Atmosphere

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

“I don’t think I was lost. I think I was trying to lose myself.”

Because the world had decided that to be soft was to be weak, even though in Joan’s experience being soft and flexible was always more durable than being hard and brittle. Admitting you were afraid always took more guts than pretending you weren’t. Being willing to make a mistake got you further than never trying. The world had decided that to be fallible was weak. But we are all fallible. The strong ones are the ones who accept it.

In all of her time spent watching others, she hadn’t picked up on this part of falling in love, that someone could look at you as if you were the very center of everything. And even though you knew better, you’d allow yourself a moment to believe you were worthy of being revolved around, too.

Why was it that when you let someone that far in, you learned to be okay with all the ways they saw you, even if they weren’t flattering?

“Sometimes, with both feet on the ground I feel lost,”

Language is what allows us to communicate. But it also limits what we can say, perhaps even how we feel. After all, how can we recognize a sentiment within ourselves that we have no word for?

“You can’t miss something you never had.”

I will spend the rest of my life, if I get that lucky, seeking you out. Not because I promised you or because you’re there. But because I will want to. I will want to be beside you. Every day. Forever.”

For some people, childhood is the best part of their lives, and later, all they are trying to do is go back to it. But for people like us, it’s different. The good part hasn’t started yet. But it’s coming. It’s just ahead, when your life is in your own hands and, listen to me, you are going to soar.”

Do you understand that, to someone, you are everything that matters on this entire planet?”

Worse yet, to afford yourself the role of the victim always—regardless of how grotesquely it required you to twist reality—so that you never had to look in the mirror and admit you were the perpetrator.

“You make my life worth something. And I can promise you with my entire body that you will never be alone. Every day, you can wake up and go to bed knowing there is someone whose heart is bursting, barely able to contain how much they love you.

Because I do not know how to live my life without you. Because I don’t even recognize the person I was before I loved you.

Because while the great expanse of space may be enticing, I belong here, with you, looking up at the stars from afar.