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21 " He keeps conversation to a minimum, and responds to her questions in monosyllabic sentences. No matter what she says, or how hard she tries to get a rise out of him, he gives nothing in return, no hint of how it makes him feel. I recognise this behaviour- the conversational equivalent of playing dead - I've used these tactics myself in the past and it saddens me now to see how proficient Theo is in them; it takes a lot of practice to learn how not to provoke the bear. Watching Theo with his mother, I wonder if on some level I was drawn to him because his wounds look so similar to mine. "
― , Out of Love
22 " Now, I'm not the kind of girl to gush over weddings but the marriage part – the idea of two flawed people being somehow perfect for each other, the odds of finding another human who can tolerate your specific brand of shit, and whose shit you can tolerate too -I think that's pretty special. "
23 " Rituals and routine became a safety blanket of sorts, something I could wrap around myself when things felt uncertain, which they so often did. "
24 " There's nothing like saying goodbye to a place to make you want to stay. Everywhere I look I see memories I've made, good and bad, and it hurts. I feel as though I've been afflicted by some rare disease that renders me incapable of seeing an object, place or person for what it is right now, and instead forces me to remember what it has been or wonder what it might become in my absence. It's like a kind of pre-emptive grief. "
25 " For better or for worse, I am my mother's daughter, and her story is my story too. It's mine to carry, mine to hold - with love if I can manage it - and mine to weave into my own. "
26 " I had known he was capable of doing this. I was just too naive and too arrogant to believe he would do it to me. We all think we'll be different, don't we? "
27 " In the days that followed, I thought about grief. How nothing and nobody can prepare you for it. People tell you their stories, but until you experience it for yourself you cannot possibly understand. There’s no going around it, or under, or over it - you’ve got to go through it. It will hit you in waves so enormous that you are smacked against the shore. It will permeate the very fabric of your life so that everything you do is stained by it. Every moment, good or bad, is steeped in sadness for a while. Even the nice moments - the achievements and successes - are tinged with the knowledge that someone or something is missing. "
28 " I sit on the balcony with the phone to my ear and as the sun makes its way slowly across the sky, I tell her everything. Not just about the pregnancy test; I tell her all the things we’re afraid to tell our mothers about our partners in case they tell us what we don’t want to hear that we already know: that we should leave them. "
29 " I think I like stories because they're simple and contained. You establish a status quo, create conflict, then resolve it. In life, nothing is ever really resolved. Your story never stops. How can it, when all our stories are woven together, part of some greater tapestry of tales that make up our lives and the lives of those around us? "
30 " Whatever your brain tells you - that you're useless, that you're broken, that you're unfixable - just hear it, acknowledge it and try to let it pass. You are not broken just because your brain says so. "
31 " I failed,” I said finally.“At what?”“The relationship.”“Don't be ridiculous,” said Maya, “You can't fail at a relationship. That's like getting off a roller coaster and saying you failed because the ride is over. Things end. That doesn't mean the experience wasn't worth it.”“I'm not sure it was worth it Maya. What did I get out of it?”“You got what you needed," she said. “And then one day it wasn't what you needed any more. "