Penelope in Retrograde

by Brooke Abrams

They’re just so radically different from me that whenever we spend time together, we always end up turning into the worst versions of ourselves. And I know it’s me. I’m the problem.

I don’t want comfort right now. I want to be pissed and mad and sad and full of the kind of angst that’s common among emo teenagers and punks.

“Because that’s what books are made for. They’re made to connect you to people, real or fictional, even when you feel like you’re completely alone.”

Your main character has no depth, she told me. You’ve made her so perfect, she’s boring. People don’t read books about perfect people. Perfection doesn’t speak to the soul. Perfection is the antithesis of soul. If you’re going to write, you must write fearlessly. You have to let yourself go. Be willing to be ugly and unfinished. Lay your soul naked and bare. Anything less is a waste of time.

Smith knows all the bad stuff about me, and he doesn’t care. He loves me unconditionally. How can I disappoint someone who loves me like that?

“It’s not the beginning that’s painful in my opinion. It’s the ending that came before it. New moons represent that too. The end of one phase and the beginning of a new.”

“We don’t always get to choose when one phase ends and another begins, but we can choose how we face it.”

“Happiness isn’t a place you go back to. Happiness is a place you build and rebuild and then tear down and remodel a thousand times over inside you.”

“I was worried you wouldn’t like me.” I wipe the tears from my eyes with the back of my hand. “I know you love me, but I didn’t know if I was the kind of person you and Mom could like.”