Real Life

by Brandon Taylor

There comes a time when you have to stop being who you were, when you have to let the past stay where it is, frozen and impossible. You have to let it go if you’re going to keep moving, if you’re going to survive, because the past doesn’t need a future.

Perhaps friendship is really nothing but controlled cruelty.

He is crying because he cannot recognize himself, because the way forward is obscured for him, because there is nothing he can do or say that will bring him happiness. He is crying because he is lodged between this life and the next, and for the first time he does not know whether it is better to stay or go.

It’s not even that he wants to be them—though queer desire has this feature baked in, so better to say it’s not just that he wants to be them. He wants to be not himself. He wants to be not depressed. He wants to be not anxious. He wants to be well. He wants to be good.