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Kindle Notes & Highlights
“She understands that if I have to pick between you two, it’s not going to be her.”
OH MY GOSH!!!
“You have the power over that. People can say crap. They can think whatever they want, but you control how you feel about it.”
“And don’t say you aren’t going to stress over it. You stress over everything.” She smiled while I snapped my mouth shut. “Sometimes you’re so stuck in your own head that you’re not—Well, you’re not really living.”
“Please don’t take that the wrong way. It’s just that I think sometimes you miss what’s going on around you, because you’re so worried about what others are thinking about you and your choices.”
He’d promised he’d be there for me for forever. But I was of the mind that there were two types of forever. The good kind. The bad kind. I’d learned early on that the good kind of forever was, well, it was a lie. That kind of forever literally and figuratively ended in flames, because no matter how tightly you tried to hold on, that kind of forever slipped between the fingers. The bad kind of forever lingered like a shadow or ghost. No matter what. It stayed, always in the background.
Rider had said nothing lasted forever, but some things, some scars, ran too deep to ever fade away.
Love was the swelling, hopeful feeling in my chest every time I saw him. Love was the way I could forget about everything when I was with him. Love was the catch in my breath when he looked at me in his intense way. Love was the gasp he could draw out of me with the simplest of touches. Love was the way I could…I could be myself around him, know that I didn’t need to be perfect or worry about what he was thinking, because he accepted me. And all of that? Love scared the hell out of me.
And it was knowing that I could still be…still be afraid of everything, but not letting that fear stop me from living.
Forever was something we all took for granted, but the problem with forever was that it really didn’t exist.
how in the world could I fight for him when he wouldn’t even fight for himself?
I remembered him ranting once about how if someone coughed, they were given time off from work, but if someone was mentally fatigued, they were expected to suck it up.
Some people have one person who influenced them more than anyone else. I learned while writing this speech how glad I am to have many. That it’s a series of people and events that shape who you become.
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
But once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”
The past never went away and it was not designed to do so.
My past was a part of me and it molded who I was today, but it was not the sum of who I was to become. It did not control me.
Forever was simply a promise of more. Forever was a work in progress. And I couldn’t wait for forever.
