There are still Ava Maddoxes to find and sets to create and girls to kiss and colleges to attend. It's possible that someday I will hear a patsy Cline song and the heartbreak will barely register. It will be some distant, buried feeling. I won't remember how much it once hurt.
Friendship is about more than facts. It's about knowing what someone is thinking, or knowing enough to know that you don't. But I guess it's also about not letting too much time go by without asking them questions, so you don't end up looking at them one afternoon, the sun so bright you have to squint, realizing that you hardly recognize the person they've become.
In the distance are the lights of town. People must be finishing their workdays, picking up their kids, figuring out dinner. They're talking to one another in easy voices about things of great significance and things that don't mean much. The distance between us and all of that living feels insurmountable.
Whenever Ingrid and I got out of the suburbs, into Berkeley or San Francisco, and saw how other people lived, Ingrid would cry at the smallest of things- a little boy walking home by himself, a discarded cardboard sign saying HUNGRY PLEASE HELP. She would snap a picture, and by the time she lowered her camera, tears would already be falling. I always felt kind of guilty that I didn't feel as sad as she did, but now, watching Dylan, I think that's probably a good thing. I mean, you see a million terrible things every day, on the news and in the paper, and in real life. I'm not saying that it's stupid to feel sad, just that it would be impossible to let everything get to you and still get some sleep at night.
The first time she carved something into her skin, she used the sharp tip of an X-Acto knife. She lifted up her shirt to show me after the cuts had scabbed over. She had scrawled F*** YOU on her stomach. I stood quiet for a moment, feeling the breath get knocked out of me. I should have grabbed her arm and taken her straight to the nurse's office, into that small room with two cots covered in paper sheets and the sweet, stale medicinal
All I have is a life's worth of school days. What came before school I can't remember. You can only sketch so many desks and teachers and chalkboards. You can only come home to so many dinners and homework assignments and nights of taking the garbage out. You can only go to so many museum field trips before you start to wonder, Is this it?
I wish I knew why she never told me any of this. Maybe she thought I wouldn't be able to handle it, that I was too sheltered or too innocent or something. If she had told me why she cut herself all the time, or that it was the pills that made her act so spaced out, or that she was even on pills, or even saw doctors, or any of it, I would have done my best to help her. I'm not saying I'm a superhero. I'm not saying I would have just swooped down and saved her. I'm just saying the only reason everything was a waste was that she made it a waste. That whole time, back when I was just a normal kid in high school, living out my normal life, I really thought everything mattered.
When you live in LA and work in the movies, you experience the collapse of some of that fantasy. You know that the eyes glow like that because of lights placed at a specific angle, and you see the actresses up close and, yes, they are beautiful, but they are human size and imperfect like the rest of us.
I can't muster a smile. Even with the knowledge that it's dark outside and light up here, it's hard to believe that he can see us. We should be invisible. We are so alone. Mabel and I are standing side by side, but we can't even see each other. In the distance are the lights of town. People must be finishing their workdays, picking up their kids, figuring out dinner. They're talking to one another in easy voices about things of great significance and things that don't mean much. The distance between us and all of that living feels insurmountable.
You've never told him", Violet says. It's not a question. It's obvious."I tell him all the time - I just make sure it's never when he's listening. I say it when he's in the other room, or when he's asleep, or when the music's really loud. Sometimes he asks me what I just said. And I tell him never mind. Or I make up something else, something that isn't 'I love you'.
It's the opposite of the collapse of the fantasy.It's what happens when the illusion pales in comparison to the truth. I'm seeing her for the first time. Not Ava Garden Wilder, the rags-to-riches granddaughter of Clyde Jones. Not a tragic, romantic heroine. Just Ava.And I am utterly in love.
We love films because they makes us feel something. They speak to our desires, which are never small. They allow us to escape and to dream and to gaze into the eyes that are impossibly beautiful and huge. They fill us with longing. But also. they tell us to remember; they remind us of life. Remember, they say, how much it hurts to have your heart broken.
We love films because they make us feel something. They speak to our desires, which are never small. They allow us to escape and to dream and to gaze into eyes that are impossibly beautiful and huge. They fill us with longing. But also. They tell us to remember; they remind us of life. Remember, they say, how much it hurts to have your heart broken. Remember about death and suffering and the complexities of living. Remember what it is like to love someone. Remember how it is to be loved. Remember what you feel in this moment. Remember this. Remember this.
There’s still this thing that happens after you break up withsomeone. It barely takes any time to work. All you have to dois continue with your life, and then when you find yourself in aroom with her again it’s as if you’re a different person. Maybeyour posture is a little more confident. Maybe your laughter islouder. You’re wearing perfume she’s never smelled before andyou have a new way of pinning back your hair. You don’t evenhave to say anything because your presence alone is enough tosay Look at who I am without you.