Tonight the Streets Are Ours

I used to think that loving somebody meant sacrificing anything for them. I thought it meant writing them a blank cheque. I thought it meant that you would die without each other. But it turns out that death and a broken heart are not he same. These days, I think that love is not so dramatic as all that. Maybe loving somebody means simply they bring out the best in you, and you bring out the best in them - so that together, you are always the best possible versions of yourselves.

Hurting people, really, deeply hurting them - that isn't something you do on purpose. It's just a by-product of living.

Love means sometimes sacrificing the things you want in order to make somebody else happy. It means being there for them, even when maybe you don't feel like it, because they need you.

If you're going to have the tortured soul of an artist, then you might as well create some art while you're at it.

But that's the thing: when you swear to take someone's side no matter what, sometimes you have to go to war for them.

Sacrificing everything that you care about in order to make another person happy is not love. It's not really that some people are gardeners and some people are flowers, Arden. It's that we both must be both, each in our own time.

Life is sort of like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, if you know what I mean. Some days are too big. Some days are much too small. But today was one of those rare days that was just right.

There were people in this world who didn't know how to take care of others. There were people who walked away even when they'd made a promise to stand by you. There were people who threw around the word love but only acted on it when it was convenient for them.

Like all stories, the one you are about to read is a love story. If it wasn't, what would be the point?

Maybe loving somebody means simply they bring out the best in you, and you bring out the best in them - so that together, you are always the best possible versions of yourselves.

And isn't that such a freeing thing, to talk to somebody who already feels like your journal?

If you want something to be amazing, if you really want it, do you think you can somehow make it become that way? Like you somehow imbue it with amazingness, even if it doesn't have anything special inherent to it?