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Telling a dying man that everything was going to be okay when you knew it wasn’t. It was a sort of mercy.
Maybe this was my life now, just existing and hating every minute of it.
“All they do is lie and throw off your PH balance. They are a constant reminder that we don’t choose our sexuality, because who in their right mind would choose to be attracted to men. They are completely worthless as partners. Did you know that when a wife becomes seriously ill, she is six times more likely to be abandoned by her spouse than a husband is?”
there’s a saying up in oncology. When the wife gets sick, the husband gets a new wife.”
you can’t spell disappointment without men,”
But having men as friends and peers and family is very different than having them as partners.
And kids? No. Not if it meant I’d be attached to their father for the rest of my life.
She said she didn’t write letters, which meant she probably got them just for this. The thought of her making that effort made me smile to myself.
He seemed so uptight. But then I realized that it was probably the anxiety that made him come off that way.
She looked up at me with bloodshot eyes and said in the most sincere way I’d ever heard, “I did everything I could.” And it terrified me that now I knew what that meant.
I wanted to have things in common with her. I wanted to try the things she liked. It was a small, invisible gesture of friendship from me.
This was me making space for her, even though she would never know it. My way of saying thank you for her friendship, even if it was too quiet to hear.
if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it’s stupid?”
“I always think that when we’re quiet, we’re agreeing to be harmless to each other. That we’re just sharing the same space and letting each other exist exactly as we are, and neither of us would hurt or upset the other one.”
There is something so intimate about being in a man’s bedroom. Probably because there’s really only one reason why you would be…
Imagine being the woman he picked to join him here. Having a gentle man like this one choose you to be a part of his private, insular world. To be as special as each thing he carefully surrounded himself with. How lucky that woman would be. And I wondered how Amy couldn’t have felt that way. How she could have had the love of a man like this one and not wanted it.
I’d done that once. I’d built a life. Picked out furniture and framed photos and put vacation souvenirs on shelves. And then the man I’d done it with gave it to someone else.
‘A man who can keep a plant alive has the patience to put up with your shit.’”
Only I had no idea if that was the truth. But either way, today was the day I was going to muster the courage to find out.
I was tired of making excuses for why it was okay to accept less than I deserved.
if you’re with someone who doesn’t speak your language, you’ll spend a lifetime having to translate your soul?
Then I picked her up and carried her to bed. And while she was cradled in my arms, she muttered something about teleporting.
Don’t you tell me I can’t have what I want because you’re trying to make me live forever.
“That’s what you want?” “I just said.” “Sometimes people say things they don’t actually mean.” I threw up my hands. “What do you want from me, Jacob?” He paused. “Everything. I want everything. I want us to be real.”
“Use me,” he said, his eyes resigned. “Use me for whatever you want. Just stay.”
It’s the greatest revenge to be happy. To have a good life.
hardest thing isn’t trusting the next person. It’s trusting yourself.
She didn’t like the idea of someone bringing her to me like she was “property changing hands”
