The Story of Us

The scariest part of forever is that nothing is.

A dog — a dog teaches us so much about love. Wordless, imperfect love; love that is constant, love that is simple goodness, love that forgives not only bad singing and embarrassments, but misunderstandings and harsh words. Love that sits and stays and stays and stays, until it finally becomes its own forever. Love, stronger than death. A dog is a four-legged reminder that love comes and time passes and then your heart breaks.

We hurt each other, is the point. Hurt, annoy, embarrass, but move on. People, it just doesn't work that way. Your own feelings get so complicated that you forget the ways another human being can be vulnerable. You spend a lot of energy protecting yourself. All those layers and motivations and feelings. You get hurt, you stay hurt sometimes. The hurt affects your ability to go forward. And words. All the words between us. Words can be permanent. Certain ones are impossible to forgive.

A person could leave you so quickly. So much history and time and memories, but they snuck away from you, and other things took their place. How could you hold on? Wait. A bigger question. The biggest. How could you hold on and let go?

Sometimes I’ve even wished there was a human pause button, where you could choose some point in your life where you could stay always.

Maybe sometimes you just feel like everything can be taken from you all at once.

You could put your confusion and upset and worries into whatever book you were reading. You could sort of set them down in there, and you could come out with your head on a little straighter. I don't why stories worked that way, but they did.

Stories help you understand your life, she’d say. Stories can heal. And I think she’s right, because why do old guys back from the war tell their experiences again and again? Why did people of long ago make up elaborate tales of mythical beings? Why do people sit in a room and reveal the pieces of their life to doctors trained to listen, and why are they cured by doing that? Why libraries? Come on, all those stories, pieces of life told again and again. We need them. Stories are a ritual that put all the crazy shit about life into a form that makes sense. We’re all like the little kids that need to be read the same story over and over again.

Stories took twists and turns down fairy-tale paths or down very human everyday ones. You think you’re at the end of the book, and it’s only the end of a chapter.

She would bring you some great book because she was a book matchmaker, because she loved books the way other girls loved clothes.

But an apology too — you think you’re giving something, but you’re not. You’re really asking for something. You’re asking for forgiveness, you’re asking for the other injured person to make it okay for you. Apologies were harder work for the person getting one than the person giving one.

The hurt affects your ability to go forward.

You … You had always made the future feel safe. As long as you were in it too, beside me, I could be okay.

Flawed Human Parents + Shit Life Throws At You = Childhood That 'Builds Character.

I don’t know why we do it. But sometimes we just swim straight for the net.

Beaches, music, and car rides—they could all bring on a sudden bout of deep, dreamy thoughts.

A relationship could be a place to hide too.

It's hard to see clearly when your eyes are squinched tight out of fear.

There are so many different fifteens. And eighteens. And forty-twos, for that matter. Mature fifteens and young fifteens and wise fifteens and lost fifteens. And angry fifteens.

You were a stone wall, a fort in high, unreachable trees, an island, my own island, that no boat could reach.

I could forget that part, but it had to have been true.

...forever is hard enough without it beginning now.

This was what happened after you'd been together with someone a long time. You loved that it was old and worn and comfy, but sometimes it was old and worn and comfy.

Good guy. There was efficiency to male language. Those two words were what guys said about other guys that they really respected. Guys they could count on, that were solid, whose word you trusted...The language for the other kind of men-even more efficient. Cut down to a single word they deserved. Asshole.

He’s good, all right,” Mom said. “But I guess there’s something else. About being sure. Sure about anything. Right comes with right timing.

Still, past assholes could make a person feel skittish. You had to be careful. It could all suddenly be different than you thought it was. A big possible mistake could be hidden anywhere, ready to blow up everything, same as stepping on a land mine.

It doesn't matter if we're young. If you love someone, and it's right...We can make it the whole way, Crick.

Butterflies are trapped first, before they are free.