Augusten Burroughs

I know now: what is is all that matters. Not the thing you know is meant to be, not what could be, not what should be, not what ought to be, not what once was.Only the is.

It may seem to you that your life is over now. Your future without the person you love is no future at all.Death is a head-on collision with your plans.But everything in life--the gold fillings of your teeth, the cotton of your sheets, the air you breathe, all the food you will ever eat--everything there is was born from a collision.Inside every single thing that lives is a debt to a distant star that died.Nothing new is ever created without one thing colliding into another.And something new is created when the person you love dies.Because they are not the only ones who die: you die, too. The person you were when you were with them is gone just as surely as they are.This is what you should know about losing somebody you love. They do not travel alone. You go with them.

The more time I spent at the Finches', the more I realized what a waste of my life this school crap was. It was nothing but a holding tank for kids without bigger plans or ideas.

Not crazy in a 'let's paint the kitchen bright red!' sort of way. But crazy in a 'gas oven, toothpaste sandwich, I am God' sort of way. Gone were the days when she would stand on the deck lighting lemon-scented candles without then having to eat the wax.p28

His laugh is made of porch swings and lemonade.

His eyes are so clear and blue that nothing but clichés enter my mind.

Fact: upon locking yourself our of your apartment you will immediately need to use the bathroom. Fact: and then you will stand in place and watch your door. You will just stare. As though rebuffed by it. As though it has done this to you.

I didn't begin life hating my grandmother. Like every child, I adored her. Until I formed a brain and got to know her.

I want to feel calm and at ease. Like someone who lives in Half Moon Bay, California, and makes hummus from scratch. Instead, I feel like I'm a contestant on some awful supermarket game show where I've got sixty seconds to hurl my shopping cart down the aisles, piling it with as much as possible before the buzzer goes off.

He continues to smile expectantly. I take a step back. I don't want to catch whatever he has. He is a disturbing out-of-uniform Santa.

I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside. Because how do you meet a new person? I was very stunned by this for many years. And then I realized, you just say, "Hi." They may ignore you. Or you may marry them. And that possibility is worth that one word.

Long marriages have ended in ruin over tiny and insignificant grievances that were never properly aired and instead grew into a brittle barnacle of hatred.

Real optimism is not the pep talk you give yourself. It is earned through the labor involved in emotional housekeeping.

Was I heartbroken or furious? I didn__ know. I did know: that__ it. Our relationship could not continue like this, out of balance, unequal.And as surely as I knew this, I knew something else: But of course it can. We can continue to live exactly as we do right now, in a heavy-lidded state of love and unspeakable compromise. Isn__ that what people do? Every day? Don__ they ache but rename it tired?It made me wonder: Was it even fair to expect the person you__e with to be just as happy as you? Furthermore, how could you ever even know for sure? You couldn__, was the truth of it. You could not know this.

If you have one parent who loves you, even if they can't buy you clothes, they're so poor and they make all kinds of mistakes and maybe sometimes they even give you awful advice, but never for one moment do you doubt their love for you--if you have this, you have incredibly good fortune.If you have two parents who love you? You have won life's Lotto.If you do not have parents, or if the parents you have are so broken and so, frankly, terrible that they are no improvement over nothing, this is fine.It's not ideal because it's harder without adults who love you more than they love themselves. But harder is just harder, that's all.

I slipped on a turtleneck, laughing when my head became stuck in the turtle part. If they weren't called turtlenecks, I wouldn't have worn them.

I confidently walked up to the counter, and his friends moved to the side to let me through. I handed him the note. "Happy Birthday," I said. Then I smiled and walked out of the store. I did my crossing-the street trick again, lurking in the shadows and watching. I could see him turn the note over in his hand, open it and read, then turn it over again. He passed it to his friends, who passed it between them. Then I watched him make a shrugging gesture with his hands. And then they were all laughing again. My mortification was total and overpowering. I was suddenly having a very difficult time standing. I had experienced a perfect note of utter and true clarity. He was straight.