Matchmaking for Beginners

by Maddie Dawson

Don’t settle for anything you don’t want. That’s the main thing.”

You need to forget what society has told you about life and expectations, and don’t let anybody make you pretend. You are enough, just the way you are—do you hear me? You have many gifts. Many, many gifts.”

‘Whatever happens, love that.’”

I’ve made nice with trouble my whole life, and I’ve noticed that what happens is that problems just curl right up like declawed kittens and nestle at your feet and fall asleep. Later, you look down, and they’ve wandered off somewhere. You bid them a fond farewell and get back to what you wanted to do in the first place.

his dad, whom Jessica hates in the way you can only hate somebody you once loved beyond reason,

I think she’s kind of enjoying being furious with her ex for now, if you want to know the truth. It’s hard to make room for love when anger still feels so good.

You are going to be okay, I beam to her. And then to them both: Be brave. Be brave. There is so much fear to wade through before you get to love.

This, I think, is my life. I am living my life. Right now. This is the moment that we have.

How can this be? How does such a thing happen around us every day—and we just go about our lives like it’s nothing out of the ordinary?

Maybe, it occurs to me, this is what marriage ultimately turns into: you have to tough it out through the bad times so that you can get to these pinnacle moments when life has just handed you a shiny star.

we are all vibrational beings in physical bodies, and thoughts actually become reality so you have to make sure you’re thinking about what you want and not about what you don’t want.

“You know, when you watch people like that live, you start to realize that the rest of us are just counting off the days until we die. They were the experts at life.”

When you’re as old as I am, you learn a couple of things about love. And one of the main things is that you can’t give up on people you love. When you really believe.”