Assassins Anonymous

by Rob Hart

Why is a caterpillar wrapped in silk while it changes into a butterfly? So the other caterpillar can’t hear the screams. Change hurts. —Rory Miller, Meditations on Violence

I’m hunting for nonlethal cuts, but he’s that kind of Bruce Lee fast where you see where he starts and finishes but not all those parts in the middle.

The adrenaline is doing its job. The pain is outside, knocking at the door, but the disorientation is inside pouring a cup of tea.

Mathilda: Is life always this hard, or is it just when you’re a kid? Léon: Always like this. —The Professional

“Choosing to change is not something you do once. It’s something you have to wake up every day and choose to do again…”

There was this boxer who used to say pain is information. Your shoulder hurts, you protect it. Your ribs ache, you cover them up. Process it like that, and you can deal with just about anything.

“You look like the kind of guy who takes off his wedding ring at the bar before he hits on me, and when he flames out, drives his minivan back to his family on Long Island. You don’t look like an assassin. Jason Statham looks like an assassin.”

There are a lot of eyes on me. I’m the only white face I’ve seen since I got off the train, still standing out like a cat in a dog park.

Kenji gives me a little look that says he does not. “I believe that every time we kill,” he says, “we lose a part of ourselves, and gain a part of that person.” His eyes take on a soft haze of sadness. “I feel like I have lived a very long time, and I am ready to rest.”

Some people think of recovery as a destination. Really, it’s a path you travel for the rest of your life, and the finish line is perpetually over the horizon. You have to learn to be happy with the journey. To be the journey.

And according to the Talmud, for every life you saved, you saved a universe.

He’s a serial killer and his last name is Bates? C’mon now.

The unencumbered wind hurtling off the water bites and claws at our skin.

“A friend is someone who sees you,” Ravi says. “And I see you. I get why you struggle. I do, too. If you didn’t, you’d be a complete sociopath. But in the end, the world needs bad men to keep other bad men from the door.” “Did you just quote True Detective at me?”

Grace means that all of your mistakes now serve a purpose instead of serving shame. —Brené Brown

I do my best to block him, waiting for my opening and, when I find it, send my fist so deep into his stomach I leave knuckle prints on his liver.

My heart shatters on the tile floor, the fragile glass shards of it cascading around us.

She surveys the empty street, and the sparkling lights and decorations, and the swirling snowflakes, and the enormity of what it means to decide you want to change. Both the impossibility and the simplicity of it.