Alex

“Who am I? Who am I?”
“You’re Jude St. Francis. You are my oldest, dearest friend. You’re the son of Harold Stein and Julia Altman. You’re the friend of Malcolm Irvine, of Jean-Baptiste Marion, of Richard Goldfarb, of Andy Contractor, of Lucien Voigt, of Citizen van Straaten, of Rhodes Arrowsmith, of Elijah Kozma, of Phaedra de los Santos, of the Henry Youngs. You’re a New Yorker. You live in SoHo. You volunteer for an arts organization; you volunteer for a food kitchen. You’re a swimmer. You’re a baker. You’re a cook. You’re a reader. You have a beautiful voice, though you never sing anymore. You’re an excellent pianist. You’re an art collector. You write me lovely messages when I’m away. You’re patient. You’re generous. You’re the best listener I know. You’re the smartest person I know, in every way. You’re the bravest person I know, in every way. You’re a lawyer. You’re the chair of the litigation department at Rosen Pritchard and Klein. You love your job; you work hard at it. You’re a mathematician. You’re a logician. You’ve tried to teach me, again and again. You were treated horribly. You came out on the other end. You were always you.”

"And who are you?"
"I'm Willem Ragnarsson. And I will never let you go.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Medical specialists flinging procedures and prescriptions at you—betahistines and SSRIs, SNRIs, benzos and CNS depressants, DNRIs, rTMS, ECT, CBT, DBT—if the list seems inexhaustive, it’s because it is, all sorts of fancy-colour pills that nuke your libido and make your limbs tense up with a writhing athetosis. Besieged by waves of nausea, I have never wanted to kill myself more than when I was on sertraline.”
― Sofia Ajram, Coup de Grâce

“The withering ember of dreams. Finances. Aging parents. The future. We are promised the world, but by the time we hit thirty, life knocks us over the head with a baseball bat like we’re a fucking piñata at a gender reveal party and we’re struck by the futility of it all: our finances are indelibly fucked, our dreams are scattered ash and the future has been salted.”
― Sofia Ajram, Coup de Grâce

“Purpose
Unifies us:
It focuses our dreams,
Guides our plans,
Strengthens our efforts.
Purpose
Defines us,
Shapes us,
And offers us
Greatness.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents