Zain

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.

It was terrible and awful when someone left you. You could move on, do the best you could, but... an ending was an ending. No matter how many pages of sentences and paragraphs of great stories led up to it, it would always have the last last word.

“When someone leaves you once, you expect it to happen again. Eventually you stop getting close enough to people to let them become important to you, because then you don’t notice when they drop off your world.”

“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.”

“But good God, what’s wrong with me, after all? What am I missing? Why this emptiness, this nostalgia? What is this anxiety, as if I only loved something I didn’t know?”

I’m afraid that you’ll never understand me fully, and because of that, sometimes you’ll be frightened, disgusted, annoyed, or pleased. The thing that makes me different from all of you is the vast inner life I have. I just thrive in this, by nature. The bigger and deeper this inner life grows, the less anyone of you will understand me. That’s okay.

“My craving to be alone is continuous—”

“I want to talk with you forever. I remember every word you’ve ever said to me. If only I could visit you as a foreigner goes into a new country, learn the language of you, wander past all borders into every private and secret place, I would stay forever. I would become a citizen of you. You would say it’s too soon to feel this way. You would ask how I could be so certain. But some things can’t be measured by time. Ask me an hour from now. Ask me a month from now. A year, ten years, a lifetime. The way I love you will outlast every calendar, clock, and every toll of every bell that will ever be cast.”

“Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.”

“And who understands? Not me, because if I did I would forgive it all.”