“I love you also means I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else.”
“I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love.”
“But men don’t come and make everything all better— they’re only human. And you shouldn’t punish him because you were forced to grow up so fast, you never learned how to let someone else take care of you. He’s not your father, okay? He’s not necessarily gonna disappear at the first sign of trouble. And, as scary as it is to consider letting yourself be truly vulnerable with another human being, what’s even scarier is that deep down inside you know you picked this man… and if you run away from him now, you’ll be running away from being the kind of person you always wanted to be.”
“I’m not the silly romantic you think. I don’t want the heavens or the shooting stars. I don’t want gemstones or gold. I have those things already. I want…a steady hand. A kind soul. I want to fall asleep, and wake, knowing my heart is safe. I want to love, and be loved.”
“I know that I’m weird, but you know you’d be weird too if your mother aged backwards like mine did. So the thing is, I always kinda figured that I’d end up alone… and then you came along. And you don’t just accept my quirks and my crazy stories, and my lies about my mom… you actually appreciate me for them. And I’ll never stop appreciating you for that. I know I’ll never stop loving you for it.”
“I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long. I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it— I will love you through that, as well. If you don’t need the medication, I will love you, too. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and Braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me. Tonight, this strange interior gesture of friendship— the lending of a hand from me to myself when nobody else is around to offer solace— reminds me of something that happened to me once in New York City. I walked into an office building one afternoon in a hurry, dashed into the waiting elevator. As I rushed in, I caught an unexpected glance of myself in a security mirror’s reflection. In that moment, my brain did an odd thing— it fired off this split-second message: “Hey! You know her! That’s a friend of yours!” And I actually ran forward toward my own reflection with a smile, ready to welcome that girl whose name I had lost but whose face was so familiar. In a flash instant of course, I realized my mistake and laughed in embarrassment at my almost doglike confusion over how a mirror works. But for some reason that incident comes to mind again tonight during my sadness in Rome, and I find myself writing this comforting reminder at the bottom of the page.”
“I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday.”
“Sometimes you have to test someone. Not because you don’t trust them, but to see how much they’ll sacrifice for you. And sometimes you have to let them go, not because you suddenly stopped loving them, but to see if they love you enough to come back.”
“I thought we were a real love relationship. I did. I was very invested in love, but it was just this long long sex thing that could end at any moment because after all, it’s just about getting off. Almost all the time, you tell yourself you’re loving somebody when you’re just using them. This only looks like love.”
“Being with her I feel a pain, like a frozen knife stuck in my chest. An awful pain, but the funny thing is I’m thankful for it. It’s like that frozen pain and my very existence are one.
The pain is an anchor, mooring me here.”
“She’s so in love with me, she doesn’t know anything. That’s why she’s in love with me.”
“In my whole life, no one has ever looked at me the way that you do. No one has ever, touched my face or brushed my hair out of my eyes like you do. And maybe this is really selfish but, it’s not just you I’m going to miss. It’s the way I feel when I’m with you that I’m going to miss even more.”
“No mistake about it. Ice is cold; roses are red; I’m in love. And this love is about to carry me off somewhere. The current’s too overpowering; I don’t have any choice. It may very well be a special place, some place I’ve never seen before. Danger may be lurking there, something that may end up wounding me deeply, fatally. I might end up losing everything. But there’s no turning back. I can only go with the flow. Even if it means I’ll be burned up, gone forever.”
“The burns, the scars, the black and blues on your face body heart, I want to know their stories. I want to know what hurt you, who hurt you, how bad the damage is. I like your hard, ugly toenails and the layer of fat that lines your belly, the soft parts you try to hide. It’s okay to be soft, sometimes.”
“I don’t love him, and he definitely doesn’t love me. Still, he semi-fills a gaping black hole inside me. That place wants love, maybe even needs love, but love is something I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist.”
