The Apocalypse of Elena Mendoza

The moment we forget that even the evil among us are still human is the moment we forget that even the most human among us are still evil.

Falling in love is about hormones and pheromones and powerful emotions that overwhelm our better judgement. Staying in love requires time and effort and knowledge and trust that has to be earned over the course of lifetimes. Falling in love is the illusion. Staying in love is the real miracle.

But that's life. One long tunnel. There are lights along the way. Sometimes they feel spread farther apart than others, but they're there. And when you find one, it's okay to stand under it for a while to catch your breath before marching back into the dark.

We make choices. We make bad choices. But we still deserve the right to choose.

I don't think I'm as strong as you think I am." "And I think you're stronger than you believe.

No one is perfect, no one is flawless, and loving someone means admitting they have faults. It means loving them, not in spite of those flaws, but because of them.

What if you’re wrong? What if I screw up and the world burns?” Fadil shrugged. “Then I’ll buy marshmallows and we’ll watch it burn together.

But the thing about depression is that it doesn’t create bad thoughts, it amplifies and distorts them. Depression doesn’t make me look in the mirror and see a girl who’s overweight and has too-wide hips and pudgy cheeks. Those thoughts are already there. Depression just cranks up the volume on them so loud that I can’t hear anything else.

What happens if the world ends?" Freddie said. "Maybe it already has," I said, "and this is it. Now we have the opportunity to start over and try to do better this time around.

Up until that point everyone who gets hurt winds up fine. There's not actual loss. And then Voldemort kills Cedric Diggory and suddenly everything becomes real. We have to face the possibility that we won't all live long enough to lose our hair or become those crotchety old folks who yell at dumb kids like us. Good people die and bad people don't always get what they deserve. Death stops being this abstract concept that happens to other people, and becomes something that could happen to the people we love. Or even to us.

And yet, despite being faced with so much hardship and pain, we continue to live. We continue to struggle and fight for our place in the world. We continue to try even though we know we're going to lose. That's the real miracle, not me.

Please. I want to get better; I want to be better.” “Then you’re going to have to do it on your own.

It's easy to allow the world to collapse down to our own stories. To see ourselves as the central figure in the only story worth knowing and forget that every person we encounter is living their own, is the center of their own universe. But that's the nature of the human experience.

The constant noise of our own personal problems drowns out what’s happening in the rest of the world. We get caught up in our day-to-day struggles and can’t see that everyone is fighting their own battles.

You are who you are, Fadil. And it’s okay if you’re not sure what that means yet. Anyone who says they’ve got it all figured out at sixteen is a liar, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

...but that's life. One long tunnel. There are lights along the way. Sometimes they feel spread farther apart than others, but they're there. And when you find one, it's okay to stand under it for a while to catch your breath before marching back into the dark

And you couldn't say 'vagina' without giggling. If you can't say it, you dont get to go near it

When we died, the only things we’d leave behind of importance were our deeds. Our corpses would rot and our treasured belongings would wind up in someone else’s house or in a landfill. Our clothes don’t tell the stories of our lives, and no one would remember what kind of dishes we had. But they’d remember the thing we’ve done. Our actions would live on and tell the stories of our lives long after we’d vanished from the earth.

If she had any fucks to give about what we thought of her, she hoarded them jealously.

It was difficult to think about assignments and romantic entanglements when I still had the fate of the world looming over me, but the world ending didn't mean that our other problems disappeared. We could push them aside for awhile, but we dragged them behind us everywhere we went.

Everyone matters, Elena.” “But don’t some people matter more than others?” I asked. “I mean, if we’re talking about saving humanity, doesn’t it make sense to save the best and brightest of us?” Freddie’s laughter had faded. “So you’re saying it’s better to save a world-famous physicist than say, a modest merchant who was a partner in a bed feathers company.” “That’s a really odd comparison, but yeah.” “Except no,” Freddie said. “That merchant and his wife would go on to birth and raise Albert Einstein.” She paused dramatically. “Hermann and Pauline Einstein might not have seemed like anyone special at the time, but their son changed how we look at the universe.” “That’s one example.” “Here’s another. Who should you save? A genius mathematician admitted to Harvard at sixteen or a single mom living on welfare?” “This is a trick question.” “Are you allergic to answering questions, or what?” “The mathematician,” I said. “Ted Kaczynski. Otherwise known as the Unabomber. And that single mom would go on to write Harry Potter.

I felt like a terrible friend for not recognizing his confusion sooner. That's the problem with living in a world where everyone was assumed to be heterosexual until proven otherwise. He's talked about girls, so it had never crossed my mind to ask if he was queer. But it should have. I should have asked.

That’s the problem with living in a world where everyone was assumed to be heterosexual until proven otherwise.

We have to face the possibility that we won’t all live long enough to lose our hair or become those crotchety old folks who yell at dumb kids like us. Good people die and bad people don’t always get what they deserve. Death stops being this abstract concept that happens to other people and becomes something that could happen to the people we love. Or even to us.

We had to drive to the past so that we could face the future.

It terrified me that one day I might not be the person I was; that one day I might not even remember who I used to be. Like I said, maybe it makes me a horrible person, but I think anyone who says they’re not afraid of the future is lying.

He stopped at a Dunkin' Donuts and bought me an OJ and a bagel. Bribery wasn't going to make me forgive him, but I couldn't say no to carbs and juice.

In this bubble of time, I wasn't a freak and he wasn't a bully, and we could be friends without anyone knowing, and at least for now, that was enough.

Soon, the whispers would solidify and their version of the truth would be the only one that mattered.