Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying you’re friends is easy. Being friends is not.

I just needed to realize that style was like personality - it didn't always have to be consistent; it just had to be something you lived with.

The truth feels different from other things. The closest you can come to describing it is that it feels like taking a perfect breath.

We wish we could have been there for you. We didn't have many role models of our own--we latched on to the foolish love of Oscar Wilde and the well-versed longing of Walt Whitman because nobody else was there to show us an untortured path. We were going to be your role models. We were going to give you art and music and confidence and shelter and a much better world. Those who survived lived to do this. But we haven't been there for you. We've been here. Watching as you become the role models.

Maybe relationships could have fractals, too. And maybe the sense of loss was when you're becoming a fractal of what you once were to each other.

No, really,' I said. 'I think she's great. And I honestly like her about twenty more times now than I did when we were dating. But love needs to have a future. And Sofia and I don't have a future. We've just had a good time sharing the present, that's all.

This isn't even something I've feared, because I never knew it was a possibility.