Release

by Patrick Ness

Why did everyone no longer a teenager automatically dismiss any feeling you had then? Who cared if he’d grow out of it? That didn’t make it any less true in those painful and euphoric days when it was happening. The truth was always now, even if you were young. Especially if you were young.

It’s interesting to note as parents how easily we say you’ll grow out of it, knowing full well from experience you won’t? These experiences end up defining who you are or who you’ll become. I know I’m guilty of telling my kids either it won’t hurt forever or you aren’t the only one going through this. It really shouldn’t matter. It’s really funny we expect kids to do and process things even adults have issues with.

When I realized how things were, when I said to myself that I am not this thing I’ve been told I have to be, that I am this other thing instead, then Jesus, Ange, the label didn’t feel like a prison, it felt like a whole new freaking map, one that was my own, and now I can take any journey I want to take and it’s possible I might even find a home there. It’s not a reduction. It’s a key.”

Though different, I recall being called a nerd in grade and high school. It was always funny that the top students were also the top athletes at my school. Now a days I embrace the nerd. It’s who I am.

was so much easier to be loved than to have to do any of the desperate work of loving.

This hit home for me. There are times in the past when I wasn’t surei knew what it was.

“All hands are alike. As alike as they are different.”

Just a cool quote

I love you but . . . It was always, always, “I love you but . . .”

Anytime you use but, you are adding a condition. Love how this was tied in at the ending too.

He’d twice pushed himself hard enough to vomit, and though it was awful, there felt something heroic in it, too, something powerful about going beyond what you could safely do, into oblivion, to the point where you could erase yourself, be erased.

This is how I’ve felt running or cycling.

Because there was always a wound, it seemed, kept freshly opened by a family who also kept saying they loved him.

Hits home hard. Reminds me of living with my mom and step dad...

Can I love? he thought. Can I? Can I be loved?

I think everyone goes through this at some point, if not multiple times in their lives.

Maybe love made you stupid. Maybe loneliness did.

Yep I can say this has happened to me. You feel very dumb in the end.

If you ever fall, I’m here to catch you. Or not, actually, you’re a giant, but I’m here to at least watch you fall and then get bandages.”

Angela, loved this character!

BECAUSE, PIZZAS

Best chapter name ever!

“I love your mom. That was when she told us about that racist Dutch Christmas thing.” “Zwarte Piet! Oh, my God! Even my hippie mother didn’t think that was racist until she moved here.”

Make a note to ask grandma about this but it’s the first I’m hearing about it...

For a moment, she had been strong. For a moment, she had trembled from that strength. For a moment, anything was possible, a future, a way to make it better, to make it right, to step out of this rut, out of these weights that clung to her like bricks in her pockets. For almost an entire evening, there was possibility.

The more I read this side of the book, the more I came to appreciate how it was phrased. It was a very intriguing way to tell a completely parallel story.

“Never pass up the chance to be kissing someone. It’s the worst kind of regret.”

Yep, been there, done that. You know the times when someone tells you they knew someone liked you but well after the fact? Especially if you and that person may have worked out well?

But then she thinks, feels, reaches out, and knowing exactly what blame is—a human construct, one of its blackest and most selfish and self-blinding—she can find further strands of it, emanating in all directions, for blame is something that is shared but denied in equal measure.

Love this!

“They’re your parents. They’re meant to love you because. Never in spite.”

If only all parents knew and applied this thought!

“mostly” was as close to “not at all” as any hand grenade.

Or horseshoes for that matter 😂

this soul, this soul, this spirit bound to her and of her and with her and in her,

Again the phrasing in these parts was so weird but oddly appropriate as the story goes on. I really enjoyed how the end ties things up.

She regards the hand she still holds. “You searched for me when I was lost.” “A Queen is never lost. She is always exactly where she needs to be.”

This reminds me of what Gandalf says I think? Arrives precisely when her means to.