Thought Catalog Quotes

Holy Abercrombie catalog, Megan thought.

That night in my sister’s bed I stared at the ceiling and felt the true loss of our father. Not his money or his house, but the man I sat next to in the car. He had protected me from the world so completely that I had no idea what the world was capable of. I had never thought about him as a child. I had never asked him about the war. I had only seen him as my father, and as my father I had judged him. There was nothing to do about that now but add it to the catalog of my mistakes.

The way he talked about thoughts was the way i experienced them---not as a choice,but as a destiny. Not a catalog of my consciousness, but a refutation of it.

...What’s the one superpower of June Elbus?” I thought about myself from head to toe. It was like being forced to read the most boring part of the Sears catalog. Like leafing through the bathroom accessories pages. Boring brain. Boring face. No sex appeal. Clumsy hands. “Heart. Hard heart,” I said, not sure where it came from. “The hardest heart in the world.” “Hmmm,” Toby said, tapping a finger in the air. “That’s a useful one, you know. Very handy. The question is . . .” Toby paused like he was considering this all very seriously. “What’s the question?” “The question is, stone or ice? Crack or melt?

I think part of the reason we hold on to something so tight is because we fear something so great won’t happen twice. —Anonymous

Anything that feels forced or harder than it should be or causes you pain and distress is not meant for you.

The way he talked about thoughts was the way I experienced them—not as a choice but as a destiny. Not a catalog of my consciousness, but a refutation of it.

In the words of C. Joybell C., we’re all stars that think they’re dying until we realize we’re collapsing into supernovas – to become more beautiful than ever before. It often takes the contrast of pain to completely appreciate what we have, it often takes hate to incite self-recognition. Sometimes the way light enters us is, in fact, through the wound. 5.

Those relationships didn’t actually hurt you, they showed you an unhealed part of yourself, a part that was preventing you from being truly loved.

You're not my matchmaker any longer. But we're still friends, and in the interest of our friendship we need to discuss page thirteen." "Page thirteen ?" "You've accused me of being arrogant. I've always thought of myself as confident, but I'm here to tell you, no more. After studying these pictures... Honey, if this is what you're looking for in a man, I don't think any of us are going to measure up." "I have no idea what you're talking about." "Who knew flexible silicone came in so many colors?" Her sex toy catalog. He'd taken it months ago. She'd hoped he forgotten it by now. " Most of these products are hypoallergenic. That's good, I guess. Some with batteries, some without. I suppose that's a matter of preference. There's a harness on this one. That's pretty kinky. And...Son of a bitch ! It says this one is dishwater safe. I'm sorry but there's just something unappetizing about that.

The way he talked about thoughts was the way I experienced them - not as a choice but as a destiny. Not a catalog of my consciousness, but a refutation of it.

The more you fight for something that is not meant for you, the more it will fight you.

Whatever it is you’re feeling, feel it. Don’t bury it, don’t hide from it, don’t ignore it. Feel the awful, brutal feelings.

There is power in letting go, a power that brings more peace and serenity than being stuck in situations that make your heart a bit heavier each and every day.

He stood there weeping and watching us go, while behind him Lucky Paul entered and collapsed the prospector's tent, and I thought, Here is another miserable mental image I will have to catalog and make room for.

There’s no right way to be twenty-five. Because there’s no one, single, specific way to be human. As long as you keep your eyes open, as long as you keep trying new things and working hard and refusing to accept mediocrity as your fate, you will be okay. You will be happy. You will be exactly where you’re supposed to be.

What is destined will reach you, even if it be underneath two mountains. What is not destined, will not reach you, even if it be between your two lips.

In the strangest, most inexplicable way, we need those lovers that we never fully let go of. Because each one of them represents a whole entire world within ourselves.

we are just programmed to complicate life sometimes

Our culture teaches us about shame—it dictates what is acceptable and what is not. We weren’t born craving perfect bodies. We weren’t born afraid to tell our stories. We weren’t born with a fear of getting too old to feel valuable. We weren’t born with a Pottery Barn catalog in one hand and heartbreaking debt in the other. Shame comes from outside of us—from the messages and expectations of our culture. What comes from the inside of us is a very human need to belong, to relate.

The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving.

Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.—Vivian Greene

2. You don’t meet people by accident, and that each person who crosses your path brings life lessons to you that God knew you needed.

Some endings are not bad; sometimes they are not even endings, just bridges to new beginnings.

Go outside occasionally to smoke a cigarette. It’s a good way to make friends, it makes you look cool, and you’re already dead on the inside, anyway.

Any time you feel like you’re making the wrong choice, remember that life is not built exclusively on perfect decisions and that your recoveries are just as important as your mistakes.

Forgiveness means giving up hope for a different past. It means knowing that the past is over, the dust has settled and the destruction left in its wake can never be reconstructed to resemble what it was. It’s accepting that there’s no magic solution to the damage that’s been caused. It’s the realization that as unfair as the hurricane was, you still have to live in its city of ruins. And no amount of anger is going to reconstruct that city. You have to do it yourself.

Information wants to be free.' So goes the saying. Stewart Brand, the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, seems to have said it first. I say that information doesn't deserve to be free. Cybernetic totalists love to think of the stuff as if it were alive and had its own ideas and ambitions. But what if information is inanimate? What if it's even less than inanimate, a mere artifact of human thought? What if only humans are real, and information is not? ... Information is alienated experience.

The truth about anger is that it’s nothing more than the refusal to heal, because you’re scared to. Because you’re afraid of who you’ll be once your wounds close up and you have to go on living in your new, unfamiliar skin. You want your old skin back. And so anger tells you to keep that wound bleeding.

But the truth is going to heal your heart a lot faster than simply letting it break over and over until you finally face what you knew all along anyway: If he wanted to be with you, he would be with you.

Speaking of libraries: A big open-stack academic or public library is no small pleasure to work in. You're, say, trying to do a piece on something in Nevada, and you go down to C Floor, deep in the earth, and out to what a miner would call a remote working face. You find 10995.497S just where the card catalog and the online computer thought it would be, but that is only the initial nick. The book you knew about has led you to others you did not know about. To the ceiling the shelves are loaded with books about Nevada. You pull them down, one at a time, and sit on the floor and look them over until you are sitting on a pile five feet high, at which point you are late home for dinner and you get up and walk away. It's an incomparable boon to research, all that; but it is also a reason why there are almost no large open-stack libraries left in the world.

If an opportunity passed you by, it didn’t really want to stop at your station, if someone let you go, they didn’t really want to stay, if someone else got what you were praying for, this blessing was not written for you to begin with and you will be blessed in another way.

In feeling helpless, you learn to take care of yourself. In feeling used, you recognize your worth. In being abused, you develop compassion. In feeling like you’re stuck, you realize there is always a choice. In accepting what was done to you, you realize that nobody has control at the end of the day, but in surrendering the need for something we’ll never have, we can find peace, which is what we were actually seeking in the first place.

The mail was junk: a couple of furniture catalogs, a credit card offer, a dead mouse, and a flyer with coupons for 50 percent off the moon. The faceless old woman who secretly lives in her home had censored the credit card offer, using charcoal to blot out entire lines and amounts. Diane looked through the coupons, considering what a great deal it would be if anyone actually wanted the moon. It's a hideous rock, Diane thought. You couldn't pay me to take it.

I bought new lingerie today I wanted to show you, but I didn’t get a chance with all that happened.” “You’ll have to return tomorrow night then…. Maybe we’ll order an entire catalog.” His smile and the glint of mischievousness in his eyes reflected lascivious thoughts. “You can model all the outfits you’d like for me.

Go for a walk and make yourself a promise for the duration of your walk. I will allow myself to feel whatever I feel. And listen. With every step, check in with yourself. Are you sad? Are you angry? Do you feel utterly lost? Listen to all of it. Accept all of it. Decide this walk will be the time you finally let yourself off the hook.

The way he talked about thoughts was the way I experienced them --- not as a choice but as a destiny. Not a catalog of my consciousness, but a refutation of it. When I was little, I used tell Mom about my invasives, and she would always say, "Just don't think about that stuff, Aza." But Davis got it. You can't choose. That's the problem.

If you’re brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello. —Paulo Coelho

Just survive. Life is about surviving the best way you know how.

Growing up is a lot like that, I think. Convincing the world you’ve got it all figured out. Even when we know it’s a lie. We’re all still trying.

I would never give someone complete power over me where I lost control; complete power over me where I felt I was worthless.

Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life. —Anne Roiphe

There are only two types of women— goddesses and doormats. —Pablo Picasso

Your Potential Is Infinite If You’re Willing To Persevere

That reaching a destination hasn’t got a thing to do with the difficulty of the path you’ve chosen to take, but instead the passion and persistence you walk it with.

If you’re brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello.

A relationship should bring out the best in you. A relationship should be eternally supportive, and you should lift each other up in your worst moments.

Tell the people you love how much you appreciate them more than you think is necessary.

The more you fight for something that is not meant for you, the more it will fight you

There are a thousand minute intricacies that make up the tapestry of who you are and not a single one has ceased to exist since the last time that somebody loved you. I

Not everything makes sense, and sometimes trying will drive you insane.

It doesn’t matter if its a relationship, a lifestyle, or a job. If it doesn’t make you happy, let it go.

The truth is, when someone doesn’t want you, no reason matters. No amount of fixing could change that and actually, there isn’t anything that needs to be fixed because nothing was wrong or missing in the first place. You have always been wholly you, before or after them, including all the flaws and imperfections that make you unique. So if you ever feel the need to redeem or validate yourself after being rejected, please don’t because no one can take anything away from you by not wanting you and you aren’t born to prove yourself to anyone.

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” —WILLIAM JAMES I don’t know what superpower William James enjoyed, but I can no more choose my thoughts than choose my name. The way he talked about thoughts was the way I experienced them—not as a choice but as a destiny. Not a catalog of my consciousness, but a refutation of it. When I was little, I used to tell Mom about my invasives, and she would always say, “Just don’t think about that stuff, Aza.” But Davis got it. You can’t choose. That’s the problem.

So please, refuse to let the wounded people extinguish you. Refuse to be tamed. Refuse to flicker down into a meagre, burnt-out coal because somebody else is not tending to your flame.

My father worked behind closed doors inside the house, had a huge ancient Latin dictionary on a wrought-iron stand, spoke Spanish on the phone, and drank sherry and ate raw meat, in the form of chorizo, at five o'clock. Until the day in the yard with my playmate I thought this was what fathers did. Then I began to catalog and notice. They mowed lawns. They drank beer. They played in the yard with their kids, walked around the block with their wives, piled into campers, and, when they went out, wore joke ties or polo shirts, not Phi Beta Kappa keys and tailored vests.

Someday someone’s going to love all of those tiny things about you. Someone’s going to love the way you cough. They’re going to laugh at the way you lose your keys while you’re actually holding them. Someday, someone is going to stare at you from across a crowded room and know exactly how you’re feeling based on the way your head is tilting or the type of wine you’ve used to fill your glass. Someone is going to appreciate all of your obscurities eventually but right now they are all only your own. And that’s okay. First and foremost, you will always belong to yourself.

He meant rather that the evolution of our minds from bits of inanimate matter was more beautiful and more extraordinary than any of the miracles cataloged down through the ages by the religions of our world. And so he had an instinctive skepticism of any system of thought, religious or theorical, that pretended to encompass that miracle, and in so doing sought to draw limits around it.

The truth is if you reach a point where letting go is the only option, it usually means that this thing or someone already let you go. You are trying to stay in a place where you are not welcome anymore.

I had never thought about him as a child. I had never asked him about the war. I had only seen him as my father, and as my father I had judged him. There was nothing to do about that now but add it to the catalog of my mistakes.

Yet inner behavior was still behavior, thought Aron, even if it was difficult to catalog. So what is the inner behavior of people whose most visible feature is that when you take them to a party they aren’t very pleased about it? She decided to find out.

If an opportunity passed you by, it didn’t really want to stop at your station, if someone let you go, they didn’t really want to stay, if someone else got what you were praying for, this blessing was not written for you to begin with and you will be blessed in another

Relationships with expiration dates teach us that love doesn’t have to last forever to be meaningful. That someone doesn’t have to stick around to make an impact. That the best things in life are not always measured by their longevity but by their intensity. Their complexity.

This was a habit Alizeh had mastered long ago. Cataloging moments of grace even in the midst of disaster often helped steady her mind; indeed there had been days in her life so bleak that Alizeh had resorted to counting her teeth if only to prove she still owned something of value. Just then she forced herself to listen to the susurrations of the wind, to appreciate that she'd never seen the moon so close, in all its unobstructed glory. She drew in a deep breath at the thought, tasting pure cold on her tongue, and lifted a searching hand to the night. The skies passed under her fingertips much like a cat, demanding to be pet.

There’s a particular way you laugh that can make an entire room light up, if only for a moment in time. There is a way you tilt your head when you are concentrating that makes you look unbearably kissable — as if you were placed on this earth only to stare at things and frown in the most endearing form humanely possible.

So make a list of what you can and can’t control, and focus on the former and leave the latter to the heavens. It helps. Counting your blessings help. Keeping your life and lifestyle in moderation helps; talking helps. You are not your anxiety, your worries, or your problems. These things will pass because they always do.

Any mode of thought that lays out complete and final answers to great existential questions is liable to dogmatism. A great attraction of care ethics, I think, is its refusal to encode or construct a catalog of principles and rules. One who cares must meet the cared-for just as he or she is, as a whole human being with individual needs and interests. [...] At most, it directs us to attend, to listen, and to respond as positively as possible. [...] it recognizes that virtually all human beings desire not to be hurt, and this gives us something close to an absolute: We should not inflict deliberate hurt or pain. Even when we must fight to save our children, we must not inflict unnecessary or deliberate pain.

I leaned back across the table and shut my eyes and thought that at some point in the future, long after humanity had run its course, after some other creature had replaced us, maybe, or maybe even after the next creatures had been replaced by whatever came after them, at some point in a future I could not fully imagine, a question might occur in some mind, and that question might be What was the human? What was the world of the human? - though it would be in some unforeseen language, perhaps a language that was without sound, perhaps a language that did not have to grow from a damp, contaminated mouth - and if this question ever did arise in that future being's mind, would it even be possible to catalog and make sense of all our griefs, our pains and wars? Our delineations? Our need for order? The question arose then - did all this human trouble begin in our bodies, these failing things, weaker or stronger, lighter or darker, taller or shorter? Why did they cause so much trouble for us? Why did we use them against one another? Why did we think the content of a body meant anything?

I wouldn’t go that far. Anyway, what’s yours, then? What’s the one superpower of June Elbus?” I thought about myself from head to toe. It was like being forced to read the most boring part of the Sears catalog. Like leafing through the bathroom accessories pages. Boring brain. Boring face. No sex appeal. Clumsy hands. “Heart. Hard heart,” I said, not sure where it came from. “The hardest heart in the world.

81. You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp. —Anne Lamott

The strange thing was that, inside, I always felt I was the same as everyone around me. I am just like you, I thought when kids squinted at me in mockery of my own eyes; why can’t you see that? When I was young I certainly felt more like a white girl than an Asian one, and sometimes it was shocking to catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror and be forced to catalog the hated differences; to encounter tormentors and former friends and know that what they saw was so at odds with the person I believed I was.

Another thing I liked about the Dewey decimal system was that it could sometimes function as a secret code. Every once in a while during my high school years, I would hesitantly and cautiously type “gay” into a search bar in a card catalog. Just “gay,” as if more specificity would kill me right on the spot. Libraries were the only space I felt remotely comfortable even acknowledging the question—which didn’t yet even have words or language, just the faint outline of the punctuation. And where if not a library could I go to understand the unknown, to expand my world, to make sense out of gibberish? I would type “gay” and then survey the titles that came up and then click the window closed without ever doing any further exploring. I didn’t know what I thought I might find if I actually went to the aisle where the books were. A very quiet gay bar, perhaps? I figured it wasn’t worth the risk. But as I closed the screen, I memorized the Dewey decimal number of the section where, I presumed, a mirror ball sprinkled stardust across the aging carpet and the rows of books waiting to be opened.

I thought back to a soliloquy I’d seen on TV about pain as women’s birthright. It’s not hard to catalog the dazzling torment life puts us through: childbirth and menstrual cramps and the suffocating heat of menopause. We do our best to avoid it, but men run toward it: war and wrestling and football that cracks their skulls, bruises the fragile gray matter underneath. Their bravado is just them manufacturing their own pain, trying to seem strong. But fear—fear is at least as strong a motivator as pain. Maybe the TV show had it wrong; maybe men aren’t out to experience pain so much as fear, the icy jolt of feeling alive. They crave it because they have no idea how miserable it is to feel that frigid blast a hundred times a day.

I thought back to a soliloquy I’d seen on TV about pain as women’s birthright. It’s not hard to catalog the dazzling torment life puts us through: childbirth and menstrual cramps and the suffocating heat of menopause. We do our best to avoid it, but men run toward it: war and wrestling and football that cracks their skulls, bruises the fragile gray matter underneath. Their bravado is just them manufacturing their own pain, trying to seem strong. But fear—fear is at least as strong a motivator as pain. Maybe the TV show had it wrong; maybe men aren’t out to experience pain so much as fear, the icy jolt of feeling alive. They crave it because they have no idea how miserable it is to feel that frigid blast a hundred times a day. I

Did dinosaurs sing? Was there a teeming, singing wilderness with all the species thumping around, tuning up for the next millennia? Of course, dinosaurs sang, I thought. They are the ancestors of the singing birds and cousins to the roaring crocodiles…turns out, no. Turns out the syrinx, the organ that produces birdsong and the larynx, the organ that produces operatic arias, didn’t evolve until after the dinosaur extinction event…Some dinosaurs blew air into their closed mouths and through nasal cavities into resonance chambers, which we see in fossils as bony crests. They made the forest echo with clear, ominous tones, eerily like a cello. I have heard it in recordings scientists made of the sound they produced when they blew air through crests constructed to mimic lambeosaurus’s. Some dinosaurs cooed to their mates like doves…turns out that even if dinosaurs didn’t sing, they danced. There is evidence in vigorous scrape marks found in 100-million year old Colorado sandstone. From the courting behavior of ostriches and grouse, scientists envision the dinosaur males coming together on courting grounds, bobbing and scratching, flaring their brilliant feathers and cooing. Imagine: huge animals, each weighing more than a dozen football teams, shaking the Earth for a chance at love. What the story of the dinosaurs tells me is that if the earth didn’t have music, it would waste no time inventing it. In birds, tantalizing evidence of birdsong is found in 67-million-year old fossils, marking the first know appearance of the syrinx. Now the whole Earth can chime, from deep in the sea to high in the atmosphere with the sounds of snapping shrimp, singing mice, roaring whales, moaning bears, clattering dragonflies, and a fish calling like a foghorn. Who could catalog the astonishing oeuvre of the Earth? And more songs are being created every year.

If anyone had ever asked me to defend my work, here’s what I would have said: The more complex a behavior is, the more rigorous and complicated the science behind it. Math, chemistry, that’s the easy stuff—closed models with discrete answers. To understand behavior—human or elephant—the systems are far more complex, which is why the science behind them must be that much more intricate. But no one ever asked. I’m pretty sure my boss, Grant, thought this was a phase I was going through, and that sooner or later, I’d get back to science, instead of elephant cognition. I had seen elephants die before, but this was the first time since I’d changed my research focus. I wanted every last detail to be noted. I wanted to make sure I didn’t overlook anything as too mundane; any action that I might learn later was critical to the way elephants mourn. To that end, I stayed there, sacrificing sleep. I marked down which elephants came to visit, identifying them by their tusks, their tail hair, the marks on their bodies, and sometimes even the veins on their ears, which had patterns as unique as our own thumbprints. I cataloged how much time they spent touching Mmaabo,

One day, at a quiet hour, I found myself alone in a certain gallery, wherein one particular picture of pretentious size set up in the best light, having a cordon of protection stretched before it, and a cushioned bench duly set in front for the accommodation of worshipping connoisseurs, who, having gazed themselves off their feet, might be fain to complete the business sitting. This picture, I say, seemed to consider itself the queen of the collection. It represented a woman, considerably larger, I thought, than the life. I calculated that this lady, put into a scale of magnitude suitable for the reception of a commodity of bulk, would infallibly turn from fourteen to sixteen stone. She was indeed extremely well fed, very much butcher's meat, to say nothing of bread, vegetables, and liquids must she have consumed to attain that breadth and height, that wealth of muscle, that affluence of flesh. She lay half reclined on a couch – why, it would be difficult to say. Broad daylight blazed round her. She appeared in hearty health, strong enough to do the work of two plain cooks. She could not plead a weak spine. She ought to have been standing, or at least sitting bolt upright. She had no business to lounge away the noon on a sofa. She ought likewise to have worn decent garments – a gown covering her properly, which was not the case. Out of abundance of material, seven and twenty yards I should say, of drapery, she managed to make inefficient raiment. Then, for the wretched untidiness surrounding her, there could be no excuse. Pots and pans – or perhaps I ought to say, vases and goblets – were rolled here and there on the foreground, a perfect rubbish of flowers was mixed amongst them, and an absurd and disorderly mass of curtain upholstery smothered the couch and cumbered the floor. On referring to the catalog, I found that this this notable production bore name: 'Cleopatra.

Gray froze as Miss Turner emerged from the hold. For weeks, she’d plagued him-by day, he suffered glimpses of her beauty; by night, he was haunted by memories of her touch. And just when he thought he’d finally wrangled his desire into submission, today she’d ruined everything. She’d gone and changed her dress. Gone was that serge shroud, that forbidding thundercloud of a garment that had loomed in his peripheral vision for weeks. Today, she wore a cap-sleeved frock of sprigged muslin. She stepped onto the deck, smiling face tilted to the wind. A flower opening to greet the sun. She bobbed on her toes, as though resisting the urge to make a girlish twirl. The pale, sheer fabric of her dress billowed and swelled in the breeze, pulling the undulating contour of calf, thigh, hip into relief. Gray thought she just might be the loveliest creature he’d ever seen. Therefore, he knew he ought to look away. He did, for a moment. He made an honest attempt to scan the horizon for clouds. He checked the hour on his pocket watch, wound the small knob one, two, three, four times. He wiped a bit of salt spray from its glass face. He thought of England. And France, and Cuba, and Spain. He remembered his brother, his sister, and his singularly ugly Aunt Rosamond, on whom he hadn’t clapped eyes in decades. And all this Herculean effort resulting in nothing but a fine sheen of sweat on his brow and precisely thirty seconds’ delay in the inevitable. He looked at her again. Desire swept through his body with starling intensity. And beneath that hot surge of lust, a deeper emotion swelled. It wasn’t something Gray wished to examine. He preferred to let it sink back into the murky depths of his being. An unnamed creature of the deep, let for a more intrepid adventurer to catalog. Instead, he examined Miss Turner’s new frock. The fabric was of fine quality, the sprig pattern evenly stamped, without variations in shape or hue. The dressmaker had taken great pains to match the pattern at the seams. The sleeves of the frock fit perfectly square with her shoulders, in a moment of calm, the skirt’s single flounce lapped the laces of her boots. Unlike that gray serge abomination, this dress was expensive, and it had been fashioned for her alone. But it no longer fit. As she turned, Gray noted how the neckline gaped slightly, and the column of her skirt that ought to have skimmed the swell of her hip instead caught on nothing but air. He frowned. And in that instant, she turned to face him. Their gazes caught and held. Her own smile faded to a quizzical expression. And because Gray didn’t know how to answer the unspoken question in her eyes, and because he hated the fact that he’d banished the giddy delight from her face, he gave her a curt nod and a churlish, “Good morning.” And then he walked away.

Recently, Liberal blogger Amy Glass at Thought Catalog wrote a whole article mocking stay-at-home moms called, “I look down on young women with husbands and kids and I’m not sorry.” Even in the last election, when Democrats were pushing the “war on women” meme, Democrat strategist Hillary Rosen slammed Ann Romney for being a stay-at-home mom while Barack Obama himself has said staying at home to raise children isn’t real “work.” Conservatives support women, whether they want to work or stay at home. Liberals don’t—and their utter contempt for stay-at-home moms is just as disgusting as it is revealing.

I don’t know how much you’ve thought about this, but faith isn’t natural for you and me. Doubt is natural. Fear is natural. Living on the basis of your collected experience is natural. Pushing the current catalog of personal “what-ifs” through your mind before you go to sleep or when you wake up in the morning is natural. Living based on the thinking of your brain and your physical senses is natural. Envying the life of someone else and wondering why it isn’t your life is natural. Wishing that you were more sovereign over people, situations, and locations than you will ever be is natural. Manipulating your way into personal control so you can guarantee that you will get what you think you need is natural. Looking horizontally for the peace that you will only ever find vertically is natural. Anxiously wishing for change in things that you have no ability to change is natural. Giving way to despondency, discouragement, depression, or despair is natural. Numbing yourself with busyness, material things, media, food, or some other substance is natural. Lowering your standards to deal with your disappointment is natural. But faith simply isn’t natural to us.

He can,” Leonard said. “He’s got patents on sex toys. Nice stuff—he ought to show you the line sometime. What’s in his catalog is for sale. There’s this one—a big purple rubber dick with metal studs on it—that will make you scream like there’s a man with a chain saw after you. And me, I got some serious-ass money. A white couple left me their estate. I was their gardener for about ten years. They didn’t know that secretly I hated them for their whiteness and called them ugly names behind their backs. Cracker, honky, and such. That old, wrinkly lady, and her having me stud her. Jesus. That was some tough work, I got to tell you. I’d rather have had a job wiping asses in hell. Dropped her drawers, lay down on the bed, that thing of hers looked like a taco rolled in hair rotting on a blanket. Paid all right, though. Still, you had to get past the smell and imagine it was a goddamn donkey to get a hard-on.” I thought: Gardener? White couple? Stud to a wrinkly old lady? Get past the smell? What the fuck?

3. It’s okay if you don’t like your friends anymore. Because growing up means growing apart, sometimes.

It was Evan. He leaned against the door frame, his hands in his pockets. He was wearing distressed khakis, a white T-shirt, and a perfectly broken-in brown suede car coat. “Hey,” he said. Holy Abercrombie catalog, Megan thought.

Through the years I experimented with all different types of materials and frames. Finally, I settled upon one that was so simple, easy, and inexpensive to use that it was almost ridiculous. Then I began growing all different types of plants vertically. I originally thought I would need to design some special way to hold up and accommodate heavier fruits such as winter squash and pumpkins, but as it turned out, these plant vines seemed to understand the situation; the stem supporting the heavy fruit grows thicker and heavier as the fruit becomes larger. If you have a framework and support that will hold the plant, the plant will hold the fruit; it is as simple as that! Mother Nature always seems to know best. Pea and bean netting can be stretched taut across a box frame and held in place by four metal posts. Plants will then grow up through the netting and be supported. Best Material I use the strongest material I can find, which is steel. Fortunately, steel comes in tubular pipe used for electrical conduit. It is very strong and turns out to be very inexpensive. Couplings are also available so you can connect two pieces together. I designed an attractive frame that fits right onto the 4 × 4 box, and it can be attached to the wooden box with clamps that can be bought at any store. Or, steel reinforcing rods driven into the existing ground outside your box provide a very steady and strong base; then the electrical conduit slips snugly over the bars. It’s very simple and inexpensive to assemble. Anyone can do it—even you! To prevent vertically grown plants from shading other parts of the garden, I recommend that tall, vertical frames be constructed on the north side of the garden. To fit it into a 4 × 4 box, I designed a frame that measured 4 feet wide and almost 6 feet tall. Tie It Tight Vertically growing plants need to be tied to their supports. Nylon netting won’t rot in the sun and weather, and I use it exclusively now for both vertical frames and horizontal plant supports. It is very strong—almost unbreakable—and guaranteed for twenty years. It is a wonderful material available at garden stores and in catalogs. The nylon netting is also durable enough to grow the heavier vine crops on vertical frames, including watermelons, pumpkins, cantaloupes, winter and summer squashes, and tomatoes. You will see in Chapter 8 how easy it is to train plants to grow vertically. To hold the plants to the frame, I have found that nylon netting with 7-inch square openings made especially for tomato growing works well because you can reach your hand through. Make sure it is this type so it won’t cut the stem of the plant when it blows against it in the wind. This comes in 4-foot widths and can easily be tied to the metal frame. It’s sometimes hard to find, so call around.

What is destined will reach you, even if it be underneath two mountains. What is not destined, will not reach you, even if it be between your two lips. —Proverb Anything

Maybe he didn’t choose me because he only liked the idea of me.

35. It’s natural to feel like you have to run away—from people, from feelings, from places, from life—but sometimes you should challenge yourself to stay put.

You can gaze over the fence and covet another person’s life or tell yourself that God has blessed you in ways you never could have earned. Do you ever battle with envy? Have you ever wondered why someone else’s life seems easier than yours? Have you ever struggled to celebrate the blessings of someone else who had what you thought you needed? Have you ever wished you could just switch lives with someone? Perhaps there are ways in which envy haunts us all, so it’s worth examining the heart of envy. What things prepare the heart for envy? Envy is forgetful. In concentrating on what we don’t have that we think we should have, we fail to keep in mind the huge catalog of blessings that are ours simply because God has chosen to place his bountiful love on us. This forgetfulness causes us to do more comparing and complaining than praising and resting. Envy misunderstands blessing. So often envy is fueled by misunderstanding what God’s care looks like. It is not always the care of provision, relief, or release. Sometimes God’s blessing comes in the form of trials that are his means of giving us things we could get no other way. Envy is selfish. Envy tends to put us in the center of our own worlds. It tends to make everything about our comfort and ease, our wants, needs, and feelings, and not about the plan and the glory of the God we serve. Envy is self-righteous. Envy has an “I deserve _____ more than they do” posture to it. It forgets that we all deserve immediate and eternal punishment, and that any good thing we have is an undeserved gift of God’s amazing grace. Envy is shortsighted. Envy has a right here, right now aspect to it that overlooks the fact that this moment is not all there is. Envy cannot see that this moment isn’t meant to be a destination, but a preparation for a final destination that will be beautiful beyond our wildest imagination. Envy questions God’s wisdom. When you and I envy, we tend to buy into the thought that we are smarter than God. In envy, we tend to think we know more and better, and if our hands were on the joystick, we would be handling things a different way. Envy is impatient. Envy doesn’t like to wait. Envy complains quickly and tires easily. Envy doesn’t just cry for blessings; it cries for blessings now. What is devastating about envy is that it questions God’s goodness, and when you do that, you quit running to him for help. So cry out for rescue—that God would give you a thankful, humble, and patient heart. His transforming grace is your only defense against envy. For further study and encouragement: Psalm 34

Hey.” A lopsided smirk offers chagrin as he turns my way. “Sorry about that,” he says, and I’m struck by how much I’ve missed his voice. He opens the door and unfolds himself from the tiny car, and then I realize how much I’ve missed him. “You made it.” It’s tough to keep my emotions in check, but I know I need to. “You look tired.” “I took the long way home.” And just like that, he reaches out and pulls me into a hug. Not a shoulder hug, but the real thing, the kind you give to someone you thought of while you were away. I’m surprised at first. I wasn’t expecting…well…that. I was prepared for more of the uncertain off-and-on awkward dance we usually do. Friends…or two people who want something more? We’re never quite sure. But this feels different. I slip my arms under his and hang on. “Tough few days?” I whisper, and he rests his chin on my head. I listen to his heartbeat, feel the sultry warmth of skin against skin. My gaze lingers on the tangle of wisteria vines and crape myrtle branches hiding the ancient structures of Goswood Grove’s once spectacular gardens, concealing whatever secrets they know. “Tough few days all around, it sounds like,” Nathan says finally. “We should go in.” But he hangs on a minute longer. We part slowly, and the next step suddenly seems uncharted. I don’t know how to catalog it. One moment, we’re as natural as breathing. The next, we’re at arm’s length—or retreating to our separate safety zones. He stops halfway across the porch, turns, widens his stance a little like he’s about to pick up something heavy. Crossing his arms, he tilts his head and looks at me, one eye squeezing almost shut. “What are we to each other?” I stand there a moment with my mouth agape before words dribble out in a halting string. “In…in…what way?” I’m terrified, that’s why I don’t give a straight answer. Relationships require truth telling, and that requires risk. An old, insecure part of me says, You’re damaged goods, Benny Silva. Someone like Nathan would never understand. He’ll never see you in the same way again. “Just like it sounds,” he says. “I missed you, Benny, and I promised myself I’d just put it out there this time. Because…well…you’re hard to read.” “I’m hard to read?” Nathan has been largely a mystery I’ve pieced together in fragments. “Me?” He doesn’t fall for the turnabout, or he ignores it. “So, Benny Silva, are we…friends or are we…” The sentence shifts in the wind, unfinished—a fill-in-the-blank question. Those are harder than multiple-choice. “Friends…” I search for the right answer, one not too presumptuous, but accurate. “Going somewhere…at our own pace? I hope.” I feel naked standing there. Scared. Vulnerable. And potentially unworthy of his investment in me. I can’t make the same mistake I’ve made before. There are things he needs to know. It’s only fair, but this isn’t the right moment for it, or the right place. He braces his hands on his hips, lets his head rock forward, exhales a breath he seems to have been holding. “Okay,” he says with a note of approval. His cheek twitches, one corner of his mouth rising. I think he might be blushing a little. “I’ll take that.” “Me, too,” I agree.

It’s about time I free myself from thoughts of ‘what if’ and ‘what could have been’ so that I may start embracing the ‘what else’s and ‘what could be’s.

But wanting things doesn’t mean you’ll get them. And loving people doesn’t mean they’ll love you back.

Surround yourself with people who make your world brighter and your mind more excited and your heart bigger.

We focus so much of our attention on trying to get others to love us, to adore us, and to admire us that we forget to do those things to ourselves.

It took me until I walked away to realize real love wasn’t suppose to be this complicated. Real love was simple and he wasn’t.

Heartbreak hurts, no matter how long you were with someone, no matter if you were dating or not. Once your heart is invested, it hurts when it ends.

You don’t need a title in order to feel for someone.

Sometimes there’s just no pleasing people. But that’s the thing—this life isn’t about pleasing people. It’s about pleasing yourself.

You are a unique collection of cells and energy that will never again be recreated on this planet earth.

You are worthy of everything you have, and everything you dream of. Don’t let any person, any advertisement, any pessimistic thought tell you otherwise. You are whole, today. You are enough, today.

After the beating was over and the berating stopped, though, it was easy. I just turned off the flow of tears and stared out the window. Or I went back to reading a Babysitters Club book. I put it all behind me and moved on... But what was I supposed to do with those feelings? Catalog them? Sit there thinking about them all day long? Tell them to my mommy and expect sympathy? Please. My feelings didn't matter. They were pointless. If I felt those soft, mushy feelings, if I really thought about how messed up it was... could I wake up and eat breakfast with her everyday?... If I took up all that space with my feelings, what space could I maintain for hers? Hers were more important. Because hers had greater stakes.