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“Instead of just saying what you’d prefer, you off-load the choice to someone or something else. Instead of ‘I don’t want to hang out with you,’ it’s ‘I have work that night’ or ‘I’m not feeling well.’ Nothing is ever expressed as your own needs and wants, so you never have to defend your choices or own the consequences later. I used to do it all the time.”
“I bet you do that a lot, too. Catastrophize. Everything outside your comfort zone is a worst-case scenario waiting to happen.
“Well, maybe it’s time to try something new. If you allow yourself to feel the distress of the conflict, you should also allow yourself to feel the release of victory.”
“Remember how you said we all need silence now and then, so we finally have a chance to process our thoughts? That’s what I need from you right now. Silence.”
“Listen: I fully believe that I would think the way you do, if I had lived the life you’ve lived and consumed the media you’ve consumed. But I have this theory, that everything that happens on our screens is designed to do exactly what’s happening here, to repel us from one another, to create a war of all against all. It’s like a filter that only shows you others’ bad behavior, blocking the pure and letting through the poison, to make you scared of everyone who isn’t exactly identical to you. I think that, long-term, it traps your brain in a prison, that it’s designed to keep you inside,
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That’s the other thing about living in the black box—you get trained to turn every little thing in your life into a grand fucking psychodrama.”
Inside, food still tastes good, water is still wet, you’re still alive and in a healthy and strong body. That’s real. And when you focus on real things, you’ll be shocked at how easy it is to make this”—she held up the phone—“not matter at all.”
“Are you going to try to stretch that into a metaphor for my whole life? That I’m physically comfortable but my brain won’t let me enjoy it?”
Who in the hell was coming to this party? Did they know it was hosted by a man who once celebrated the Fourth by firing a roman candle that was clenched in his asshole? Indoors?
