Kindle Notes & Highlights
I’ve never been able to see myself getting old. Every time I try, it’s like there’s this white space in the middle of my brain, a void where there should be some semblance of a future.
I’ve always liked the idea that you could put yourself through pain like that and have something beautiful to show for it on the other side.
It’s going to look at a tree shaped like a monster and think it’s a monster, even if it’s only a tree. Then, if it succeeds in steering you away from the tree, maybe you’re going to miss out on all the fruits that are hanging off it. Do you see what I mean? Your body’s going to think it knows what’s best for you, even when it doesn’t. “So, when I started seeing it that way—you know, with compassion, knowing that it’s only trying to protect me—it helped me control it. It helped me tell it, you know: thank you, body, but I’m the one in charge. I’m going to make these decisions for me.”
I write about my love for her and how it always made me feel like I was on fire, and as good as it felt sometimes to feel so much, it was also breaking me down further and further every day until I was nothing but nerves. I tell her that I know now that that isn’t what love is supposed to feel like. I tell her that I understand what I was doing to her—putting so much pressure on her to be everything for me because she was all I had—and how I should have let her go a long time ago.
It’s fucking hard. I didn’t think being nice to myself would be the hardest thing I’d ever try to do, but it feels like a miracle when I manage to do it over the other, much louder voice in my head that tries to tear me down in the most vicious ways it can.
