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“I tried to talk to him, but—” she stopped because truly, what do you say? We hold our friends’ hands as their hearts break: lost lovers, lost children, divorce and illness and addiction. There are no perfect words. We can be there. “How can I help?” we say. We say, “I’m sorry.”
“I wanted to get it out of me,” he said, and even though it would be years before I understood what he meant, before I put my own heart in the open and looked, really looked, I still nodded like I understood. “You can’t fix it if you can’t see it.”
It’s been forever since I remembered my dreams. Who has time to sleep?
I didn’t do much that was forbidden, didn’t sneak around and get in trouble and test boundaries as kids so often do. For better or worse, I stayed in my head.
We walk through the world at its leisure. We’re here at its mercy and with its blessing. At some point, we have to ask ourselves how we want to live.
There is no: Snap—twenty-one and now I understand it. Snap—thirty-one and now I have healed. Snap—thirty-nine and here I am, invincible. There’s only me, on the edge of my life. The whole world is spread out before me. God, what if?
We should all be in awe of teenagers, of youth, youth artists in particular. Holy hell, the emotion! The love and the anger and the energy, all so huge, enough force to power a city. I think back to myself then, and I look at the young writers I work with now, and am blown away by their courage. It scares people, I think. We try to contain it. We teach them to hold back. To be “appropriate.” To be “respectable.” I wonder: What might happen if we got out of their way? What might happen if we actually listened?
Think of how much time you spend trying to find your next love. Think of how much time you spend trying to find your next lay. What could you do with that time? What could you make?
There is a difference between common practices and best practices.
I didn’t want to be there anymore. That doesn’t mean it was easy to leave.
Your best friend on the other side of the country is your body without any breath.
Other people’s obsessions are infuriating.
Be gentle with yourself. The writing process is more than building sentences.
But here’s the thing: There’s never a right time to have a dog. To have a child if you so choose. To fall in love or write a book or perform a poem or put your heart on the goddamn table. I’ll go to the next open mic, we say. And: Next month I’ll sign up for a class. And: I’ll quit my job later. Doesn’t matter that I’m miserable, I have to wait for the lateral move or the substantive raise or the fully funded position and hey, how’s that going for you? You wake up one day and there it is. You say yes or you say no.
Jesus. How do you write about depression in a way that’s not depressing?
week after week, month after month, each sentence another step back to myself.
