I Need You to Read This

by Jessa Maxwell

He has all of my passageways memorized, places I don’t even know myself, dark corners where he can hide and wait for me.

Rarely in life do you have the opportunity to start completely from scratch.

It’s part of the magic of New York, Alex often muses, that you can be completely anonymous while also feeling so interconnected to the people and places around you.

The idea of a person doing the job poorly is somehow more terrifying than no one doing it at all.

It is surprisingly satisfying solving other people’s problems, she thinks. Much easier than fixing your own.

All my life I have felt like I was at sea alone in a boat that was bound to sink unless I kept my hands on the oars. But the problem with paddling like crazy is that sometimes, just focusing on surviving makes it hard to know what direction you’re heading or if you are going anywhere at all.

Her only constraints are that nothing be too complicated or depressing. Too much quiet can be damaging, can lead to spiraling thoughts and unproductive days.

The kind of woman who stopped in on a whim to do whatever she liked, who had a sort of lightness to her as if nothing terrible had touched or could touch her.

I wonder if you are not missing your youth at all—being young is never as easy as we remember it—but rather the feeling of being true to who you are, of letting time stretch out in front of you in such a way that you don’t need to guard it or worry about its end. Or maybe you miss feeling hopeful.”

There are certain people who appreciate your vulnerability and certain people who will try to use it against you. But they can’t if you don’t let them.

You are not miserable because of your job but rather because you have made it the whole focus of your life.

It’s an incredibly strange feeling being able to peer into someone’s most private life, to read about their shame and worries, to be told their deepest secrets.

It’s got to be an intimate job, being someone’s assistant. You’d know everything about them, from the ins and outs of their schedule down to what they like for lunch and how they take their coffee. Whether they came in early or liked to stay late. All of their habits and eccentricities.

There is something thrilling about being allowed into a complete stranger’s deepest thoughts and desires, being let into their inner life.

I don’t pretend to be wise, but I am observing, and I see a great deal more than you’d imagine. I’m interested in other people’s experiences and inconsistencies, and, though I can’t explain, I remember and use them for my own benefit.

You have to allow yourself to be vulnerable if you want to receive anything good this world has to offer.

We can never get back time—it’s one of life’s biggest tragedies but also one of its greatest motivators. If things were not finite, there would be no need to ever evaluate what is most important to us.

You thought you were being true to yourself by keeping your options open, but all that time you were living in fear. If you are not mindful, you can spend a whole lifetime weighing your options. Commitment to anything, let alone another person, takes bravery.

The first times they’d met flash in her memory, the coffee shop and then later on the street. Funny how it was always Tom approaching her. Almost as though he’d planned it that way. Was it all really just happenstance, or is there something more deliberate about the way Tom has inserted himself into her life?

Often staying inside the delusion feels easier than the alternative, which is usually some version of a dark room where you can’t see any doors.

To love someone who would never love you back, to be married to them, is a brutal form of punishment.

Sometimes the only way to be able to see yourself clearly is through a fresh lens. So go forward toward your new beginning. It’s not often in life we get to start completely fresh. Savor it.