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b40ec48
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Everyone always wants to know how you can tell when it's true love, and the answer is this: when the pain doesn't fade and the scars don't heal, and it's too damned late.
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pain
true
true-love
love
scars
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Jonathan Tropper |
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022c428
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You have to look at what you have right in front of you, at what it could be, and stop measuring it against what you've lost. I know this to be wise and true, just as I know that pretty much no one can do it.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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0f0275f
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It would be a terrible mistake to go through life thinking that people are the sum total of what you see.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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ccb61ac
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We all start out so damn sure, thinking we've got the world on a string. If we ever stopped to think about the infinite number of ways we could be undone, we'd never leave our bedrooms.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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0a9f9ed
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Even under the best of circumstances, there's just something so damn tragic about growing up.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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0c56bf8
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You're terrified of being alone. Anything you do now will be motivated by that fear. You have to stop worrying about finding love again. It will come when it comes. Get comfortable with being alone. It will empower you.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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5aa931a
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You never know when it will be the last time you'll see your father, or kiss your wife, or play with your little brother, but there's always a last time. If you could remember every last time, you'd never stop grieving.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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016001d
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And I just want to tell you, at some point it doesn't matter who was right and who was wrong. At some point, being angry is just another bad habit, like smoking, and you keep poisoning yourself without thinking about it.
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positive
angry
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Jonathan Tropper |
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1cc91f5
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Childhood feels so permanent, like it's the entire world, and then one day it's over and you're shoveling wet dirt onto your father's coffin, stunned at the impermanence of everything.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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2aae55f
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It's just hard to see people from your past when your present is so cataclysmically fucked.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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cd44a50
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I loved her for so long. Our past trails behind us like a comet's tail, the future stretched out before us like the universe. Things happen. People get lost and love breaks.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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1ebaca7
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We are injured and angry, scared and sad. Some families, like some couples, become toxic to each other after prolonged exposure.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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673880b
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I may not be old but I'm too old to have this much nothing
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self-realization
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Jonathan Tropper |
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cfd0743
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Phillip is the Paul McCartney of our family: better-looking than the rest of us, always facing a different direction in pictures, and occasionally rumored to be dead.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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e3f4d54
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You have to look at what you have right in front of you, at what it could be, and stop measuring it against what you've lost.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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a210a19
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Everyone always wants to know how you can tell when it's true love, and the answer is this: when the pain doesn't fade and the scars don't heal, and it's too damned late. The tears threaten to return, so I willfully banish all thoughts from my head and take a few more deep breaths. I'm suddenly dizzy from the panic attack I've just suffered, and I close my eyes, resting my head against the warm leather of my steering wheel. Loneliness doesn..
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Jonathan Tropper |
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d87b37b
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Love made us partners in narcissism, and we talked ceaselessly about how close we were, how perfect our connection was, like we were the first people in history to ever get it exactly right.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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69364f7
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Sometimes you walk past a pretty girl on the street there's something beyond beauty in her face, something warm and smart and inviting, and in the three seconds you have to look at her, you actually fall in love, and in those moments, you can actually know the taste of her kiss, the feel of her skin against yours, the sound of her laugh, how she'll look at you and make you whole. And then she's gone, and in the five seconds afterwards, you ..
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Jonathan Tropper |
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e30f231
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It's true. somewhere inside us we are all the ages we have ever been. We're the 3 year old who got bit by the dog. We're the 6 year old our mother lost track of at the mall. We're the 10 year old who get tickled till we wet our pants. We're the 13 year old shy kid with zits. We're the 16 year old no one asked to the prom, and so on. We walk around in the bodies of adults until someone presses the right button and summons up one of those kid..
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Jonathan Tropper |
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d43c4e4
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We are all smiling in the picture, three brothers having a grand old time just playing around in the living room, no agendas, no buried resentments or permanent scars. Even under the best of circumstances, there's just something so damn tragic about growing up.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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4b255c4
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I sit down on the bed, cradling her little head against my shoulder, inhaling her sweet baby scent. Someday she'll get older, and the world will start having its way with her. She'll throw temper tantrums, she'll need speech therapy, she'll grow breasts and have pimples, she'll fight with her parents, she'll worry about her weight, she'll put out, she'll have her heart broken, she'll be happy, she'll be lonely, she'll be complicated, she'll..
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Jonathan Tropper |
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68cbc64
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I'm living in separate universes, and I have no idea where I actually belong.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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4d47922
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Forgiveness has its comforts, but it can never give you back what you've lost.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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57f3c08
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That's the thing about life; everything feels so permanent, but you can disappear in an instant.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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18c19da
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I'm not the same person I was. I'm fucked up." I give her a sideways glance. "I am," she says. "You haven't even scratched the surface." "I find that most people worth knowing are fucked up in some way or another."
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Jonathan Tropper |
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1a8354b
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you realize that you don't understand yourself any better than you understand anyone else.
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understanding
poignant
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Jonathan Tropper |
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09ee7d5
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I've never been shot, but this probably what it feels like, that second of nothingness right before the pain catches up to the bullet.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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1c76e6b
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The thing about living alone is that it gives you a lot of time to think. You don't necessarily reach any conclusions, because wisdom is largely a function of intelligence and self-awareness, not time on your hands. But you do become very good at thinking yourself into endless loops of desperation in half the time it would take a normal person.
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thoughts
wisdom
thinking
desperation
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Jonathan Tropper |
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3fd877b
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It's hard to imagine her ever having felt lost, but it's impossible to know the people your parents were before they were your parents.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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3f497a0
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She was smart and funny and vulnerable and just so goddamned beautiful, the kind of beautiful that was worth being shot down over.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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0c7f680
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I wasted a lot of time being angry, time I can't get back. And now I see you, so angry about what happened to your marriage, and I just want to tell you, at some point it doesn't matter who was right and who was wrong. At some point, being angry is just another bad habit, like smoking, and you keep poisoning yourself without thinking about it.
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forgiveness
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Jonathan Tropper |
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b70e830
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the first thing you do at the end is reflect on the beginning. Maybe it's some form of reverse closure, or just the basic human impulse toward sentimentality, or masochism, but as you stand there shell-shocked in the charred ruins of your life, your mind will invariably go back to the time when it all started. And even if you didn't fall in love in the eighties, in your mind it will fee like the eighties, all innocent and airbrushed, with b..
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Jonathan Tropper |
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2835c29
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I wake up like this, this sense that I've somehow been transported to an alternate universe where my life took a left instead of a right beacuse of some seeemingly insignificant yet cosmically crucial choice I've made, about a girl or a kiss or a date or a job or which Starbucks I went into...something.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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114e16b
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We don't stop loving people just because we hate them, but we don't stop hating them either.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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b2f6947
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A problem is something to solve," Phillip says. "If there's no solution, it's not a problem, so stop treating it like one."
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Jonathan Tropper |
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023601f
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Fate already warned us to pack it in. We just didn't hear it in time.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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da64c2b
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And even if you didn't fall in love in the eighties, in your mind it will feel like the eighties, all innocent and airbrushed, with bright colors and shoulder pads and Pat Benetar or the Cure on the soundtrack.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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7bfc9dc
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I loved her for the way she embraced the unknown, how she opened herself up to every experience. When I was with her, she opened me up, too, stirred my passion and heightened my every sensation. Which was great, until she left me and all my heightened senses to deal with the heartache of losing her.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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5e4701d
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We're all cliches, all following scripts that have been written and played out long before we landed the role.
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meditative
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Jonathan Tropper |
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e3139d3
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Whatever the opposite of a plan is, that's what I've got.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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f999043
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I keep waiting for the universe to decide things for me, and the thing is, the universe has better things to do.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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324f827
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A good speech is like a woman's skirt: short enough to hold your attention, long enough to cover the subject
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Jonathan Tropper |
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514abfb
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The only thing worse than not having your dream come true is having it come true for a little while.
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one-last-thing-before-i-go
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Jonathan Tropper |
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bd97b06
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I blame Hollywood for skewing perspectives. Life is just a big romantic comedy to them, and if you meet cute, happily ever-after is a forgone conclusion.
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life
love
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Jonathan Tropper |