You Know Me Well

by Nina LaCour

In between moments of almost-paralyzing self-doubt, I looked in the mirror and thought, for about half a second, that I looked like the kind of person I might like to know if I didn’t know myself already.

Have you ever wanted something so badly that it sort of takes over your life? Like, you still do all the things you’re supposed to do, but you’re just going through the motions because you are entirely consumed by this one thing?”

“Have you ever wanted something so badly that when it’s about to happen, you feel this need to sabotage yourself?”

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

All the lesbians I know are in some way smarter than me, or at least seem to know the world a little more. They also tend to read a lot of books.

So I tell him everything about her, which feels like telling him about myself, because when you think about something so intensely for so long, it kind of has a way of taking over everything else.

There is always something to like on a menu, some new meaning to glean in a film. Maybe the fact that I’m easy is the reason I’m their friend.

A small masterpiece of handcrafted obliviousness, delivered with sincerity.”

I thought it was the end of the world, but it wasn’t. I thought it was the start of the world, but it wasn’t. Instead it was an introduction to the halfway world where we’d spend the next two years.

His gesture toward the table may as well be the unveiling of my heart. The stripping off of my clothes. I might as well be singing her a love song.

“You can imagine what might happen after you press send,” Violet says. “But you don’t get to control it. And it could surprise you.”

“As your SAT tutor and your friend, I feel that I have an investment in your future,” I say. “And I think you have to gamble in order to win.”

It’s one thing to be wrecked by another person, entirely something else to be wrecked by yourself.

Taylor is a boy, and you are my best friend. Taylor is a date, and you are my calendar. Understood?”

Also, I don’t want to be a best friend if I can’t also be a boy in his eyes. I don’t want to be a calendar if I’ll never get a date.

I just want all my friends to be happy. And sometimes you have to do that one friend at a time.”

They have found each other at last. And with every minute, they are finding each other more.

Why do you have to risk the good things for the better things?

I can’t even explain the comfort I take in this routine. The comfort could fill the sky—it’s that immense.

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.

I love him indestructibly, and I care about him at a root level, but in this three-breath-long moment I can understand that the two of us will never be boyfriends, never be husbands, never be everything to each other in that way. I can let that go, and hold tight to everything else.

It should feel like my love is diminishing and my feelings are contracting. But instead I have a sense that they’re expanding.

Today is finally today. We are no longer what we were. We are now what we’re going to be.

We’ll risk the good thing for the better thing. We’re really, truly going to be okay.”

Empathy is wonderful, but you can still overdose on it if you try too much too fast.

“You’re becoming. You’re in the process of becoming. You just don’t know what yet.”

There are too many types of us to be counted; there are too many variations of our pride to be pigeonholed. I see people my age and people five times my age. I see all of these people freed from their given definitions and fashioning their own way of being defined.

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

Maybe he’s queer; maybe he isn’t. He still doesn’t know. But he knows that he doesn’t want anyone to assume anything about him. He wants to figure it out first, himself.