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‘You really never know someone wholly.’
It strikes me that luck is a relative thing, that it’s not something you can pin down and be sure of.
She was the ringleader, but I was happy to be led.
I want to say that she should forget about him. He doesn’t sound worth the effort. But you can’t tell people how to live their lives. Or you can, but it doesn’t work. I know that better than most. So I just nod.
Perhaps there’s no easy way through that transition to adulthood, no matter when you live it.
How much time have I wasted, over the years, caring about the thoughts of people I don’t know and never will?
‘I think no one is really who you think they are, even if they’ve been in your life the whole time,’
‘Well, I think we all have secrets, and things we’re ashamed of, and things we exaggerate because they show us in a better light.
‘We don’t always have to know what the next step is. Sometimes we have to wait a bit for inspiration to strike. Don’t lose hope.’
Because the young think they know it all already, don’t they? They don’t know how they’ll feel later. How lonely and wistful. That’s the trick of it.
The price of living a long life, I think, is the sheer weight of the losses you have to suffer. You carry each loved one you lose, and they stack up, and it becomes unbearable. I tick them off in my mind. Brother, father, mother, husband, and my friend, my love.
Can the love of your life be someone you didn’t really get to love at all?
I open my mouth to say something like, ‘As long as it’s not too far,’ and then I shut it again. Think. ‘Yes,’ I say. Because I’m still here, still alive, and I want to do things. Look at what I’ve already done, what I’ve changed. And I have no idea what might be next.
‘I think we’re all grieving for something. Our childhoods or a relationship or a dream.’
All the times she listened to me talk about losing my brother, when her heart was broken in the same place.
I might learn something. And that’s a privilege, at my age. To change something, or learn something. To keep growing.
