Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

by Matthew Quick

I’m hoping he can save me, even though I realize he can’t.

Do anything! Something! Because you start a revolution one decision at a time, with each breath you take.

I want to believe that happiness might at least be possible later on in life for people prone to sadness.”

I realized that the truth doesn’t matter most of the time, and when people have awful ideas about your identity, that’s just the way it will stay no matter what you do. So I didn’t

Appearances, appearances. The great façade. How to Live Blindly in a Blind World 101.

There’s a lot for you to live for. Good things are definitely in your future, Leonard. I’m sure of it. You have no idea how many interesting people you’ll meet after high school’s over. Your life partner, your best friend, the most wonderful person you’ll ever know is sitting in some high school right now waiting to graduate and walk into your life—maybe even feeling all the same things you are, maybe even wondering about you, hoping that you’re strong enough to make it to the future where you’ll meet.

But then I thought, if that were really true, Linda would be the biggest Jesus freak going, because she’d drown a baby in a bathtub if it would make her look ten years younger.

and then Lauren’s father gave a talk about humility and humbling ourselves so that we might be able to best serve God, which I didn’t really understand. If god existed and he created the whole universe, like these people believed, why would he need our help, let alone our praise? Why would he need us to serve him? Was god really both all powerful and emotionally needy?

It was like once again someone was labeling me and putting me in a box just as soon I expressed myself.

She hugs me and I clutch her, sob into her neck that smells like vanilla extract baking inside cookies—so fucking wonderful!

but instead it’s just the hot sweaty rush of bodies mangling when they maybe shouldn’t even be mingling—and

These people we call Mom and Dad, they bring us into the world and then they don’t follow through with what we need, or provide any answers at all really—it’s a fend-for-yourself free-for-all in the end, and I’m just not cut out for that sort of living.

People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.