Out of Nowhere (Middle of Somewhere #2)

by Roan Parrish

“What’s your name?” he asks the cat. Why do people do that?

😂

“I think sometimes the people we get angriest with are the ones who have the things we want the most.”

Is there a word for just not trying very hard to avoid ceasing to exist?

“I just need you to know,” he says slowly. “That it’s a lot. For me. The secrecy. If this is how it’s always going to be—a secret, a lie. It’s a lot, Colin. It’s a lot if I don’t have any hope that things might be different someday. Maybe…. It may be too much. Too much to live with and not… I just have to think. Okay?”

I’ve done it so many times but never quite seen what it looks like from the other side: forcing someone to see you the way you see yourself. Forcing them to press their face right up to the ugliness inside and then make the decision about whether they want to go or stay from there. Most people go.

There should be a word for living a life so different from anything you ever thought was possible that you don’t even recognize yourself in it.