Balance

Already I was heading in the direction of fixation. When I met someone I liked I wanted him in my orbit, virtually or physically or mentally, at all times; I would want to know what he was thinking and doing and saying when I was not around; I would want to account for him. I’m aware this is considered unhealthy. I also suspect it’s normal, that it’s the aloof, pointedly independent people who should be checked on and deemed dysfunctional. The train came and I almost missed it because I wasn’t paying attention.

...and when I woke up at seven to leave for the march, he still hadn’t sent me anything. I was annoyed but didn’t find it peculiar—he slept late and refused to see the advantages of certain relationship best practices, like ignoring your friends and surroundings in order to text your partner constantly.

I loved her the way I loved life, the miracle of growth and things blossoming. I loved her the way I loved the future. The past was over, and there was no love left there. It hurt me to think that Magda was dead, life wrangled out of her body, that she'd been so abandoned, with nobody but maybe Blake to attend to her corpse. It is easy, I thought, to find great affection for victims, emblems of vanished potential. There is nothing more heartbreaking than a squandered opportunity, a missed chance. I knew about stuff like that. I'd been young once. So many dreams had been dashed. But I dashed them myself. I wanted to be safe, whole, have a future of certainty. One makes mistakes when there is confusion between having a future at all and having the future one wants.