The Prince of Milk

by Exurb1a

He's just lonely. If we're scared of lonely people, they'll only get lonelier.”

Seems insane, he thinks, that something so beautiful would want to remove itself from the world. But then maybe that's how beauty keeps its market value, else the world would be full of beautiful things and no one would give a damn about any of them.

Now you're free to reveal yourself as a vegetarian, or an emotional wreck, or a YouTuber.

Better to keep lovers at arm's length from then on, he decided. A wrapped surprise was better than an opened gift you never wanted anyway. That was a fine philosophy to lead a life by. Probably.

You're a thinking bag of meat standing on an organic spaceship. And that doesn't seem to bother you. Why should a talking cat make the situation any worse?”

“Happy people are just people you aren't acquainted enough with yet to know how miserable they really are.”

the sense that everything is just an absurd game, from dating to doting to deference, then death; the initial light show of falling in love, the cultivating of a life together, the calm civility of cohabiting, then the burying of the only person in the world who truly understood you.

He'll learn to live easy. It's simple. He'll just hold on to that determination and if anything makes him sad, or if he thinks he's going to be mean to someone, he'll remember that being happy is a choice and he'll choose it.

Just because something's mysterious doesn't make it magic. Nothing, if you look at it hard enough, if you take it apart, if you smash it, freeze it, measure its temperature, ever turns out to be magic.”

And if you were the one who'd gone mad, how could you possibly tell?

a new space: adulthood or something close, where everything is a grey area and no decision will please everyone, if anyone at all, and each story has some other side to it you hadn't considered before.

“One would strain to tell the difference between insanity and a mere annoyance, depending on the context. If a fellow had been wronged enough, perhaps he would take on the appearance of a man insane, but he is only insane with rage.”

And it's all right to have a meltdown about the whole affair from time to time, faced with the pressures of modern existence, trying to be a good human and a good worker and a good son/daughter/parent, trying to be a good citizen, trying to be wise without condescension but uninhibited without recklessness, trying to just muddle through without making any silly decisions, trying to align with the correct political opinions, trying to stay thin, trying to be attractive, trying to be smart, trying to find the ideal partner, trying to stay financially secure, trying to just find some modest corner of meaning and belonging and sanity to go and sit in, and all the while living on the edge of dying forever. We're all in the same strange boat, grappling with the same strange condition. But it isn't quite so scary if we all do it together. So let's do it together.