I'll Stop the World

by Lauren Thoman

It’s not that I don’t care about my civic duty or whatever; it’s just that it feels a little like getting excited about a glass of water while the whole building burns.

She wanted the woman to know she was small, and that she would always be small because her mind was small, but that Noah would be big because his heart was big.

She knew what she was to him, to everyone. A footnote in other people’s stories.

I feel like everyone got a manual for what they’re supposed to be doing with their lives, and I was, I don’t know, absent that day or something.”

All the parts of herself she didn’t dare show, but couldn’t bear to hide.

“Being drunk doesn’t change how you feel about someone. It just gives you permission to say it out loud.”

Eventually, if I keep pulling crap like this, she’s going to decide I’m not worth the effort, and I’ll have lost the one thing in my life that’s actually decent.

I don’t think fate causes things to happen, but once they do happen, they have significance.

—isn’t it also about the importance of having someone with you when things feel impossible? That maybe sometimes, even if you can’t change anything, it’s good to be with someone who makes you believe that you can?”

maybe it’s good to have someone in your corner who can push you to keep hoping when it would be easier to give up.”

Veronica always had to shoulder her way through every door herself, throwing her full weight against it until it began to budge, an inch at a time.

wondering just how many pieces of herself she’d have to give up by the time this was all over, and if she’d even recognize herself anymore by then.

It’s that I want those things so badly that I feel paralyzed.

Too little has changed, probably because too many people like me are content to just sit on our asses and assume that everything will sort itself out. And if it doesn’t, that’s no big deal either, because we’ll be fine either way.

Sometimes even the most justifiable of excuses is still not an actual excuse.