I want you to stop making me sick.
I want you to go away and not stay away.
Could you bring me razor blades when you come back?
and a sandwich of begonias and glass?

On a balmy summer day when you feel young and fresh and slender. Partly because you make me feel higher than any drug possibly could, partly because you make me feel like I’m worth loving, partly because you can make me feel warmer than the sun. It’s hard to believe when I’m with you that I could feel this childlike and safe. A giant sense of relief is lifted off my shoulders because I now know that I never have to spend another night wondering if anyone could ever adore me on a cold winter day when I have a puffy face and stomach and my scalp is itchy and my mouth tastes like blue cheese and my jeans no longer fit and I start to look less like the person you first met and fell in love with. I don’t have to get my eyebrows waxed or buy the right skin creams or go to the gym after work and buy jeans that make my ass look good. I don’t need to trick anyone anymore.

JOSH:
When a relationship starts with, “This isn’t going to be a thing, right?” and then progresses to, “I just don’t see myself being with one person forever,” as ours did, it doesn’t really matter how long you are together. You never really feel stable. There were wonderful, dizzy times when we were perfectly coordinated, and there were others where I felt adrift on my own like a synchronized swimmer who never learned the routine.

I want you to miss me. I want you to recognize me in your morning cereal and the voice of your favorite singer. I want you to wonder where I am when your fingers are stretched beneath your waistband, when you’re lighting up, when you’re tripping up the uneven step on your basement stairs. I want you to think of me when you look into your teacup and your rearview mirror. I want you.

You are terrifying and strange and beautiful. Something not everyone knows how to love.

Those doing soul work, who want the searing truth more than solace or applause, know each other right away. Those who want something else turn and take a seat in another room. Soul-makers find each other’s company.

I still catch myself feeling blue about things that don’t matter anymore.

And she finds it difficult to believe — that a person would love her even when she isn’t trying. Trying to figure out what other people need, trying to be worthy.

I actually attack the concept of happiness. The idea that - I don’t mind people being happy - but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It’s a really odd thing that we’re now seeing people saying “write down 3 things that made you happy today before you go to sleep”, and “cheer up” and “happiness is our birthright” and so on. We’re kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position - it’s rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don’t teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say “Quick! Move on! Cheer up!” I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word “happiness” and to replace it with the word “wholeness”. Ask yourself “is this contributing to my wholeness?” and if you’re having a bad day, it is.

I’m just a single guy. I’m not married, I don’t have kids or anything like that. All of my friends are getting married and stuff which is, uh, kinda strange. I don’t know, I feel like I see people my age getting married to people and it’s not people they know that well sometimes. It’s like people they’ve known for a year and a half. A year and a half? Is that enough time to get to know someone to know you want to spend the rest of your life with them? I’ve had sweaters for a year and a half and been like what the fuck am I doing with this sweater? It’s stupid-looking.

the object of her passion was only an accessory to the passion itself, a passion that through its long suppression was now asserting itself with volcanic necessity.

This is what divorce is: taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love.

There are some people—people the universe seems to have singled out for special destinies. Special favors and special torments. God knows we’re all drawn toward what’s beautiful and broken; I have been, but some people cannot be fixed. Or if they can be, it’s only by love and sacrifice so great that it destroys the giver.

Is this one of those keep-your-friends-close-and-your-enemies-closer things?” “I thought it was keep your friends close so you have someone to drive the car when you sneak over to your enemy’s house at night and throw up in his mailbox.