So Long, Chester Wheeler

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

It’s weird how you think you know somebody, but then suddenly you don’t. How you think you know what a person thinks and how they feel, but then it turns out you only knew what they chose for you to know. How there are two whole people in there, and one is a perfect stranger.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. It’ll be terrible. It’ll be your worst nightmare. But how many of us get to stand face to face with our worst nightmare and just . . . bushwhack our way through it?”

But you have a way of pushing decisions down the road. It’s like you’re waiting to be sure how it’ll pan out before you decide. But that never works. We can’t ever know that going in. I think you just need to choose a path and see where it takes you.”

.

leaving me with a feeling that I had made someone very happy, even if I had made myself very unhappy in the process.

It gave the eerie impression that the person who lived there didn’t love anyone or anything.

“I fell in love,” she said. “People fall in love. Especially when they’re not happy in their marriage.”

It felt like the best possible advertisement for kindness. Treat people well, otherwise you might die and no one will notice or find it especially relevant to their life.

I sat cross-legged for a long time and just let myself be overwhelmed—just tried to accept the fact that I was emotionally unable to begin.

There’s a time in the middle of our lives when we tend to have it under good control, but coming into the world and going out of the world, we’re much more vulnerable.

if people knew how much they were revealing about themselves when they tell you what they think of you, everybody would just shut up and never say anything to anybody again.”