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You do sometimes sit and wonder why it wasn’t you, what makes you so special that you get to be safe. The world doesn’t make much sense.
You have these lines you won’t cross. But then you cross them. And suddenly you possess the very dangerous information that you can break the rule and the world won’t instantly come to an end. You’ve taken a big, black, bold line and you’ve made it a little bit gray. And now every time you cross it again, it just gets grayer and grayer until one day you look around and you think, There was a line here once, I think.
It was like I’d been playing with fire but somehow I was genuinely surprised when I burnt myself.
People say that life keeps moving, but they don’t mention that it does stop sometimes, just for you. Just for you and your girl. The world stops spinning and just lets you two lie there. Feels like it, anyway. Sometimes. If you’re lucky. Call me a romantic if you have to. Worse things to be.
“We only look like young stars/because you can’t see old scars.”
It’s so strange, how someone’s silence, someone’s insistence that something isn’t happening can be so suffocating. But it can be. And suffocating is exactly the word, too. You feel like you can’t breathe.
I’m not saying that I didn’t care. I cared a lot. I’m saying that when you really love someone, sometimes the things they need may hurt you, and some people are worth hurting for.
But loving somebody isn’t perfection and good times and laughing and making love. Love is forgiveness and patience and faith and every once in a while, it’s a gut punch. That’s why it’s a dangerous thing, when you go loving the wrong person. When you love somebody who doesn’t deserve it. You have to be with someone that deserves your faith and you have to be deserving of someone else’s. It’s sacred.
If I’ve given the impression that trust is easy—with your spouse, with your kids, with anybody you care about—if I’ve made it seem like it’s easy to do…then I’ve misspoken. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.
“That’s me. And no matter where we are, no matter what time of day it is, the world is dark and we are two blinking lights. Flashing at the same time. Neither one of us flashing alone.”
“When you think of me, I hope it ruins rock ’n’ roll.”
You have to have one person in your life that you know would never do anything to steer you wrong. They may disagree with you. They could even break your heart, from time to time. But you have to have one person, at least, who you know will always tell you the truth.
Because I thought love was this thing that was supposed to tear you in two and leave you heartbroken and make your heart race in the worst way. I thought love was bombs and tears and blood.
No matter who you choose to go down the road with, you’re gonna get hurt. That’s just the nature of caring about someone. No matter who you love, they will break your heart along the way.
Camila our best girl
You can justify anything. If you’re narcissistic enough to believe that the universe conspires for and against you—which we all are, deep down—then you can convince yourself you’re getting signs about anything and everything.
But at some point, you have to recognize that you have no control over anybody and you have to step back and be ready to catch them when they fall and that’s all you can do. It feels like throwing yourself to sea. Or, maybe not that. Maybe it’s more like throwing someone you love out to sea and then praying they float on their own, knowing they might well drown and you’ll have to watch.
“I’m not perfect. I’ll never be perfect. I don’t expect anything to be perfect. But things don’t have to be perfect to be strong. So if you’re waiting around, hoping that something’s going to crack, I just…I have to tell you that it’s not gonna be me. And I can’t let it be Billy. Which means it’s gonna be you.”
The two of you think you’re lost souls, but you’re what everybody is looking for.”
It’s the ones who never loved you enough that come to you when you can’t sleep.
My whole life, I have been a person who loves to sleep in a bed alone. And Graham is a guy who likes to wake up next to somebody. If he had had it his way, I’d’ve conformed to what everybody else did, to what everybody else wanted for their lives. But it wasn’t what I wanted.
But what’s most compelling to me is that the women we shine a light on—the women we allow to be raised up onto that pedestal—are all forced to become two women: The woman they are, and the woman we all want to believe in.
The women we are, is Karen and Daisy. And the woman we want to be is Camila
