Although I was able to maintain a pleasant expression, I was mentally throwing up in her face.
I am prone to envy. It is one of my three default emotions, the others being greed and rage. I have also experienced compassion and generosity, but only fleetingly and usually while drunk, so I have little memory.
Doctor, if being a bitch is healthy, then I am the healthiest damn woman on the face of the earth
Just as I had long suspected, a person didn’t really need math for anything anyway. Maybe some people did. Some limited people.
I nodded again, but I knew I would not grow up to drive a bulldozer. It would be awful to be dirty all day like these men. I didn’t say it, but at best I would keep one in the backyard, like a goat.
And we were married and all the windows were open but the smell of flowers was so thick and sickly sweet. I felt like I might choke to death.
…Trying is not the same as being. Trying flies in a circle around the moment and *being* is inside of it.
I love you,” she said, and I knew she meant it because she spoke the words from the heart at the center of her chest. This, at least, had not been left behind at the hospital.
I’m lonely. And I’m lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely, and how deep this feeling runs. And it scares the shit out of me to be this lonely because it seems catastrophic.
I was desperate to discover what nothing felt like. It was the absence of something that attracted me. It was the start. Everything important originated with nothingness.
Part of me felt deep compassion. And another part felt like, You fucker.
Saying just the right thing after a considerable, awkward pause is far less effective than saying the wrong thing with perfect timing. I’m telling you.
This is what you should know about losing someone you love. They do not travel alone. You go with them.
My question was:How did I go from merely seeing the dirty French Santa in a bar to being in his hotel room the next morning? And this presented me with an actual equation. How did one plus one equal old French Santa?
I slipped on a turtleneck, laughing when my head became stuck in the turtle part. If they weren’t called turtlenecks, I wouldn’t have worn them.
Real optimism is not the pep talk you give yourself. It is earned through the labor involved in emotional housekeeping.
Long marriages have ended in ruin over tiny and insignificant grievances that were never properly aired and instead grew into a brittle barnacle of hatred.
He continues to smile expectantly. I take a step back. I don’t want to catch whatever he has. He is a disturbing out-of-uniform Santa.
I didn’t begin life hating my grandmother. Like every child, I adored her. Until I formed a brain and got to know her.
Fact: upon locking yourself our of your apartment you will immediately need to use the bathroom. Fact: and then you will stand in place and watch your door. You will just stare. As though rebuffed by it. As though it has done this to you.
His eyes are so clear and blue that nothing but clichés enter my mind.
The more time I spent at the Finches’, the more I realized what a waste of my life this school crap was. It was nothing but a holding tank for kids without bigger plans or ideas.
I know now: what is is all that matters. Not the thing you know is meant to be, not what could be, not what should be, not what ought to be, not what once was.Only the is.
I discovered the bleeding when he licked my hand and left a swath of blood behind, death’s autograph.
It’s not such a huge deal when this happens at a 7-Eleven. It’s pretty huge, though, when you spend the entire job interview trying not to come across like a box of hair and you come across like a box of hair.
I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.
Smoking had become my favorite thing in the world to do. It was like having instant comfort, no matter where or when.
I could not imagine the kind of person that would, upon seeing a crazy talcum-powder-covered Southern lady think to herself, Hmmmm, she might make a great new friend. The line between normal and crazy seemed impossibly thin.
I sit there and think how it isn’t fair that I can’t drink at all, even a little. I realize I have crammed an entire lifetime of moderate drinking into a decade of hard-core drinking and that is why. I blew my wad.
And in my mind, this settles the issue. I would never drink cologne, and am therefore not an alcoholic.
My goal was to get through the day as fast as possible. I worked fast because I wanted to be done. I wanted to be done because I wanted to go home to my nest and drink.
I think out of seven billion people, there is probably more than just one soul mate. Surely, the paid employee in charge of each person’s love life has taken into account the possibility of fatal snake bites and heavy falling objects.
The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It’s not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.