lost.

It seems to me that you need a lot of courage, or a lot of something, to enter into others, into other people. We all think that everyone else lives in fortresses, in fastnesses: behind moats, behind sheer walls studded with spikes and broken glass. But in fact we inhabit much punier structures. We are, as it turns out, all jerry-built. Or not even. You can just stick your head under the flap of the tent and crawl right in.

I still remember what you tasted like, it was nothing poetic, and you didn’t taste like love; it was more like the bittersweetness of every bad thought I’ve ever had.

And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

The world seems a complete nightmare at times; nothing that could happen would be surprising. I wonder if there will ever come a time when we shall look back and find that the period we are living through seems quite unreal in retrospect.

It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.”

Stop apologizing. You don’t have to say sorry for how you laugh, how you dress, how you make your hair, how you do your makeup, how you speak. You don’t have to be sorry for being yourself. Do it fearlessly. It’s time to accept: this is you, and you gotta spend the rest of your life with you. So start loving your sarcasm, your awkwardness, your weirdness, your peculiar habits, your unique sense of humor, your voice, your talents, your everything. It will make your life so much easier to simply be yourself.