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I originally walked away from material possessions because I felt the weight of them dragging me down. Now I don’t own anything I can’t afford to lose because I don’t want to die one day trying to protect something I never should’ve cared about in the first place.
Man can progress as much as we want. Mother Nature still owns our ass.”
“Small children take shelter,” I murmur. “The elderly head downhill. The inexperienced follow the path of least resistance.”
“When it comes to basic survival, you want to remember the rule of threes: You can go three minutes without air, three hours without shelter, three days without water, and three weeks without food. Prioritize accordingly.”
while I’m in my own little world of What the Fuck, which, to be honest, is my norm.
Have you ever attended an AA meeting? We are experts at silence. So much of our drinking is about filling those gaps, smoothing over awkward moments, trying to feel like we belong when most of us have gone through our entire lives feeling alone in a crowded room. Meaning, it’s one of the first things we must overcome. It’s not enough to stop drinking. We must change who we are, because who we are, are drunks.
Watching her, I’m filled with the age-old terror of making a mistake, looking foolish. How is it we all leave high school, but high school never leaves us?
I don’t speak. In this day and age, we all talk too much and hear too little. Listening has become a forgotten art that the world is sorely missing.
What do you remember most—the moments your parents genuinely tried, or all the times they definitely failed? I’ve never figured out that answer. Sitting here now, I focus on the good. That this moment is beautiful and perfect, and I’m wise enough now to appreciate all the moments that came before it, even the less beautiful and less perfect ones, as they led me here.
“You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.”
Plans give you a list of tasks to keep you from drowning in your own fear. Plans give you a feeling of control, even if it’s just an illusion at the time.
Why do I do what I do? Because at the end of the day, the people left behind matter as much as the ones who are missing. We mourn the ones we’ve lost, but we agonize over the pieces of ourselves they took with them. The identities we’ll never have again. The emotions we’re certain we’ll never feel again. The sense of our own selves, becoming undone and disappearing just as completely and suddenly as those who vanished.
