You Know Me Well

by Nina LaCour

But the thing about possibilities: There are some you want much more than others. Or only one you want much more than everything else.

You can be naked with someone and remain unknowable. You can be someone’s secret without ever really knowing what the full secret is. You can know he’s even more scared than you are, but that doesn’t make you any less scared yourself.

you can’t let go of something that’s inside you. You’re not holding it like that.

Most lives are long, and most pain is short. Hearts don’t actually break; they always keep beating. This is not to diminish what you’re going through, but I’ve been there, and I’ve been through

it. As that famous homosexual Winston Churchill once said, if you find yourself heartbroken, keep walking.”

I don’t pose. I let him see me as I am. “Imperfect,” he says. “Which is perfect.”

people can choose to forget how it was for them, or they can remember. They can half-listen to us and roll their eyes when we leave because we’re young and we have no fucking clue what we’re doing. Or they can actually listen, and they can think about themselves when they were like us, and maybe we can bring some pieces of them back.”

“Because we lose it,” I say. “We grow up and we lose ourselves. Sometimes when my favorite songs are on I have to stop what I’m doing and lie down on my carpet and just listen. I feel every word they’re singing. Every note. And to think that in twenty years, or ten years, or five, even, I might hear those same songs and just, like, bob my head or something is horrible. Then I’m sure I’ll think that I

know more about life, but it isn’t true. I...

There is something powerful about the shedding of comfort. There is something intense about feeling that person push, knowing that the force behind it is the force of their caring, of their genuine belief that the push will get you to a better place.

“The heart is a treacherous beast.” “But it means well.”

Hiding and denying and being afraid is no way to treat love. Love demands bravery.

Here we come—through hard days and good ones, through despair and through exhilaration, in love and out of love, for just

now or for forever. Here we come. It’s our parade.