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1 " In this world, we return home to find our way separately, each forgiving the other for the things she could not give. In this world, we see each other occasionally; a friend, a touchstone to whom we both return, the heartbreak we both bravely revisit. "
― Kayla Rae Whitaker , The Animators
2 " Your life is the people who fill it," Mel says. "And nothing's good without them. "
3 " You know, the voiceover continues, it would be nice if we were defined, ultimately, by the people and places we loved. Good things. But at the end of the day, there's the reality that we're not. Does the good stuff really have the weight that the weird stuff does? What makes the deeper impact—all the ridges and gathers—on who we are? Do we have a choice? "
4 " I spent years trying to outrun myself, Mel says. Trying to make enough noise to drown myself out. It makes me ashamed to admit this. But it's okay to let yourself catch up. It's okay if you work to catch up to the things that have happened to you. You do it for yourself. But also for the people around you. The people who deserve to experience you, undiluted, honest. Your genuine self, given to them. "
5 " More truth: I have an infatuation problem. It’s not just Beardsley. It’s all of them. I’ve felt this for a hundred other men—the rush of the encounter, the way my stomach heats and bubbles, the adrenaline, the urge to run five miles and move my bowels and puke at the same time. It’s a frenzy for the story and what it could be. The ability to escape from my life, the chance at a grand renovation of self within another person. It’s the sense of possibility, so good it feels like it will salvage everything. How hard it is to beat the dream. How it traps you. It’s embarrassing. It’s lonely. It’s unsatisfying. It’s impossible. At day’s end, I just want a life where I’m laughing and eating and coming all the time. I could do this for the rest of my life—this rise and fall, defined increasingly by what I cannot have. "
6 " The less I could do, the more I wanted. Wanted things I couldn’t have and I wanted things I couldn’t even think up yet, but I could feel myself wanting. And that feeling, it’s like itching. Like to drive you crazy.” She shakes her head slightly. “I just wanted and wanted and wanted. You ever felt that way?” “Yes,” I tell her. “I have.” I feel something warm light my chest. It’s maybe the first time in my life that my mother has put something into the right words for me. "
7 " We sank into a cozy little vacuum, Mel and I, watching. I don’t know if it was the cartoons themselves, or watching them with Mel, but that night was the closest I had felt to knowing what I wanted from my life. She was the first person to see me as I had always wanted to be seen. It was enough to indebt me to her forever. "
8 " feel myself light up, like I do every time I hear an outside assessment of how I seem. "
9 " You’re gonna let the world happen to you, and you’re gonna love it. "
10 " Children learn it. Boys, but more often, and more closely, girls. When girls learn it, they learn it for the rest of their lives, inventing two separate planes on which they exist--the life of the surface, presented for others, and the life forever lived on the inside, the one that owns you. "
11 " It happens to you while you are asleep inside. The world in which we work is a place where no one is a ghost, a world in which the potential for anything walks and breathes, alive. And this is reason enough to have faith. To keep going. "
12 " It is strange and ultimately insulting how, when someone you love dies, just expires without warning, time does not stop. For weeks after the funeral, everything is in limbo. Obligations disappear, routines crumble. It is enough to shuffle along the edge of one’s life. When the call back to normality comes, I ignore it "
13 " This is what working in what amounts to a rat’s nest for the past decade has done to us, I think, looking at our reflections in the mirror. Ten years in a piece-of-crap studio in the armpit of Bushwick with full view-and-sound of the JMZ train, giving ourselves humpbacks craning over our drafting tables, Camels drooping from our mouths, passing expired packages of Peeps back and forth in the dark. The work has made me forget how to act like a person. We’re not fit to go out and socialize with the fancy people, all Cheetos-stained hands and dilated pupils. "
14 " There’s a lot that can bring two people together, it occurs to me. They may, unawares, have entire conversations that do not take place in words. They may never know, themselves, what is admitted, what is declared. What binds. "
15 " We have to start from wherever we are. "
16 " I bring it to my face, smell. Mildew and sweat and every empty day that's passed since. "
17 " Then, “Is your name really Sharon Kisses?” “It is until I have the money to get it changed.” “Dude, no. Your name is mind-blowing. "
18 " My drug of choice at eighteen: the quiet devouring of boys in my head. "
19 " Your life is the people who fill it, Mel says. And nothing’s good without them. "
20 " He’s nowhere near the price tag you’re hanging on him. "
