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1 " Sometimes it was enough just to listen to voices that weren't your own. "
― Claire Lombardo , The Most Fun We Ever Had
2 " Life’s insistence on juxtaposing darkness and light would never cease to amaze him. "
3 " The best thing about the cold was the comfort that came from escaping it. "
4 " The thing that nobody warned you about adulthood was the number of decisions you’d have to make, the number of times you’d have to depend on an unreliable gut to point you in the right direction, the number times you’d still feel like an eight-year-old, waiting for your parents to step in and save you from peril. "
5 " It’s funny,” her mom continued. “I think so much of making a relationship work has to do with choosing to be kind even when you may not feel like it. It sounds like the most obvious thing in the world but it’s much easier said than done, don’t you think? "
6 " Maybe another person couldn’t irrevocably save you, but they could sometimes calm you down, and that felt like an exquisitely magical thing. "
7 " Everyone thinks I know what I’m doing but I actually have no idea what I’m doing and that’s the cruelest trick the universe plays on people who have their shit together, little one; the people who seem like they have it together are the most overlooked, because everyone thinks those people never need anything, but everyone needs things; I need things; thanks for listening; "
8 " And there was something indescribably lovely about this, the baby who’d once jabbed with restless knees at your internal organs sitting beside you on a park bench and benevolently giving you shit, and it occurred to her that it was moments like these that made being alive feel worth it, little blips of contentment amid the mayhem and status quo. "
9 " Nobody’s ever prepared to care for a child full-time, is what I mean. Nobody understands what that means until they do it for themselves. We’re all just holding our breath and hoping nothing catastrophic happens. And how deeply you get hurt doing that! It’s constant pain. It’s a parade of complete and utter agony, all the time, forever. "
10 " The world as it was would almost never be the world you wanted it to be, and there was a certain pleasure in finding your space in the schism. "
11 " And he realized, then, how silly it seemed that you could ever know another person—really know her—and how silly it was to think that he had any idea what it was like to be her, day after day. "
12 " You were right,” she said. “Thanks,” he replied. “About what?” “About the fact that we’re never going to—you know. Reach the finish line. With the kids. There’s always going to be something. "
13 " The thing that nobody warned you about adulthood was the number of decisions you’d have to make, the number of times you’d have to depend on an unreliable gut to point you in the right direction, the number of times you’d still feel like an eight-year-old, waiting for your parents to step in and save you from peril. "
14 " And it was striking, how much less alone that could make you feel, because of course to be peopled at all was a high-order gift, but to find people beyond your people was nothing short of miraculous, finding a person away from home who felt like home and shifted, subsequently, the very notion of home, widening its borders. "
15 " This is the problem with you,” she said finally. “You’re so nice until you’re not. And then you’re the biggest asshole on the planet. "
16 " And this was what worried her the most: nothing had ever felt as comfortable, as easy, as good as being with her parents, her family. No one, it seemed, would ever regard her with the same enthusiastic awe as her mother; the same quiet, feverish pride as her father. It aroused concern within that she was slated for a lifetime of disappointment from the outside. "
17 " There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?”“It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products. "
18 " He’s sorry. He’s embarrassed. He’s hungry. The Catholic trifecta. You’ve taught him well. "
19 " Pregnancy was the cruelest evolutionary fuck-you, filling you with more anxiety than you’d ever experienced in your life while prohibiting you from imbibing anything that might calm your nerves. "
20 " Life was never going to be what she wanted it to be, and she'd decided to pragmatically lower her bar in a way that would have horrified her teenage self. "
