Gravity Is the Thing

by Jaclyn Moriarty

“I think I should come with you, Abi. They might be going to sell you into slavery or turn you into a drug mule.” “They’d only do the same to you,” I pointed out. “Oh no,” she said, “I wouldn’t let them.”

This is my mom 100%

What kind of a breathtakingly fucked-up world do you think we live in, Barbara, where we’d prefer Robert to vanish from our lives rather than to have to build a fucking ramp?

Raising teenagers is all about deception. Give teenagers the illusion of freedom. It’s like when you’re playing the triangle. If you clutch the bar, it will make an ugly clang. However, if you dangle the triangle in the air from a fine, fine string, it will chime out its sweetness. It believes it is free, you see, even though you’ve got it by the string. Convince the triangle it is free.

If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody.

This is a scenario you often see with sad men, I think: the rescue women. Whereas a sad woman who sits alone unshaven in her garbage, fungus in her toenails, will almost certainly remain un-rescued. A sweet young ingenue with giant teary eyes might be the exception, but even then it will depend on the extent and nature of garbage, and just how hirsute she has become. *

and I understood that he had not brought my mother’s Lagavulin along to keep him warm, as we had hypothesized.

This broke me. I was sad but fine until this line 😭