is, to understand someone else without even trying to.

I want to ask him about these things, but whenever I imagine doing so, I freeze up. I have always been better at writing things than saying them.

Time's a slippery little jerk, Fin." Dad sounds tired. "Things happen more quickly than you think. One minute you're a kid, and the next minute you're grown up and wondering what the heck happened when you weren't looking.

This is a room for a princess, and I am anything but that. What am I? A lump of heaviness. A stranger. A thing that does not fit. I can't seem to stop the poison inside me from spreading.

First you must give it a name,” said the snake. “Naming a thing takes away some of its power and gives it to you instead.

If I am a puzzle, this is the moment in which I find the first corner piece. There is still a lot of work to do; I still have a thousand pieces of myself to fit into place. But everyone knows you're supposed to find the corners first. They are the beginning.

My chest is knotted up. I feel like a person standing in the middle of a crowded street. The person is screaming, but nothing is coming out, and no one's paying attention anyway.

It seems like I didn't know what I was doing, like I was just a silly kid playing make-believe. Before long these thoughts are so loud they start to feel true: I am just a silly kid playing make-believe. I don't know what I am doing. I am all wrong.

I want to tell them about the stones piling up in my stomach. That my thoughts are tangled and wordless.

We all carry secrets,” said the fox. “The more we ignore them, the heavier they become.

I wonder if Mom and Dad fell in love in a day, or if it took much longer, and if it makes a difference. If the way you fall in love determines how long you will stay in love, or if you will stay in love at all.

Jack thinks it is so easy to do just things: to steal your neighbors' property so they will chase you. To hug your friend because you missed her.

When I set the glass back down, I see the prints my sweaty fingers have left behind. I feel a sense of deep, sudden friendship with that smudge. That is me. My aunts and uncles, my grandparents, my beautiful, beautiful cousins-- I am a smudge on their glass.

I suppose most things in a person’s life are good for a while, even if that doesn’t last very long. Maybe that is why, even after something has gone wrong, we spend so much time trying to fix it. Because we remember when it wasn’t broken when it wasn’t broken.

A baby step. That’s what life is, you know: a bunch of baby steps, one after another after another, and sometimes you fall, but you always get back up, and eventually you get where you’re going. And hopefully, you have people beside you to help you up when you need it. That’s where family comes in.

I see the prints my sweaty fingers have left behind. I feel a sense of deep, sudden friendship with that smudge. That is me. My aunts and uncles, my grandparents, my beautiful, beautiful cousins—I am a smudge on their glass.

How I am sinking into cold, blue water, a blue nothing like the warm music filling the house downstairs. How I am finding it difficult to breathe. How my skin is crawling with something like fear.

Only fools try to run away from fear," called the snake. "What you must do is learn to walk alongside it.

I never want to scare my parents again. I don't want them to look at me like I am broken in a way they don't know how to fix.

I hear whispers, bare feet slapping on wood floors, bodies moving throughout the house... The Harts are a storm and I am its bewildered eye.

That in itself is scary, but I have learned it is important to tell the truth, even if it is frightening.