My Name Is Anton

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

A human life is a very different place when you can tell people what you need.

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But he didn’t let on. He didn’t say what he needed.

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Purposeful or not, they were violating the unspoken social contract that states you must offer a stranger as much personal space as you reasonably can.

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have you ever felt like . . . like you’ve known people for a long time, and they always seemed to fit with you before, but then all of a sudden you feel like you don’t have anything in common with them anymore?” “I

Love is when you can make the following statement, and mean it: ‘What’s best for her, even if it doesn’t include me.’ Otherwise you just love the way you feel when she’s around, and you want to be selfish with that—hang on to it at all costs, even if it harms her. You said

Yes

So I loved him enough to stand out of his way. I let him make a decision to go forward to a future that did not include me. Because I loved him that much.”

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Most people have this image of the person they wanted to love—that they always imagined themselves loving—and they just love you for fitting with that. Which is dangerous, because they’ll try to avoid the parts of you that don’t fit.

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he expected her to fling some parting rejoinder at his back. Just to get the last word in. But she let him go in silence. She let her kind words be the sum total of what he took away from that encounter.

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So he borrowed from a future event that might or might not arrive, and gave her what she wanted.