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It feels like every time I get my hopes up for something good, reality comes out swinging. I don’t know how to be a hopeful person anymore. It’s easier not to be.
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“I tried a dating app for two weeks,” Lucie confesses. “It was the most embarrassing two weeks of my life.” “For you? Or for your prospective—” “Victims?” she questions. “I was going to say ‘dates,’ but whatever makes you comfortable.”
“When the whole world tells you you’re silly for wanting the things you want, you start to believe them. You start to think you’re not worth it. That if the things you’re waiting for do exist, they’re not for someone like you.”
“But what’s wrong with being a romantic? I can be a confident, independent woman and still want someone to hold my hand. To ask about my day. It’s a good thing to want passion and excitement and care. Attention and affection. I don’t want to settle for anything less than that.
don’t want to be with someone if they’re not giving me something I don’t already have. I don’t want to waste my time on things that don’t feel like everything I’ve always wanted for myself.”
You don’t have to be alone to be lonely.
I need to start working so my mind can disappear. When my hands are busy, everything else seems more manageable. Fixable. My brain takes the back seat and I follow the steps to put everything in exactly the right place.
told Aiden that I’m tired of wasting time on things that don’t feel like everything I’ve ever wanted for myself, but I’m not sure that’s true. I don’t know what I want for myself. It’s all twisted up in the things I think I deserve, then squashed under the things I’m brave enough to reach for. I don’t think I’ve ever thought about any of it long enough to know what I want.
“What if this is what you’ve been waiting for? What if it’s all a string of choices and moments and events and decisions that have led you to exactly right here? And what if what happens next—what if what happens next is the good part? The part you’ve been waiting for.”
“I like that. Thinking that I’m worth paying attention to. Something ordinary made extraordinary by the person you’re sharing it with.”
I’ve always been good at avoiding the things that make me feel like shit. Content to compartmentalize, a therapist told me when I was younger. But now all the heavy doors I’ve locked everything behind are rattling on their hinges. I know I’m acting like an asshole, but I don’t know how to stop. It’s muscle memory.
“I want to feel it first and think about it second. I want to be in the moment and not worry about what’s coming next. I don’t want to twist myself into circles over the idea of a partner.”
“Because you said it was your favorite,” I admit. “And I want your favorite to be my favorite.”
“Fate and magic are things we’ve constructed in our minds so we can feel better about ourselves. The only truth is what we can see, blah, blah, blah.”
I like thinking that I’d be worth the trouble of something like that.
“You tell me all the time you have all the love you need. That you’re fit to burst with our family and all the people in it. But I thought, maybe just this once, you could have the love you deserve too.”
“I think you tell yourself you don’t deserve the things you want so it’s easier for you to manage your expectations. It won’t hurt if you don’t care, right? How many lies have you told, Aiden?”
“I know what falling in love feels like because I’ve been falling in love with you.”
