Turtles All the Way Down

by John Green

Anybody can look at you. It’s quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see.

True terror isn’t being scared; it’s not having a choice in the matter.

But the things that make other people nervous have never scared me.

I have these thoughts that Dr. Karen Singh calls “intrusives,” but the first time she said it, I heard “invasives,” which I like better, because, like invasive weeds, these thoughts seem to arrive at my biosphere from some faraway land, and then they spread out of control.

“I don’t mind worriers,” I said. “Worrying is the correct worldview. Life is worrisome.”

The way he talked about thoughts was the way I experienced them—not as a choice but as a destiny. Not a catalog of my consciousness, but a refutation of it.

I think this is good-bye, my friends, although, then again: No one ever says good-bye unless they want to see you again.

“You can’t control it, that’s the thing,” I said. “Life is not something you wield, you know?”

Him: And the thing is, when you lose someone, you realize you’ll eventually lose everyone. Me: True. And once you know that, you can never forget it.

It didn’t feel like something I was looking at so much as something I was part of.

but there was a depth to Davis’s brown eyes that you just don’t get from lighter colors, and the way he looked at me made me feel like there was something worthwhile in the brown of my eyes, too.

but I couldn’t stop myself, because I wanted him to understand that I felt like the fish, like my whole story was written by someone else.

He looked like a kid now—his watery brown eyes, the fear and fatigue in his face, like a kid waking up from a nightmare or something.

I knew how that felt—all my life, I’d been unable to think straight, unable to even finish having a thought because my thoughts came not in lines but in knotted loops curling in upon themselves, in sinking quicksand,

And I wanted to tell him that even though I’d never been in love, I knew what it was like to be in a feeling, to be not just surrounded by it but also permeated by it,

It was so much easier to talk to him in the dark, looking at the same sky instead of at each other. It felt like we didn’t have bodies, like we were just voices talking.

I suddenly wanted Davis badly enough that I no longer cared why I wanted him, whether what wanted him was capitalized or lowercase.

“Just how his tongue has its own particular microbiome and once he sticks his tongue in my mouth his bacteria become part of my microbiome for literally the rest of my life. Like, his tongue will sort of always be in my mouth until I’m dead, and then his tongue microbes will eat my corpse.”

“It’s so weird, to know you’re crazy and not be able to do anything about it, you know? It’s not like you believe yourself to be normal. You know there is a problem. But you can’t figure a way through to fixing it. Because you can’t be sure, you know?

Our hearts were broken in the same places. That’s something like love, but maybe not quite the thing itself.

“I mean, I love you, and it’s not your fault, but your anxiety does kind of invite disasters.”

Can’t stop thinking. Trying to find something solid to hold on to in this rolling sea of thought.

I knew how disgusting I was. I knew. I knew now for sure. I wasn’t possessed by a demon. I was the demon.

What I want to say to you, Holmesy, is that yes, you are exhausting, and yes, being your friend is work. But you are also the most fascinating person I have ever known,

Everyone wanted me to feed them that story—darkness to light, weakness to strength, broken to whole. I wanted it, too.

We started talking to each other like people who used to be close—catching each other up on our lives rather than living them together.

You’re both the fire and the water that extinguishes it. You’re the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. You’re the storyteller and the story told. You are somebody’s something, but you are also your you.

but slowly I understood that we were going to be part of each other’s past. I still missed him, though. I missed my dad, too. And Harold. I missed everybody. To be alive is to be missing.

You remember your first love because they show you, prove to you, that you can love and be loved, that nothing in this world is deserved except for love, that love is both how you become a person, and why.