The Sea of Tranquility

by Katja Millay

It doesn’t matter if you do everything right, if you dress the right way and act the right way and follow all the rules, because evil will find you anyway. Evil’s resourceful that way.

“Too many obligations. People like to say love is unconditional, but it’s not, and even if it was unconditional, it’s still never free. There’s always an expectation attached. They always want something in return. Like they want you to be happy or whatever, and that makes you automatically responsible for their happiness because they won’t be happy unless you are. You’re supposed to be who they think you’re supposed to be and feel how they think you’re supposed to feel because they love you, and when you can’t give them what they want, they feel shitty, so you feel shitty, and everybody feels shitty. I just don’t want that responsibility.”

I can tell he’s still struggling to understand, to make this fit into his view of the world, but it never will. And it shouldn’t. It has no place in the world, no matter how often it happens.