You Were There Too Quotes

“Maybe all that matters is that love is a circle. Infinite. Eternal. Present, even when the person you want to be there most is absent.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“While some dreams are purely imagination, or inconsequential, precognitive dreams, like Lincoln’s, are tapping into another time and space. How is that possible? Two words: quantum physics. We often think of time as an arrow, a straight line: past, present, future. But quantum physics views time as another dimension, like space. There’s up, down, east, west—it’s more than bidirectional. And if you think of time that way, the future already exists. It’s just that our brains allow us to focus only on the here and now—just like you can see only the little patch of earth where you’re standing, even though an entire world exists outside of it. Many Native American cultures understand this intuitively. They view time as a circle, where everything is happening all at once. For them it’s no surprise that you can dream about the future.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“And now, in the waiting room of an OB/GYN office for a postmiscarriage checkup, I feel like a soldier in a field of visual landmines. Nowhere is safe to look. Not the black-and-white photos of cherubic babies on every single wall, or the rounded bellies protruding from proud mothers-to-be, all glowing and puffed up with their success of carrying a baby nearly to term—I can’t even look the receptionist in the eye, not wanting to see either her pity or judgment of my slack belly.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“You keep trying to figure out what you’re supposed to do. Like life is some big game show with right and wrong answers. It doesn’t work like that. You have to put all that aside and really ask yourself: What do you want? It’s simple as that. Who do you love? Who do you want to be with? Forget everything else.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“Maybe the future already exists. Maybe I will see my husband again one day. Maybe time is a circle. Or maybe not. Maybe all that matters is that love is a circle. Infinite. Eternal. Present, even when the person you want to be there most is absent.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“how wonderful and awful it is that nothing in life happens quite the way we expect.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“And I’m overwhelmed by how wonderful and miraculous and unfair it all is. I think of that banal platitude: Love isn’t supposed to hurt. But really, if you’re doing it right, love hurts all the time.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“maybe there’s no rhyme or reason to it all. Maybe instead of wondering why we’re all connected, what’s important—the only thing that’s important—is to know that we are.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“It’s impossible to know what the future could hold. And so I have to live in the what-is and not in the what-could-be.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“Everyone has their own perspective, right? Their own life experience, breadth of knowledge, emotions, whatever they happen to be going through in that moment—it all informs their responses.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“Everyone’s terrible at it. Marriage is hard.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“I always thought if my marriage ended it would be an explosion—a fiery blast of fighting and screaming, a plate of spaghetti thrown against a wall. The way my parents ended things. I didn’t know it could end in a trickle. A pipe under the sink dripping unnoticed until one day the entire thing crashes through the water-damaged floor.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“I always thought if my marriage ended it would be an explosion—a fiery blast of fighting and screaming, a plate of spaghetti thrown against a wall. The way my parents ended things. I didn’t know it could end in a trickle. A pipe under the sink dripping unnoticed until one day the entire thing crashes through the water-damaged”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“I feel like we’re just living in this limbo, and neither one of us wants to say it. I know you’re waiting for me to change my mind. To change. And I’m not going to.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“feel like we’re just living in this limbo, and neither one of us wants to say it. I know you’re waiting for me to change my mind. To change. And I’m not going to.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“It’s these moments—when I’m a flailing fish on land—that I cast him as the callous fisherman, and it takes everything in me to keep from pushing his solid body off the bed and hearing it make a satisfying thud as it hits the floor.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“Other times, a rage grips me so tight, every peaceful inhale and exhale of Harrison’s sleeping form is an aggressive personal affront.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“Sometimes I stare at his peaceful face and offer a fervent silent wish to the darkness that he could find that same peace when he’s awake.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“That in the random chaos of life, you and I met somehow. And out of everyone else in the world that we know, we choose each other. Every day.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“And I reveled in it, the little thrill, that buzz of excitement that courses through your veins at the beginning of a relationship that, after years with someone, is impossible to replicate.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“Why do some people have that—the ability to grab life by the horns and ride it like a bull, hanging on for the pure exhilaration?”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“talking about adjustment periods and life stages and how I needed to finish unpacking—that it was a symbolic step of accepting where I am or some bullshit like that.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“You keep trying to figure out what you’re supposed to do. Like life is some big game show with right and wrong answers. It doesn’t work like that. You have to put all that aside and really ask yourself: What do you want? It’s simple as that.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“Maybe there isn't room in a relationship for two artists. We're all moody and narcissistic and self-loathing as fuck. There's no balance.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“Stop making fun of me. I'm an artist. I'm sensitive.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too

“There’s no class in medical school, no tips for dealing with death, mortality, grief. So you look to your elders and you learn, not how to detach, but that you must. Numb yourself. Some doctors pray, find consolation in believing that something or someone else is in control. Some drink. Some yell at their kids.”
― Colleen Oakley, You Were There Too