Funny Story

by Emily Henry

I also don’t want to unearth the ugly stuff, over and over again, for people who are just passing through my life. It’s depleting. Like every time I dole out a kernel of my history to someone who’s not going to become a fixture in my life, a piece of me gets carried away, somewhere I can never get it back.

You can’t untell someone your secrets. You can’t unsay those delicate truths once you learn you can’t trust the person you handed them to.

If a person lets you down, it’s time to reconsider what you’re asking of them.

Waiting, for someone who rarely came, feeling worse every time, until finally, I realized that the feelings wouldn’t stop until the waiting did. You can’t force a person to show up, but you can learn a lesson when they don’t. Trust people’s actions, not their words. Don’t love anyone who isn’t ready to love you back. Let go of the people who don’t hold on to you. Don’t wait on anyone who’s in no rush to get to you.

“There’s steadiness and dependability, and those are great. But settling? Just deciding you already know everything you like and dislike on the entire planet, everything you’re good at, every friend you’re going to make, and every food you’re ever going to eat?

Trust people’s actions, not their words. Don’t love anyone who isn’t ready to love you back. Let go of the people who don’t hold on to you. Don’t wait on people who don’t hurry for you.

“I’m a cynic. And a cynic is a romantic who’s too scared to hope.”

Well, if your dad’s going to ditch you for someone he just met, and there’s no hostage situation involved, he could at least have the decency to stay in a mansion paid for with cocaine and shakedowns.

I spent so much time accustoming myself to one kind of surprise—the kind hinging on disappointments, hurts, small abandonments, and emotional bartering—that I’d stopped considering there might be any other.

The same universe that dispassionately takes things away can bring you things you weren’t imaginative enough to dream up.