Normal Friendship Quotes

You think everyone you like is special, she said. I'm just a normal person. When you get to like someone, you make them feel like they're different from everyone else. You're doing it with Nick, you did it with me once.

Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend. The rest of us know that though we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair. Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest. Above all, Eros (while it lasts) is necessarily between two only. But two, far from being the necessary number for Friendship, is not even the best. And the reason for this is important. ... In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets... Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend. They can then say, as the blessed souls say in Dante, 'Here comes one who will augment our loves.' For in this love 'to divide is not to take away.

If a normally kind, agreeable person makes an enemy of you, you ought to ask yourself why.

I ejaculated about ten minutes ago and the stuff was black. So everything is not normal." Silence greeted that happy little announcement. Man, if he had hauled off and sucker-punched V, he would have gotten less of a shocked-out reaction.

At times he has the sensation that he and Marianne are like figure skaters, improvising their discussions so adeptly and in such perfect synchronisation that it surprises them both. She tosses herself gracefully into the air, and each time, without knowing how he's going to do it, he catches her.

He feels ambivalent about this, as if it’s disloyal of him, because maybe he’s enjoying how she looks or some physical aspect of her closeness. He’s not sure what friends are allowed to enjoy about each other.

A friend was someone you talked to in school, joined a club with, or who went to your church. A stupid fight in a basement could end a normal friendship. But a best friend was someone you could trust with your life, someone who you knew would be there for you. Being best friends was a promise to work through things no matter what.

Anyone else would have probably stayed put---or at least looked deeply uncomfortable, but Frank seemed like he was taking this in stride, like helping to reunite friends was just a normal thing he did.

But the more we all stuck together, the more outside layers fell off, revealing that we all have insecurities, fears, and dreams. And that's perfectly normal. That's how God made us.

Normal people are not always boring. On the contrary. Volatility and passion, although often more romantic and enticing, are not intrinsically preferable to a steadiness of experience and feeling about another person (nor are they incompatible). These are beliefs, of course, that one has intuitively about friendships and family; they become less obvious when caught up in a romantic life that mirrors, magnifies, and perpetuates one's own mercurial emotional life and temperament. It has been with my pleasure, and not-inconsiderable pain, that I have learned about the possibilities of love - its steadiness and its growth - from my husband, the man with whom I had lived for almost a decade.

I'm surprised by her consideration. People don't normally think about how to make things less difficult for me.

sometimes when a friendship goes beyond normal borders and you find a sister, rather than an ordinary friend, conversations aren’t necessary.

We didn't say or write anything for a long time. Normally silence like that was uncomfortable and awkward. Like you needed to say something to fill the empty space in the air. But it didn't feel like that with Samantha. Maybe it was because I couldn't say anything and fill the quiet, but I thought it was more about two people just being with each other, enjoying the slowdown and the rare sunshine.

I don't have a very good idea of how people behave with their friends normally because I've never had one before. But, on the bright side, Orion hadn't either, so he didn't know any more than I did. So for lack of a better idea, we just went on being rude to each other, which was easy enough for me and a refreshing and new experience for him, in both directions.

That men of this kind despise women, though a not uncommon belief, is one which hardly appears to be justified. Indeed, though naturally not inclined to 'fall in love' in this direction, such men are by their nature drawn rather near to women, and it would seem that they often feel a singular appreciation and understanding of the emotional needs and destinies of the other sex, leading in many cases to a genuine though what is called 'Platonic' friendship. There is little doubt that they are often instinctively sought after by women, who, without suspecting the real cause, are conscious of a sympathetic chord in the homogenic which they miss in the normal man.

Friends are life's ingredient that makes every sad moment sweeter, every difficult time easier, and every normal moment extraordinary.

I had a vague memory of the intensity of teenage female relationships; more of a passion than a normal friendship.

Much like books, she could tell how voiceless things had provided a brand of companionship more compatible to his nature than human friendship had ever been. These things, locked in their inanimate ways, fed him ideas, she thought. They whispered their tales to him through unmoving lips and he listened, opening himself to their world so much more than any normal passerby. That much was evident in the way he’d taken the photos, as if he’d caught each soulless thing in a candid moment of secret animation. Like they’d sensed him coming and so turned themselves his way because they knew that he held the power to translate their silence into words.

Marianne feels aggrieved that she fell for it, aggrieved that she thought she had anything in common with them, that she’d participated in the commodity market they passed off as friendship.

Some people get a kick out of reading railway timetables and that's all they do all day. Some people make huge model boats out of matchsticks. So what's wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?" "Kind of like a hobby?" she said, amused. "Yeah I guess you could call it a hobby. Most normal people would call it friendship or love or something, but if you want to call it a hobby, that's OK too.

He was biting his lower lip and clenching his hands. He looked like he was about to cry. I threw my arms around him instinctively, wrapping them around his waist and pressing my face against his chest. He was so big, I flet like I was a child hugging a grown-up. "Oh, Jake, it'll be okay!" I promised. "If it gets worse you can come live with me and Charlie. Don't be scared, we'll think of something!" He was frozen for a second, and then his long arms wrapped hesitantly around me. "Thanks, Bella." His voice was huskier than usual. We stood like that for a moment, and it didn't upset me; in fact, I felt comforted by the contact. This didn't feel anything like the last time someone had embraced me this way. This was friendship. And Jacob was very warm. It was strange for me, being this close--emotionally rather physically, though the physical was strange for me, too--to another human being. It wasn't my usual style. I didn't normally relate to people so easily, on such a basic level. Not human beings. "If this is how you're going to react, I'll freak out more often." Jacob's voice was light, normal again, and his laughter rumbled against my ear. His fingers touched my hair, soft and tentative. Well, it was friendship for me.

Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument just one more time, or of going one more round with a hostile or (much worse) indifferent audience. I first became involved with the Czech opposition in 1968 when it was an intoxicating and celebrated cause. Then, during the depressing 1970s and 1980s I was a member of a routine committee that tried with limited success to help the reduced forces of Czech dissent to stay nourished (and published). The most pregnant moment of that commitment was one that I managed to miss at the time: I passed an afternoon with Zdenek Mlynar, exiled former secretary of the Czech Communist Party, who in the bleak early 1950s in Moscow had formed a friendship with a young Russian militant with an evident sense of irony named Mikhail Sergeyevitch Gorbachev. In 1988 I was arrested in Prague for attending a meeting of one of Vaclav Havel's 'Charter 77' committees. That outwardly exciting experience was interesting precisely because of its almost Zen-like tedium. I had gone to Prague determined to be the first visiting writer not to make use of the name Franz Kafka, but the numbing bureaucracy got the better of me. When I asked why I was being detained, I was told that I had no need to know the reason! Totalitarianism is itself a cliché (as well as a tundra of pulverizing boredom) and it forced the cliché upon me in turn. I did have to mention Kafka in my eventual story. The regime fell not very much later, as I had slightly foreseen in that same piece that it would. (I had happened to notice that the young Czechs arrested with us were not at all frightened by the police, as their older mentors had been and still were, and also that the police themselves were almost fatigued by their job. This was totalitarianism practically yawning itself to death.) A couple of years after that I was overcome to be invited to an official reception in Prague, to thank those who had been consistent friends through the stultifying years of what 'The Party' had so perfectly termed 'normalization.' As with my tiny moment with Nelson Mandela, a whole historic stretch of nothingness and depression, combined with the long and deep insult of having to be pushed around by boring and mediocre people, could be at least partially canceled and annealed by one flash of humor and charm and generosity.

Having second thoughts?” Puck’s voice was soft and dangerous, a far cry from his normal flippancy. “I thought we put this behind us for now.” “Never,” I said, matching his stare. “I can’t ever take it back, Goodfellow. I’m still going to kill you. I swore to her I would.” Lighting flickered overhead, and thunder rumbled in the distance as we faced each other with narrowed eyes. “One day,” I said softly. “One day you’ll look up, and I’ll be there. That’s the only ending for us. Don’t ever forget.

Sometimes life feels a certain way that we call “absurd”: nothing matters, all efforts are for naught, everything seems random and perverse, positive intention is perpetually thwarted. This stance communicates darkness and edginess, which can feel like wisdom. But we don’t live as if life is absurd; we live as if it has meaning and makes sense. We live (or try to) by kindness, loyalty, friendship, aspiration to improvement, believing the best of other people. We assume causality and continuity of logic. And we find, through living, that our actions do matter, very much. We can be a good parent or a bad parent, we can drive safely or like a maniac. Our minds can feel clean and positive and clear or polluted and negative. To have an ambition and pursue it feels healthy. A life without earnest striving is a nightmare. (When desire vanishes from a normal life, that is called depression.)

How well they all knew each other now, he thought. In twelve weeks James felt he had come to know more about these three men than any of the so-called friends he'd known for twenty years. For the first time he understood why his father continually referred back to friendships formed during the war with men he normally would never have met. He realised how much he was going to miss Stephen when he returned to America. Success was, in fact, going to split them up.

So I close this long reflection on what I hope is a not-too-quaveringly semi-Semitic note. When I am at home, I will only enter a synagogue for the bar or bat mitzvah of a friend's child, or in order to have a debate with the faithful. (When I was to be wed, I chose a rabbi named Robert Goldburg, an Einsteinian and a Shakespearean and a Spinozist, who had married Arthur Miller to Marilyn Monroe and had a copy of Marilyn’s conversion certificate. He conducted the ceremony in Victor and Annie Navasky's front room, with David Rieff and Steve Wasserman as my best of men.) I wanted to do something to acknowledge, and to knit up, the broken continuity between me and my German-Polish forebears. When I am traveling, I will stop at the shul if it is in a country where Jews are under threat, or dying out, or were once persecuted. This has taken me down queer and sad little side streets in Morocco and Tunisia and Eritrea and India, and in Damascus and Budapest and Prague and Istanbul, more than once to temples that have recently been desecrated by the new breed of racist Islamic gangster. (I have also had quite serious discussions, with Iraqi Kurdish friends, about the possibility of Jews genuinely returning in friendship to the places in northern Iraq from which they were once expelled.) I hate the idea that the dispossession of one people should be held hostage to the victimhood of another, as it is in the Middle East and as it was in Eastern Europe. But I find myself somehow assuming that Jewishness and 'normality' are in some profound way noncompatible. The most gracious thing said to me when I discovered my family secret was by Martin, who after a long evening of ironic reflection said quite simply: 'Hitch, I find that I am a little envious of you.' I choose to think that this proved, once again, his appreciation for the nuances of risk, uncertainty, ambivalence, and ambiguity. These happen to be the very things that 'security' and 'normality,' rather like the fantasy of salvation, cannot purchase.

I am so much less concerned with being "normal" than with simply being alive.

I had always thought that I was fine with being alone. Halfway through high school, I moved from Brazil to America, and it took me forever to make friends. I had culture shock of virtually every kind, besides which I was awkward, geeky, and shy. So I ate alone, telling myself that it was fine while I watched other people have normal conversations with their friends.

Men are taught that it is normal, even desirable, to compete and disagree with each other; when they do so, they do not personalize the argument nor do they think that a friendship or working relationship will be jeopardized by a strong difference of opinion.

The girls listened in silence, hypnotized, no longer caring about teachers or dorm monitors or Latin. A few sweet moments of peaceful quiet, the kind only the radio could give them, a few moments of nothing but sound from the world outside, where people were living and singing and playing songs. Normal people in a normal world.

It occurs to me that she is not unique--that all women compare lives. We are aware of whose husband works more, who helps more around the house, who makes more money, who is having more sex. We compare our children, taking note of who is sleeping through the night, eating their vegetables, minding their manners, getting into the right schools. We know who keeps the best house, throws the best parties, cooks the best meals, has the best tennis game. We know who among us is the smartest, has the fewest lines around her eyes, has the best figure--whether naturally or artificially. We are aware of who works full-time, who stays at home with the kids, who manages to do it all and make it look easy, who shops and lunches while the nanny does it all. We digest it all and then discuss with our friends. Comparing and then confiding; it is what women do. The difference, I think, lies in why we do it. Are we doing it to gauge our own life and reassure ourselves that we fall within the realm of normal? Or are we being competitive, relishing others' shortcomings so that we can win, if only by default?

At what point is normal natural?

If she allowed herself to give in to the whole sadness of it, she'd never ever be able to operate like a normal person again.

It was true, Peggy and Jamie were not very good people; bad people even, who took joy in putting others down. Marianne feels aggrieved that she fell for it, aggrieved that she thought she had anything in common with them, that she'd participated in the commodity market they passed off as friendship. In school she had believed herself to be above such frank exchanges of social capital, but her college life indicated that if anyone in school had actually been willing to speak to her, she would have behaved just as badly as anyone else. There is nothing superior about her at all. (194-195)

Normal people are not always boring. On the contrary. Volatility and passion, although often more romantic and enticing, are not intrinsically preferable to a steadiness of experience and feeling about another person (nor are they incompatible). These are beliefs, of course, that one has intuitively about friendships and family;

In a series of emails they exchanged recently about their own friendship, Marianne expressed her feelings about Connell mainly in terms of her sustained interest in his opinions and beliefs, the curiosity she feels about his life, and her instinct to survey his thoughts whenever she feels conflicted about anything. He expressed himself more in terms of identification, his sense of rooting for her and suffering with her when she suffers, his ability to perceive and sympathise with her motivations.

I really want us to grow old together, you know? Go through all the typical life stuff together, even if that means we can only e-mail each other once a week because you moved to the middle of nowhere in Nebraska with your ten kids, and I'm still California because it's amazing. Just like in that one movie - we'll never lose touch with each other, ever. Is that weird?! No, Feenie said. It's perfectly fucking normal.

The feelings I had felt toward Lucy, I often thought, were something like this - something sharper than a normal friendship, something that I felt threatened to overwhelm and, quite possibly, destroy. There were moments when I had thought that I did not so much as want her, as I wanted to be her.

I'm never going to be happy, but I could get close now, I think. I could be almost normal. I could have a friend.

Most days, I worked harder at faking “normal” than I did on my grades, friendships or the few-and-fleeting relationships I’d had

On our own, we’d look totally normal. Together, we’re something else. Together, we’re special.

When will you realise trying so hard to be normal only shows you lack courage? Lia, you were born to be extraordinary because the world doesn’t need another normal person. It needs you.

Like with Rob, that’s my friend who died,” he says. “I wouldn’t say we clicked on this very deep level or anything but we were friends. We didn’t have a lot in common like in terms of interests or whatever, and on the political side of things we probably wouldn’t have had the same views. But in school, stuff like that didn’t really matter as much. We were just in the same group so we were friends, ya know?

Maria would say that they were not her friends, but Maria has never understood friendship, conversation, the normal amenities of social exchange. Maria has difficulty talking to people with whom she is not sleeping.

Any real connection involves vulnerability. Whether in marriage or friendship—or even with a stranger—a relationship can progress only so far along the normal platitudes of strength and accomplishment. It is only when we have exhausted our tales of trophy winning, when we let down our guards and speak to the truths about our travels, that we find that where we really connect as humans is in the places we have found we walk with a limp.

People are too obsessed with seeking experience and feel that if they are not living on the razor’s edge, they are not alive,” Edward had once told me. “It’s because they can’t deal with normal life. They need to climb Mount Everest instead.

I'd just started to realise how important it was to intersperse my 80 Dates with some normal socialising, preferably with female friends. Dating was really demanding: there was all the stress of preparation and anticipation. Then there was the date intself: fraught with revealing body-language and full of silent 'I can't believe he just said that' moments. ...I needed relaxed, 'no agenda' fun with girlfriends to help offset the pressure of dating and stop me obsessing about 'I can't believe I just said that' moments of my own.

I wondered ...if meeting people with creativity and passion when you were at an impressionable enough age actually kind of ruined you for life among normal people. For a long time, I'd searched the world, thinking I could start up new friendships like the ones I'd had before. But I never met people like that again. I know people will think that's what everyone believes about their college friends, but it's true. Maybe we're like flowers that open up at that brief moment in our lives, and after that, we close up again, one by one.

I had known him for fewer than four years, but friendship with Roger did not seem to follow the normal laws of time. 'I want all my friends to come up like weeds,' he had once written in a notebook, 'and I want to be a weed myself, spontaneous and unstoppable. I don't want the kind of friends one has to cultivate.' That caught it exactly. Spontaneous and unstoppable. Roger had not just loved the wild, he had been the wild. Not in the austere and chastening sense I had once understood the wild to be, but natural, vigorous, like a tree or a river.

Pulling to a stop in front of Aly’s house, I take a deep breath. With a flick of my wrist, I cut the engine and listen to the silence. I’ve sat in this exact spot more times than I can count. In many ways, Aly’s house is like my sanctuary. A place I go when my own home feels like a graveyard. I glance up at the bedroom window of the girl who knows me better than anyone, the only person I let see me cry after Dad died. I won’t let this experiment take that or her away from me. Tonight, I’m going to prove that Aly and I can go back to our normal, easy friendship. Throwing open my door, I trudge up her sidewalk, plant my feet outside her front door, and ring the bell. “Coming!” I step back and see Aly stick her head out of her second-story window. “No problem,” I call back up. “Take your time.” More time to get my head on straight. Aly disappears behind a film of yellow curtain, and I turn to look out at the quiet neighborhood. Up and down the street, the lights blink on, filling the air with a low hum that matches the thrumming of my nerves. Across the street, old Mr. Lawson sits at his usual perch under a gigantic American flag, drinking beer and mumbling to himself. Two little girls ride their bikes around the cul-de-sac, smiling and waving. Just a normal, run-of-the-mill Friday night. Except not. I thrust my hands into my pockets, jiggling the loose change from my Taco Bell run earlier tonight, and grab my pack of Trident. I toss a stick into my mouth and chew furiously. Supposedly, the smell of peppermint can calm your nerves. I grab a second stick and shove it in, too. With the clacking sound of Aly’s shoes approaching the door behind me, I remind myself again about tonight’s mission. All I need is focus. I take another deep breath for good measure and rock back on my heels, ready to greet my best friend. She opens the door, wearing a black dress molded to her skin, and I let the air out in one big huff.

When introducing someone to another person, use words like acquaintance, wife/husband, fiance/fiancee, half/step-sibling, best friend, schoolmate, flatmate, classmate, In-law, cousin, nephew, neighbor, colleague and client to normalize the situation. Everyone is not your friend.

For one, I think our friendship blurred a lot of heteronormative lines, and from stories I've heard from other women, this happens a lot. It doesn't even necessarily mean either one of you is queer, but when you're a teenager, there is an overall pressure to be "normal," and spending that much time with someone of the same sex can quickly call "normal" into question. This type of intimacy and closeness is not often socially sanctioned, as we're told it's reserved for your romantic partner, who—in your teen years especially—is "supposed" to be someone of the opposite sex.

Being alone with her is like opening a door away from normal life and then closing it behind him. He's not frightened of her, actually he is a pretty relaxed person, but he fears being around her, because of the confusing way he finds himself behaving, the things he says that he would never ordinarily say

What is the secret mesmerism which friendship possesses, and under the operation of which a person ordinarily sluggish, or cold, or timid, becomes wise, active, and resolute, in another’s behalf? As Alexis, after a few passes from Dr. Elliotson, despises pain, reads with the back of his head, sees miles off, looks into next week, and performs other wonders, of which, in his own private normal condition, he is quite incapable; so you see, in the affairs of the world and under the magnetism of friendships, the modest man becomes bold, the shy confident, the lazy active, or the impetuous prudent and peaceful. What

... Nor was it the normal, portentous intimacy of twenty-year-olds: [...] although we were at the age when one always has the need, instinct, and immodesty of inflicting on one another everything that swarms in one's head and elsewhere (and this is an age that can last long, but ends with the first compromise)...

If the nature-over-nurture idea that your personality is not your own hard-earned creation but a product of your genes makes you feel uneasy, how about the concept of a personality composed by the bacteria living in your gut? Mice without gut microbes are antisocial, preferring to spend time alone rather than with other mice. Whereas a mouse with a normal microbiota will choose to meet and greet any new mice added to its cage, germ-free mice stick with mice they already know. Simply having gut microbes seems to make them more friendly. Beyond friendship, it’s possible that your microbiota may even affect who you are attracted to.

True friendship is being able to look your best friends in the eye and make fun of their deepest insecurities, call back the biggest mistakes of their lives, and say things that would normally get you punched in the head without fear of consequence. That is trust. You can say these things to me because I trust that you don't mean a word of them. If you did, it would utterly destroy me. But you don't. That's why it's fun. It's a safe version of the thing that would decimate me. Friends that don't take banter well do not trust you. They think you mean the horrible things you say and that means that they think, underneath it all, you are horrible. Or that they are.

It had just been a friendship, normal as anything. But then his mum's "little talk" had happened, and what came next was simple, really, and sudden. No one knew. Then Lily's mum knew, of course. Then Lily knew. And then everyone knew. Everyone. Which changed the whole world in a single day. And he was never going to forgive her for that.

Girls will move across the country with a boyfriend they've known less than a year, and people think that's normal because it's romantic love. But living with your best friend? Or for Dee, staying close to her parents and brothers? I don't think that's weird or codependent. I think it's basic: if you find people you love, you want to be near them.

We are also taught to guard our body, speech, and mind against the influence of unwholesome companions. We do not judge people who are unruly or negative, but we are advised to protect the mind from swinging, which naturally happens when we continuously associate with such companions. On the flip side, the tradition offers us a beautiful metaphor about associating with virtuous people. It is said that if you place a normal piece of wood in a sandalwood forest, in time that normal piece of wood will begin to take on the sweet smell of sandalwood. In the same way, even if we are a normal person, if we associate with noble companions, we will naturally begin to give rise to the qualities of virtue and wisdom.

Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest. Above all, Eros (while it lasts) is necessarily between two only. But two, far from being the necessary number for Friendship, is not even the best.

After Dena hung up she didn’t feel any better. Sookie was wrong. Dena could barely remember any of the girls she went to school with, or at times even the names of the schools. Dena had always been a loner. She did not feel connected to anything. Or anybody. She felt as if everybody else had come into the world with a set of instructions about how to live and someone had forgotten to give them to her. She had no clue what she was supposed to feel, so she had spent her life faking at being a human being, with no idea how other people felt. What was it like to really love someone? To really fit in or belong somewhere? She was quick, and a good mimic, so she learned at an early age to give the impression of a normal, happy girl, but inside she had always been lonely. As a child she had spent hours looking in windows at families, from trains, buses, seeing the people inside that looked so happy and content, longing to get inside but not knowing how to do it. She always thought things might change if she could just find the right apartment, the right house, but she never could. No matter where she lived it never felt like home. In fact, she didn’t even know what “home” felt like. Did everybody feel alone out there in the world or were they all acting? Was she the only one? She had been flying blind all her life and now suddenly she had started to hit the wall. She sat drinking red wine, and thinking and wondering what was the matter with her. What had gone wrong?

He always comes to her parties, though he says he doesn’t really understand her friendship group. Her female friends like him a lot, and for some reason feel very comfortable sitting on his lap during conversations and tousling his hair fondly. The men have not warmed to him in the same way. He is tolerated through his association with Marianne, but he’s not considered in his own right particularly interesting.

In general, we store away our experiences and make use of timeworn phrases—nice, ready-made, reassuring stylizations that give us a sense of colloquial normality. But in this way, either knowingly or unknowingly, we reject everything that, to be said fully, would require effort and a torturous search for words. Honest writing forces itself to find words for those parts of our experience that are hidden and silent. On one hand, a good story, or, rather, the kind of story I like best, narrates an experience—for example, friendship—following specific conventions that render it recognizable and riveting; on the other hand, it sporadically reveals the magma running beneath the pillars of convention. The fate of a story that tends toward truth by pushing stylizations to their limit depends on the extent to which the reader really wants to face up to herself.

normal feelings for many people, but if I had my old life back right now and the ability to walk, there are so many things that I would do. . . . I’d go for runs, rock climb, travel more, hike, and see some of the big mountains. I’d do all these things and make sure that I didn’t let a week go by where I didn’t do something new or awesome with my legs, something that required physical ability. Our Bucket Day grew to become really

People who think that queer life consists of sex without intimacy are usually seeing only a tiny part of the picture, and seeing it through homophobic stereotype. The most fleeting sexual encounter is, in its way intimate. And in the way many gay men and lesbians live, quite casual sexual relations can develop into powerful and enduring friendships. Friendships, in turn, can cross into sexual relations and back. Because gay social life is not as ritualized and institutionalized as straight life, each relation is an adventure in nearly un-charted territory—whether it is between two gay men, or two lesbians, or a gay man and a lesbian, or among three or more queers, or between gay men and the straight women whose commitment to queer culture brings them the punishment of the "fag hag" label. There are almost as many kinds of relationship as there are people in combination. Where there are -patterns, we learn them from other queers, not from our-parents or schools or the state. Between tricks and lovers and exes and friends and fuckbuddies and bar friends and bar friends' tricks and tricks' bar friends and gal pals and companions "in the life," queers have an astonishing range of intimacies. Most have no labels. Most receive no public recognition. Many of these relations are difficult because the rules have to be invented as we go along. Often desire and unease add to their intensity, and their unpredictability. They can be complex and bewildering, in a way that arouses fear among many gay people, and tremendous resistance and resentment from many straight people. Who among us would give them up? Try standing at a party of queer friends and charting all the histories, sexual and nonsexual, among the people in the room. (In some circles this is a common party sport already.) You will realize that only a fine and rapidly shifting line separates sexual culture from many other relations of durability and care. The impoverished vocabulary of straight culture tells us that people should be either husbands and wives or (nonsexual) friends. Marriage marks that line. It is not the way many queers live. If there is such a thing as a gay way of life, it consists in these relations, a welter of intimacies outside the framework of professions and institutions and ordinary social obligations. Straight culture has much to learn from it, and in many ways has already begun to learn from it. Queers should be insisting on teaching these lessons. Instead, the marriage issue, as currently framed, seems to be a way of denying recognition to these relations, of streamlining queer relations into the much less troubling division of couples from friends.

You grew up in a world of magical power,” Jason said, turning his gaze from Neil to address the whole team. “Direct, objective, honest power. I come from a political world, where power is nebulous and the wars are as much about ideology as territory. We grow up watching leaders who need to sway the populace in order to hold power, even as the populace can share information in ways that would be as amazing to you as magic was to me.” Jason nodded at Humphrey. “Humphrey’s mother encouraged our friendship because she recognised that I had a more political mind than is normally to be found in Greenstone. I’m sure it’s different in more cosmopolitan cities, but the politics here are amateurish and crude. Dangerous, yes, because power always is, but not especially complicated. She wanted Humphrey to get to know me so that he would see the next guy like me coming.” Jason conjured his dagger into his hand. “This,” he said, “Is the weakest weapon there is. A blade can cut down a person but words can bring down a kingdom. Adultery can end a dynasty, greed can start a war and compassion can end one. People will die for strangers out of faith and kill their neighbours out of fear.” He casually tossed aside the dagger and it vanished. “Everything is a weapon,” he concluded. “The trick is learning to wield them without doing yourself an injury.

Maria would say that they were not her friends, but Maria has never understood friendship, conversation, the normal amenities of social exchange. Maria has difficulty talking to people with whom she is not sleeping. "I go to the Wilshire or the Beverly Hills," I say. "I read the trades, I like to be alone at breakfast." "In fact he doesn't always get breakfast out," Maria says, very low, to no one in particular. "In fact the last time he got breakfast out was on April 17.

We stood like that for a moment, and it didn’t upset me; in fact, I felt comforted by the contact. This didn’t feel anything like the last time someone had embraced me this way. This was friendship. And Jacob was very warm. It was strange for me, being this close—emotionally rather than physically, though the physical was strange for me, too—to another human being. It wasn’t my usual style. I didn’t normally relate to people so easily, on such a basic level. Not human beings.

She was the first close friend who I felt like I’d re­ally cho­sen. We weren’t in each other’s lives be­cause of any obli­ga­tion to the past or con­ve­nience of the present. We had no shared his­tory and we had no rea­son to spend all our time to­ gether. But we did. Our friend­ship in­ten­si­fied as all our friends had chil­dren – she, like me, was un­con­vinced about hav­ing kids. And she, like me, found her­self in a re­la­tion­ship in her early thir­ties where they weren’t specif­i­cally work­ing to­wards start­ing a fam­ily. By the time I was thirty-four, Sarah was my only good friend who hadn’t had a baby. Ev­ery time there was an­other preg­nancy an­nounce­ment from a friend, I’d just text the words ‘And an­other one!’ and she’d know what I meant. She be­came the per­son I spent most of my free time with other than Andy, be­cause she was the only friend who had any free time. She could meet me for a drink with­out plan­ning it a month in ad­vance. Our friend­ship made me feel lib­er­ated as well as safe. I looked at her life choices with no sym­pa­thy or con­cern for her. If I could ad­mire her de­ci­sion to re­main child-free, I felt en­cour­aged to ad­mire my own. She made me feel nor­mal. As long as I had our friend­ship, I wasn’t alone and I had rea­son to be­lieve I was on the right track. We ar­ranged to meet for din­ner in Soho af­ter work on a Fri­day. The waiter took our drinks or­der and I asked for our usual – two Dirty Vodka Mar­ti­nis. ‘Er, not for me,’ she said. ‘A sparkling wa­ter, thank you.’ I was ready to make a joke about her un­char­ac­ter­is­tic ab­sti­nence, which she sensed, so as soon as the waiter left she said: ‘I’m preg­nant.’ I didn’t know what to say. I can’t imag­ine the ex­pres­sion on my face was par­tic­u­larly en­thu­si­as­tic, but I couldn’t help it – I was shocked and felt an un­war­ranted but in­tense sense of be­trayal. In a de­layed re­ac­tion, I stood up and went to her side of the ta­ble to hug her, un­able to find words of con­grat­u­la­tions. I asked what had made her change her mind and she spoke in va­garies about it ‘just be­ing the right time’ and wouldn’t elab­o­rate any fur­ther and give me an an­swer. And I needed an an­swer. I needed an an­swer more than any­thing that night. I needed to know whether she’d had a re­al­iza­tion that I hadn’t and, if so, I wanted to know how to get it. When I woke up the next day, I re­al­ized the feel­ing I was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing was not anger or jeal­ousy or bit­ter­ness – it was grief. I had no one left. They’d all gone. Of course, they hadn’t re­ally gone, they were still my friends and I still loved them. But huge parts of them had dis­ap­peared and there was noth­ing they could do to change that. Un­less I joined them in their spa­ces, on their sched­ules, with their fam­i­lies, I would barely see them. And I started dream­ing of an­other life, one com­pletely re­moved from all of it. No more chil­dren’s birth­day par­ties, no more chris­ten­ings, no more bar­be­cues in the sub­urbs. A life I hadn’t ever se­ri­ously con­tem­plated be­fore. I started dream­ing of what it would be like to start all over again. Be­cause as long as I was here in the only Lon­don I knew – mid­dle-class Lon­don, cor­po­rate Lon­don, mid-thir­ties Lon­don, mar­ried Lon­don – I was in their world. And I knew there was a whole other world out there.

Normal ' Expressing the seemingly nonexistent 'Normal' which (having Narcolepsy with Cataplexy) is very much a cloudy, gloomy, often rainy-day like; lifestyle. Day after day; being frequently so, so tired at whatever, random point/s in time. Near never sleeping well; at least beyond perhaps, a couple of hours. Awakening tired and as though weights are tied to the body, and you need to sleep, more. 6 - 8 hours of sleep, will feel like 3 hours. But, a headache will develop beyond 8 hours. -Sigh- With Cataplexy, fun (and much more) can become restricted and/or a possible danger. People do just want to have fun, as do I. Staying within boundaries and limits though, knowing that if you do not, there are and/or will be dangers; takes a dramatic, and invisible, heavy toll upon (any) one. So much of this is, beyond imagine-able; until you've lived it. Having so many difficulties with being able to hold and/or fit any job/s, schedule/s, friendship/s, relationship/s, etc... (¿) 'Normal' somehow (?), it all becomes.

Useful friendships are the bread and butter of life. This is one reason why marriages that are not useful don’t last. Romantic feelings come and go. In useful marriages the parties depend on each other for the basics—the dull-normal stuff of everyday existence. This is true when it comes to children too. Children serve no useful purpose any more. We look at a child and say, “So long as he’s happy, that’s all that matters”—not accounting for usefulness in our account of happiness. Perhaps this is one reason that our children disappoint us—we expect them to pursue their passions, to develop their gifts, yada, yada, yada, but we don’t give them anything worth caring about. And so they shrug and they say, “Who cares?” And why should they care? And why should we be disappointed when they don’t amount to anything? We preached to them the gospel of happiness, implying, without meaning to, that they have nothing worthwhile to contribute to either a household, or the world at large. So they end up worthless and miserable.

So if you understand me better, what then?" "You don't get it, do you?" I said, "It's not a question of what then". Some people get a kick out of reading railway timetables and that's all they do all day. Some people make huge model boats out of matchsticks. So what's wrong if there happened to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?" "kind of like a hobby?" she said, amused. "Yeah, I guess you could call it a hobby. Most normal people would call it friendship or love or something, but if you want to call it a hobby, that's OK, too.

It was true, Peggy and Jamie were not very good people; bad people even, who took joy in putting others down. Marianne feels aggrieved that she fell for it, aggrieved that she thought she had anything in common with them, that she'd participated in the commodity market they passed off as friendship. In school she had believed herself to be above such frank exchanges of social capital, but her college life indicated that if anyone in school had actually been willing to speak to her, she would have behaved just as badly as anyone else. There is nothing superior about her at all.

There seems to be a mountain of obstacles preventing people from being where their hearts want to be. It is so painful to watch and experience. The astonishing thing is that the battle for survival has become so "normal" that few people really believe that it can be different...Oh how important is discipline, community, prayer, silence, caring presence, simple listening, adoration, and deep, lating faithful friendship. We all want it so much, and still the powers suggesting that all of that is fantasy are enormous. But we have to replace the battle for power with the battle to create space for the spirit.

If I were in the habit of befriending fictional people, I'd be happy to make his acquaintance, but the trouble with fictional friendships is that you tend to find yourself sitting in a café talking excitedly to an empty chair. After several hours, the staff will probably force you to leave, even if there are still uneaten madeleines sitting on your plate, all ready to be covered with strawberry jam. Normally, if you were being treated unfairly, you could count on a friend to help you, but a fictional friend--even one with fictional magic powers--will probably just stand there with a confused and fictional look on his or her face.

I reach out and squeeze her hand, and remember everything we’ve lived through together. The normal things we endured as we grew from girls to women. The days in school where boys would line us up in order of our fuckability. The parties where it was normal to lie on top of a semi-conscious girl, do things to her, then call her a slut afterwards. A Christmas number-one song about a pregnant woman being stuffed into the boot of a car and driven off a bridge. Laughing when your male friends made rape jokes. Opening a newspaper and seeing the breasts of a girl who had only just turned legal, dressed in school uniform to make her look underage. Of the childhood films we grew up on, and loved, and knew all the words to, where, at the end, a girl would always get chosen for looking the prettiest compared to all the others. Reading magazines that told you to mirror men’s body language, and hum on their dick when you went down on them, that turned into books about how to get them to commit by not being yourself. Of size zero, and Atkins, and Five-Two, and cabbage soup, and juice cleanses and eat clean. Of pole-dancing lessons as a great way to get fit, and actually, if you want to be really cool, come to the actual strip club too. Of being sexually assaulted when you kissed someone on a dance floor and not thinking about it properly until you are twenty-seven and read a book about how maybe it was wrong. Of being jealous of your friend who got assaulted on the dance floor because why didn’t he pick you to assault? Boys not wanting to be with you unless you fuck them quickly. Boys not wanting to be with you because you fucked them too quickly. Being terrified to walk anywhere in the dark in case the worst thing happens to you, and so your male friend walks you home to keep you safe, and then comes into your bedroom and does the worst thing to you, and now, when you look him up online, he’s engaged to a woman who wears a feminist T-shirt and isn’t going to change her name when they get married. Of learning to have no pubic hair, and how liberating it is to pay thirty-five pounds a month to rip this from your body and lurch up in agony. Rings around famous women’s bodies saying ‘look at this cellulite’, oh, by the way, here is a twenty-quid cream so you don’t get

My superpower is that I think everyone is my friend, and that’s the way I treated them. I brought them right down to my level and acted like we already had a bond, and we established one. It works every time, even with people who might not normally accept someone like me. I think being gay is a fun fact about me. It’s like any other bit of biographical trivia: I’m from Pennsylvania, I have five siblings, I get Brazilian blowouts, and I’m gay. They’re all fun facts. (The fun fact of being gay might influence the fun fact of getting the blowouts, but who’s to say?) When I treat being gay like that, it doesn’t keep me from talking to someone at a party, having a good time with them, or even establishing a friendship. And it doesn’t keep them from associating with me. Fun facts have a way of doing that.

A belief in invisible cats cannot perhaps be logically disproved, but it tells us a good deal about those who hold it. Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend. The rest of us know that though we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair. Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest. Above all, Eros (while it lasts) is necessarily between two only. But two, far from being the necessary number for Friendship, is not even the best. And the reason for this is important.

the fledgling gay adult, is so assailed by social disdain that she can rarely afford the vulnerability that complete honesty requires. It’s not as if, in most cases, she can take time out from her life to figure out who she is; she has to figure it out while she lives, and while her parents and friends, colleagues and church, siblings and lovers, impose a willful definition of normality upon her. And when she does engage in the search—in the quiet moments stolen from social interaction—she has to do so against the tide of shame that pushes her as powerfully inward as pride pushes her powerfully outward. And these impulses can make for a crippling combination. Shame forces you prematurely to run away from yourself; pride forces you prematurely to expose yourself. Most gay lives, I’m afraid, are full of an embarrassing abundance of both.

Dear Sawyer and Quin, If you ever read this and I'm gone I want you to know something that has been weighing on me. I watch you two play and it can be so sad sometimes. You two have been best friends since Sawyer's birth. Always inseparable. It's been adorable , but comes with its challenges. I'm worried when I watch you boys. Quinton, you are always driven by your ego. You're strong and talented, but much too determined to beat down everyone in your efforts to be the best. You push yourself to win a competition, then shove it in someone's face. I’ve rarely seen you compliment others, but you always give yourself a pat on the back. You don't play anything for the love of it, you play to win and normally do. I've seen you tear down your brother so many times just to feel good about yourself. You don't have to do that, dear. You don't have to spend your life trying to prove that you're amazing. One day you'll fail and be alone because you've climbed to the top of a pyramid with only enough room for yourself. Don't let it get to that point and if you do, learn humility from your brother. He could do without so much of it. Sawyer, just because you're most often the underdog and the peaceful introspective kid, don't think I'm letting you off the hook. Your humility has become your worst enemy. It's so intense that I wonder if it will be your vice one day, instead of your greatest virtue. It's one thing to believe you are below all men, even when you're not, but it's another thing to be crippled by fear and to no longer try. Sometimes , dear, I think you fear being good at something because you've tasted the bitterness of being the one who comes in last and you don't want to make others feel that way. That's sweet of you and I smile inside when I see you pretending to lose when you race your younger cousins , but if you always let people beat you they may never learn to work hard for something they want. It's okay to win, just win for the right reasons and always encourage those who lose. Oh, and Sawyer, I hope one day you read this. One day when it matters. If so, remember that the bottom of a mountain can be just as lonely as the top. I hope the two of you can learn to climb together one day. As I'm writing this you are trying to climb the big pine tree out back. Quin is at the top, rejoicing in his victory and taunting Sawyer. And Sawyer is at the bottom, afraid to get hurt and afraid to be sad about it. I'm going to go talk to you two separately now. I hope my words mean something. Love you boys, Mom

we should not be content with “a level of fruitfulness” when, in fact, we can experience the supernatural life as our normal Christian life, not the occasional exception. 3.As exciting as miracles are, they fail to satisfy our hungry hearts unless we embrace them for what they are—invitations to see the personality and nature of Jesus in action. a)Miracles are invitational in nature. They invite us to visibly see who God is and what He is like. The miracle points to a greater reality—the Person of Jesus! b)Miracles bring God near. They remind us that God is not distant and detached, but He is present, near, and ever ready to invade impossible situations in our lives. c)Miracles reveal the compassionate heart of God. Jesus revealed the Father’s nature, time after time, as He was moved by compassion and healed. 4.The overflow of our friendship with Jesus is a life marked by signs, wonders, and miracles.

The Monday before we left on our trip, I wrote a note to Bonnie Clarke, Patrick’s teacher, telling her Patrick would be missing school on Friday, November 8. I said only that we would be visiting friends in Washington. While Patrick waited in the car-pool line, Mrs. Clarke had asked him whom he was going to see, expecting him to name cousins or other relatives. He had replied, “My mom and I are going to visit Diana.” When I arrived, Mrs. Clarke said, “This is so cute. You won’t believe what Patrick just told me. He said you two were going to see Diana. It couldn’t possibly be true!” Patrick and I both thought Mrs. Clarke was an exceptional teacher, but I was a little miffed that she would think he was fibbing. While I normally never talked about Diana, I couldn’t let it pass. I explained, “Patrick never lies. We are, in fact, going to visit Diana. She was his nanny while we lived in London.” Mrs. Clarke apologized quickly and exclaimed, “Oh! So you’re that American family. I had no idea.

There are a few consolations. First and foremost, a ravaged incensed defiance, a fuck you to the universe and all those who peddle sentimental nonsense that doesn’t fit our reality. A certain kind of art works too, the sort created by unflinching genius realists who went through as much loneliness as we have, who understood our sadness ahead of time, grief-stricken masters like Baudelaire and Leopardi, Pessoa and Pascal, who can express our petty domestic sorrow in mighty transcendental terms and induct us to the most dignified kind of regret. They were there too and, in the most abstract accomplished ways, tell us ‘I know’. And we have friendship, not the kind that obliterates the loneliness, but that allows us to commune around it. We can’t help each other directly, we’re more like a group of the dying in a hospice talking circle who won’t be able to eradicate the end but know they are at least not alone with it. We get better too at understanding statistics: that this is normal for a benighted group of us. We belong to an important minority party in the parliament of human suffering.

So if you understand me better, what then?” “You don’t get it, do you?” I said. “It’s not a question of ‘what then.’ Some people get a kick out of reading railroad timetables and that’s all they do all day. Some people make huge model boats out of matchsticks. So what’s wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?” “Kind of like a hobby?” she said, amused. “Sure, I guess you could call it a hobby. Most normal people would call it friendship or love or something, but if you want to call it a hobby, that’s O.K., too.” “Tell me,” said Naoko, “you liked Kizuki, too, didn’t you?” “Of course,” I said. “How about Reiko?” “I like her a lot,” I said. “She’s really nice.” “How come you always like people like that—people like us, I mean? We’re all kinda weird and twisted and drowning—me and Kizuki and Reiko. Why can’t you like more normal people?” “Because I don’t see you like that,” I said after giving it some thought. “I don’t see you or Kizuki or Reiko as ‘twisted’ in any way. The guys I think of as twisted are out there running around.” “But we are twisted,” said Naoko. “I can see that.

I pulled the sheet off their faces. Their faces were black with coal dust and didn't look like anything was wrong with them except they were dirty. The both of them had smiles on their faces. I thought maybe one of them had told a joke just before they died and, pain and all, they both laughed and ended up with a smile. Probably not true but but it made me feel good to think about it like that, and when the Sister came in I asked her if I could clean their faces and she said, "no, certainly not!" but I said, "ah, c'mon, it's me brother n' father, I want to," and she looked at me and looked at me, and at last she said, "of course, of course, I'll get some soap and water." When the nun came back she helped me. Not doing it, but more like showing me how, and taking to me, saying things like "this is a very handsome man" and "you must have been proud of your brother" when I told her how Charlie Dave would fight for me, and "you're lucky you have another brother"; of course I was, but he was younger and might change, but she talked to me and made it all seem normal, the two of us standing over a dead face and cleaning the grit away. The only other thing I remember a nun ever saying to me was, "Mairead, you get to your seat, this minute!

with “This is a class assignment,” and (2) they had to engage the interactions with a straight face. They couldn’t give away the punchline. The exchanges went something like this: Students (walking in a group toward a stranger in a mall): “Excuse me, sir!” Stranger (looking around and awkwardly shifting bags of clothes): “Uhh, yeah? Me?” Students: “Yes! You. I was walking by, saw you, and wondered: Will you be my friend? Can I see pictures of your family? What are your political preferences? Can I see the pictures of your tattoos? What are your religious preferences? Why? Are you pro-choice? How come? Who are your favorite musicians? We’re going to read you a list of probing, introspective quotes, and you simply give us a thumbs up or a thumbs down if you like them or don’t like them. If you feel angry about a quote, tell us why.” And so on. My students had to video each interaction. And yes, it was as awkward and cringey as you can imagine. According to the papers they had to write after the fact, the assignment stirred up quite a bit of reflection. In a few short years, my students had come to believe they had “friends” because they knew some information about people. They thought they were connecting with those people. The exercise helped them see that our social media exchanges are anything but normal. The thumbs ups and thumbs downs are anything but connecting. The reality is that most of us don’t have any friends. Until recently, friendship was about enduring the awkwardness and ugliness of human

A Life like Mine: Round and round, round and round, this is how life is feeling at the very moment. Why on earth, would anyone want to live in a life that is never ending chaos? Not me, she thought to herself. Gloria Jacobson, 19 years old, was on her way to a life of success when she was finally looking into a life of school, love, and a family that could look up to her for being the next honor roll student. Well, ok, technically speaking, she wasn’t an “Honor roll” Student, and she wasn’t in love yet. But she did have one thing, and that was a family that loved her. Skeptical or not, as she was, she was headed to sleep after a long day’s journey through thoughts and school. She went to a College Prep school, so it wasn’t exactly the easiest. In fact, sometimes school to her could become one of the toughest things. She rolled up her jean legs and through on her purple hooded jacket then slipped out the door. “Mom will hopefully allow her to go to the school ball tomorrow night”; she thought as she crossed her fingers. It was going to be a school formal, and all the way through elementary and middle school, she wasn’t ever allowed to go. Why on earth wouldn’t her parents ever let her just be a normal teenage girl. After all she only turns 20, towards the end of graduation. Her entire life was devoted to school work, college apps, and volunteer work at different places after school, and church activities. She never seemed to have any time for boys or even friendships at this time. She practically had to beg for the ones that she already had. ~part of my story. :)

Sometimes, though, friendship is like love. You can’t plan for it. It finds you in unlikely places. Or in the most obvious place imaginable. One evening, I get back from a run and am doubled over, recovering and panting in front of my building. The entrance opens and a woman pops out, taking out her rubbish. ‘I’m not loitering,’ I tell her when she gives me a funny look. ‘Oh, I didn’t think you were loitering,’ she says. ‘I thought you lived here.’ ‘Oh. I do. I do live here. On the third floor.’ We introduce ourselves. Her name is Hannah and she’s from the Netherlands. As she turns to go back inside, I say, ‘Hey! Do you want to swap numbers? Just in case … there’s a fire or something?’ I can tell my year is already changing me. Talking to strangers has made me less shy and even though I still had to make it a bit weird with the whole fire thing. A few weeks later, Hannah and her husband have Sam and me over for dinner in their flat because we stored a package for them when they were on holiday. Hannah has hundreds of books and I leave her flat with an armful to borrow. A few months later Hannah texts out of the blue, saying, ‘Want to grab a coffee with me right now?’ And I do. The elusive perfect friend-date: spontaneous, with good coffee, great conversation and no commute. We’d also had the spark, both having read several of the same books, both of us the same age, both of us struggling with similar things. She’d been living downstairs the entire time. But if I hadn’t gone through so many friend-dates and false starts, I know I would have asked for her number when we met. In fact, given how I normally treated my neighbours in London and how insular I was before all this began, I probably would have just pretended to be loitering.

Dear Jon, A real Dear Jon let­ter, how per­fect is that?! Who knew you’d get dumped twice in the same amount of months. See, I’m one para­graph in and I’ve al­ready fucked this. I’m writ­ing this be­cause I can’t say any of this to you face-to-face. I’ve spent the last few months ques­tion­ing a lot of my friend­ships and won­der­ing what their pur­pose is, if not to work through big emo­tional things to­gether. But I now re­al­ize: I don’t want that. And I know you’ve all been there for me in other ways. Maybe not in the lit­eral sense, but I know you all would have done any­thing to fix me other than lis­ten­ing to me talk and al­low­ing me to be sad with­out so­lu­tions. And now I am writ­ing this let­ter rather than pick­ing up the phone and talk­ing to you be­cause, de­spite every thing I know, I just don’t want to, and I don’t think you want me to ei­ther. I lost my mind when Jen broke up with me. I’m pretty sure it’s been the sub­ject of a few of your What­sApp con­ver­sa­tions and more power to you, be­cause I would need to vent about me if I’d been friends with me for the last six months. I don’t want it to have been in vain, and I wanted to tell you what I’ve learnt. If you do a high-fat, high-pro­tein, low-carb diet and join a gym, it will be a good dis­trac­tion for a while and you will lose fat and gain mus­cle, but you will run out of steam and eat nor­mally again and put all the weight back on. So maybe don’t bother. Drunk­en­ness is an­other idea. I was in black­out for most of the first two months and I think that’s fine, it got me through the evenings (and the oc­ca­sional af­ter­noon). You’ll have to do a lot of it on your own, though, be­cause no one is free to meet up any more. I think that’s fine for a bit. It was for me un­til some­one walked past me drink­ing from a whisky minia­ture while I waited for a night bus, put five quid in my hand and told me to keep warm. You’re the only per­son I’ve ever told this story. None of your mates will be ex­cited that you’re sin­gle again. I’m prob­a­bly your only sin­gle mate and even I’m not that ex­cited. Gen­er­ally the ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing sin­gle at thirty-five will feel dif­fer­ent to any other time you’ve been sin­gle and that’s no bad thing. When your ex moves on, you might be­come ob­sessed with the bloke in a way that is al­most sex­ual. Don’t worry, you don’t want to fuck him, even though it will feel a bit like you do some­times. If you open up to me or one of the other boys, it will feel good in the mo­ment and then you’ll get an emo­tional hang­over the next day. You’ll wish you could take it all back. You may even feel like we’ve en­joyed see­ing you so low. Or that we feel smug be­cause we’re win­ning at some­thing and you’re los­ing. Re­member that none of us feel that. You may be­come ob­sessed with work­ing out why ex­actly she broke up with you and you are likely to go fully, fully nuts in your bid to find a sat­is­fy­ing an­swer. I can save you a lot of time by let­ting you know that you may well never work it out. And even if you did work it out, what’s the pur­pose of it? Soon enough, some girl is go­ing to be crazy about you for some un­de­fin­able rea­son and you’re not go­ing to be in­ter­ested in her for some un­de­fin­able rea­son. It’s all so ran­dom and un­fair – the peo­ple we want to be with don’t want to be with us and the peo­ple who want to be with us are not the peo­ple we want to be with. Re­ally, the thing that’s go­ing to hurt a lot is the fact that some­one doesn’t want to be with you any more. Feel­ing the ab­sence of some­one’s com­pany and the ab­sence of their love are two dif­fer­ent things. I wish I’d known that ear­lier. I wish I’d known that it isn’t any­body’s job to stay in a re­la­tion­ship they don’t want to be in just so some­one else doesn’t feel bad about them­selves. Any­way. That’s all. You’re go­ing to be okay, mate. Andy

only the dead keep secrets." "it is not easy. Taking a life, even when we knew it was required." "most people want only to be cared for. If I had no softness, I'd get nowhere at all." "a flaw of humanity. The compulsion to be unique, which is at war with the desire to belong to a single identifiable sameness." "someone always gains, just like someone always loses." "most women are less in love with the partners they choose than they are simply desperate for their approval, starving for their devotion. They want most often to be touched as no one else can touch them, and most of them inaccurately assume this requires romance. But the moment we realize we can feel fulfilled without carrying the burdens of belonging to another, that we can experience rapture without being someone's other half, and therefore beholden to their weaknesses, to their faults and failures and their many insufferable fractures, then we're free, aren't we? " " enough, for once, to feel, and nothing else. " " there was no stopping what one person could believe. " " I noticed that if I did certain things, said things in certain way, or held her eye contact while I did them, I could make her... Soften toward me. " " I think I've already decided what I'm going to do, and I just hope it's the right thing. But it isn't, or maybe it is. But I suppose it doesn't matter, because I've already started, and looking back won't help. " " luck is a matter of probabilities. " "you want to believe that your hesitation makes you good, make you feel better? It doesn't. Every single one of us is missing something. We are all too powerful, too extraordinary, and don't you see it's because we're riddled with vacancies? We are empty and trying to fill, lighting ourselves on fire just to prove that we are normal, that we are ordinary. That we, like anything, can burn. " " ask yourself where power comes from, if you can't see the source, don't trust it. " " an assassin acting on his own internal compass. Whether he lived or died as a result of his own choice? Unimportant. He didn't raise an army didn't fight for good, didn't interfere much with the queen's other evils. It was whether or not he could live with his own decision because life was the only thing that truly matters. " " the truest truth : mortal lifetimes were short, inconsequential. Convictions were death sentences. Money couldn't buy happiness, but nothing could buy happiness, so at least money could buy everything else. In term of finding satisfaction, all a person was capable of controlling was himself. " " humans were mostly sensible animals. They knew the dangers of erratic behavior. It was a chronic condition, survival. My intention is as same as others. Stand taller, think smarter, be better. " " she couldn't remember what version of her had put herself into that relationship, into that life, or somehow into this shape, which still looked and felt as it always had but wasn't anymore. " " conservative of energy meant that there must be dozens of people in the world who didn't exist because of she did. " " what replace feelings when there were none to be had? " " the absence of something was never as effective as the present of something. " "To be suspended in nothing, he said, was to lack all motivation, all desire. It was not numbness which was pleasurable in fits, but functional paralysis. Neither to want to live nor to die, but to never exist. Impossible to fight." "apology accepted. Forgiveness, however, declined." "there cannot be success without failure. No luck without unluck." "no life without death?" "Everything collapse, you will, too. You will, soon.

At a bar addiction is normalized, made to seem a regular part of living: the warm light and familiar faces, friendship or the illusion of it. Addicts are lonely creatures.

If there was any politician in America who reflected the Cold War and what it did to the country, it was Richard Nixon—the man and the era were made for each other. The anger and resentment that were a critical part of his temperament were not unlike the tensions running through the nation as its new anxieties grew. He himself seized on the anti-Communist issue earlier and more tenaciously than any other centrist politician in the country. In fact that was why he had been put on the ticket in the first place. His first congressional race in 1946, against a pleasant liberal incumbent named Jerry Voorhis, was marked by red-baiting so savage that it took Voorhis completely by surprise. Upon getting elected, Nixon wasted no time in asking for membership in the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was the committee member who first spotted the contradictions in Hiss’s seemingly impeccable case; in later years he was inclined to think of the case as one of his greatest victories, in which he had challenged and defeated a man who was not what he seemed, and represented the hated Eastern establishment. His career, though, was riddled with contradictions. Like many of his conservative colleagues, he had few reservations about implying that some fellow Americans, including perhaps the highest officials in the opposition party, were loyal to a hostile foreign power and willing to betray their fellow citizens. Yet by the end of his career, he became the man who opened the door to normalized relations with China (perhaps, thought some critics, he was the only politician in America who could do that without being attacked by Richard Nixon), and he was a pal of both the Soviet and Chinese Communist leadership. If he later surprised many long-standing critics with his trips to Moscow and Peking, he had shown his genuine diplomatic skills much earlier in the way he balanced the demands of the warring factions within his own party. He never asked to be well liked or popular; he asked only to be accepted. There were many Republicans who hated him, particularly in California. Earl Warren feuded with him for years. Even Bill Knowland, the state’s senior senator and an old-fashioned reactionary, despised him. At the 1952 convention, Knowland had remained loyal to Warren despite Nixon’s attempts to help Eisenhower in the California delegation. When Knowland was asked to give a nominating speech for Nixon, he was not pleased: “I have to nominate the dirty son of a bitch,” he told friends. Nixon bridged the gap because his politics were never about ideology: They were the politics of self. Never popular with either wing, he managed to negotiate a delicate position acceptable to both. He did not bring warmth or friendship to the task; when he made attempts at these, he was, more often than not, stilted and artificial. Instead, he offered a stark choice: If you don’t like me, find someone who is closer to your position and who is also likely to win. If he tilted to either side, it was because that side seemed a little stronger at the moment or seemed to present a more formidable candidate with whom he had to deal. A classic example of this came early in 1960, when he told Barry Goldwater, the conservative Republican leader, that he would advocate a right-to-work plank at the convention; a few weeks later in a secret meeting with Nelson Rockefeller, the liberal Republican leader—then a more formidable national figure than Goldwater—Nixon not only reversed himself but agreed to call for its repeal under the Taft-Hartley act. “The man,” Goldwater noted of Nixon in his personal journal at the time, “is a two-fisted four-square liar.

You’re not broken, Rae, dear, and therefore not in need of fixing. You are designed to be more. You weren’t meant to be what we call normal, not that normal really exists.” She goes on as if she’s still talking to me, but her gaze zeroes in on Cole. “The number one thing I would tell you is this. You can’t fix people. You can’t change people. So the trick, if there is one, is to differentiate. Your emotion. Their emotion. Your responsibility. Their responsibility. Oh, you can offer your friendship, your support, even your help. But what somebody does with that is entirely up to them.” “That’s it?” Cole asks. “All of that stuff you taught me, about shielding, about imagery, about toning down the energy . . .” “That was you. This is Rae.

You’re not broken, Rae, dear, and therefore not in need of fixing. You are designed to be more. You weren’t meant to be what we call normal, not that normal really exists.” She goes on as if she’s still talking to me, but her gaze zeroes in on Cole. “The number one thing I would tell you is this. You can’t fix people. You can’t change people. So the trick, if there is one, is to differentiate. Your emotion. Their emotion. Your responsibility. Their responsibility. Oh, you can offer your friendship, your support, even your help. But what somebody does with that is entirely up to them.” “That’s it?” Cole asks. “All of that stuff you taught me, about shielding, about imagery, about toning down the energy . . .” “That was you. This is Rae.” Again she smiles at me, but this time it’s tinged with sadness. “You are welcome anytime, to come sit in my garden. To talk, or not to talk. And I can tell you tricks and tools and teach you what I know. But if you can understand and grasp what I’ve just told you, that’s the balancing point. The first step.

I hope you do not think me too forward, but I noticed that you’ve danced with Don Villar twice in a row.” His normally ruddy face turned crimson. “People are already talking…and unless an engagement is to be announced—” “One will be.” She cut off his words and whispered, “Tonight.” She winked. “Please do not spoil the surprise.” His eyes widened and he tripped slightly on the next step. “Brilliant! That gives me great relief for your sake. And, I confess, a measure of dismay on my account.” His smile dimmed as his lips formed a rueful frown. “I had hoped to court you one day. I suppose I waited too long to work up the courage.” “Oh, Patrick.” She placed a hand on his sleeve. “I had no idea…” He shook his head. “Nor did I give you reason to. I have always been a bumbling fool at this sort of thing. Either way, I suppose it is for the best. I will always value our friendship, no matter what. And to the devil with what others say. I believe you would have made a damned fine physician. Mr. Wakley told me that you treated Villar’s arm, and I do not know a sawbones who could have performed such a miracle.” His

Children from troubled or dysfunctional families grow up not knowing what is “normal,” healthy or appropriate. Having no other reference point on which to test reality, they think their family and their life, with its inconsistency, its trauma and its pain, is “the way it is.” In fact, when we assume the role of our false self, which troubled families, friendships and work environments tend to promote, we become fixed in this role—we don’t realize there is any other way to be. In recovery, with appropriate supervision and feedback from skilled and safe others, we slowly learn what is healthy and what is appropriate. Other related issues include: being overly-responsible, neglecting our own needs, feelings, boundary issues and shame and low self-esteem.

How long would it last? Rachel had no way of knowing. Chronic fatigue syndrome was the Great Decider. It had decided her career, where she traveled on vacation, with whom she could be intimate. It had influenced her relationships, stolen away friendships and forced her to live in constant uncertainty, robbing her of any practical ability to plan for the future. It had deprived her of normal. The privilege of having a choice. Yet, despite all these things, Rachel Rubenstein-Goldblatt was a fighter.

— N-am mai avut prieteni până acum. Nu știu ce să fac, cum trebuie să mă port... — Ce e în neregulă cu felul în care te porți în mod normal? [...] Dacă felul tău de-a fi nu face rău la nimeni, nu văd de ce l-ai schimba. La ce bună o prietenie dacă trebuie să te ascunzi?

Many people have angles attached to their relationships. They will say or do one thing and you learn later they were actually angling for something else in return. We’ve all experienced this. A lot of Christians do the same thing with their faith without really noticing it. It’s not because they’re malicious or anything. They’ve just bought into the hype that faith is like an exclusive club you’re in. They take what used to be authentic friendships and use them like a networking cocktail mixer. They call what the rest of us call normal acts of kindness “ministry” or go on a wonderful adventure to see another country and call it a “mission trip.” It can come across as formulaic and manipulative to toss out some buzz words and slip past the bouncers into the club. But these folks run the risk of downgrading a genuine and sincere faith into an infomercial for God or their own status.