Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.

Buddha

“Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.”

—	Margaret Atwood

on the phone with mom

Mom: You sound drunk
Me: I'm not drunk
Mom: You're slurring your words
Me: Maybe it's because I'm slouching down in my chair. (I sit up straight). Okay, now I'm sitting up straight.
Mom: You still sound drunk
Me: I just talked to Dad for a half hour. Ask him if I sounded drunk.
Mom: (In the background) John, did Sarah sound drunk to you?
Dad: (In the background) No. She sounded fine.
Mom: Oh, he said you're not drunk.

take away the dramatic lows. good. take away the intense highs. not good. so now i must be somewhere between good and not good. to me it just feels like not good. i still don’t understand why radical acceptance is the goal. i’ve never had an eh goal. being naive is definitely underrated.

Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.

— W.S. Merwin

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

--Ernest Hemingway

friendship

Tonight at the movies. Hearing your laugh in the dark made me smile. We should do this more often. Over drinks I talk about my guy and you talk about your guy. We discuss the movie, me going on about F. Scott Fitzgerald and you going on about Brad and Angelina. You really don’t keep up with the goings on in Hollywood do you, you ask. No, I do not. But when I’m changing channels and accidentally stop on Entertainment Tonight I think of you. This is your version of the news. And these people, the glitz and the glam, all of it is your idea of what love is supposed to be. Real love. True love. Your voice dreamy when you talk about the love in store for us. It’s a new year, this is going to be our year, you say. I roll my eyes, like I do. With our second drink, as with the first, you raise your glass to toast and clink. I ask, Must you toast every time we drink? Jaded young me and hopeful old you. We make a good team.

I’ve been burned by friends. And now I prefer acquaintances. Casual. Cold. But tonight something changed. I saw you. I really saw you.

“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.”

—	Hermann Hesse

Times like these we have to grow up a little. I don’t know anything about growing up, but I do know about growing. Remove the up and I can embrace it. Leave the up and I stick my fingers in my ears and shout until I’m far, far away.

I worry about losing my job. Every day you hear about some unlucky person who was laid off. You think god how awful and you can’t sleep at night because tomorrow morning that some unlucky person might be you.

The feeling of connection and camaraderie at work is gone. We question whether or not it ever really existed. Was this a false sense of security? Everyone is withdrawing. Drawing inward. The turtle tucks her head back into her shell. Times like these and you don’t want to expose your neck.