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009eb3f
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But someday I'll fall in love again, right? I'll start over with someone, and maybe we'll buy a big old house with all this new money I have, and we'll have kids, and I'll be a professional writer, maybe even write some books. I'll have this whole great life, and it will be thanks to Hailey dying in a plane crash. And I don't know exactly at what point it will happen, but the time will come when I'll have crossed this line where maybe I wou..
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Jonathan Tropper |
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6571591
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The old expression goes, 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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2dd48d6
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Someone should sing, Silver thinks, and then someone does-a low, somewhat hoarse man's voice singing "Amazing Grace" quietly but with great sincerity. Ruben's eyes grow wide, and almost in the same instant that it occurs to Silver that "Amazing Grace" is not sung at Jewish funerals, he recognizes the singing voice as his own. But Mrs. Zeiring is looking at him, not with anger or surprise, but a strange half-smile, and he decides that the on..
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Jonathan Tropper |
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e95c4c4
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It must be tough," I said sincerely. "Having no clear line between your reality and your bullshit." "There's a line," Jack said. "It just moves around a lot."
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Jonathan Tropper |
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c22f76a
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He doesn't so much fall in love as dive-bomb it like a kamikaze pilot, fearless and at full throttle. He used to look at this propensity as a gift, then a curse, and now understands it to be just another way in which he is broken.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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a03f72c
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even when someone is deserving of your anger, they're still deserving of compassion. It's hard to pull off, believe me--no one knows that more than me. And if you're only going to pull it off a handful of times in your life, why not for family?
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Jonathan Tropper |
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887ca17
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Our parents can continue to screw us up even after they die, and in this way, they're never really gone.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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637df8d
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The cop looks annoyed, like we're giving him a headache. I want to explain everything to him that its really not as screwed up as it all sounds, but then I remember that it is.
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drunk
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Jonathan Tropper |
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a587300
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anger you have locked up in you, and that's healthy. I just think you could be a little more judicious
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Jonathan Tropper |
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d63f07c
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We read off the ancient Hebrew words, with no idea of what they might mean, and the congregation responds with more words that they don't understand either. We are gathered together on a Saturday morning to speak gibberish to each other, and you would think, in these godless times, that the experience would be empty, but somehow it isn't.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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c99aea7
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Being an official divorce brought late-night channel-surfing up to a staggering new level of depressing. I just wanted to belong to someone already.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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93c1689
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Things have been going too well for me lately. I feel like I have some bad karma headed my way." Tamara frowns at me as she leads me toward the dressing rooms. "That's a pretty dire outlook on life," she says. "What's the point in working to be happy if you're going to be constantly looking over your shoulder, wondering when it's time to pay the bill?"
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Jonathan Tropper |
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6b67782
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You have to question the originality of your life when it can be captured perfectly in the lyrics of a rock song.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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af5797b
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One day you just wake up and discover that you got old while you were sleeping.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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9d3432e
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And someday soon, I'll rest in peace. But till that day does come, I'll rest in pieces.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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6368ad1
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It occurs to hi that what he has failed to impart through wisdom, he may well have imparted through stupidity.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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84670af
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Being gay is like taking a crash course in human nature," he says. "Your first real glimpse at the dirty underbelly of routine social interaction. A lesser person, " he offers with a wry grin, "Might well become one bitter fuck."
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Jonathan Tropper |
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53a9f5f
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You still go to therapy?" "Nah. I gave up years ago." "Mental health ins't for everyone."
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Jonathan Tropper |
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55d8e57
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You still go to therapy?" "Nah. I gave up years ago." "Mental health isn't for everyone."
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Jonathan Tropper |
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661f0e9
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Did i say something wrong?" "Well, in your defense, there is no right thing to say."
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Jonathan Tropper |
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fb08343
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Everybody dies alone. That's a fact. Some more alone than others.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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87a5773
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This is how it ends, he thinks. Strangely, he is not panicked, just a little bit sad. He tells himself to pay attention. If this is death it will only come once, and he doesn't want to miss anything. Like he did when he was alive.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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cf5a151
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I totally remember what it felt like to be so full." "Full of what?" "I don't know. Full of promise, full of dreams, full of shit. Mostly just full of yourself. So full you're bursting. And then you get out into the world, and people empty you out, little by little, like air from a balloon."
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Jonathan Tropper |
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9920260
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I work for the Spandler Corporation. We are a three-hundred-million-dollar business, with offices in twelve states. We have over five hundred employees. We are known throughout the country as a leader in the industry. Our customers rely heavily on us. We produce nothing. We sell nothing. We buy nothing. If we didn't exist, Kafka would have to invent us.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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36ef8ec
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he'd continue to cry passionately, long after he'd forgotten why he was crying to begin with.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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5fa1a1a
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Sometimes you don't need to talk things out. Sometimes, with the right person, things just need some time to percolate on their own, without the messy lunge and parry of discussion to hinder them.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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343dad0
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There is a sense of violation in learning that, unbeknownst to me, my mind has maintained such a strong connection with the town, as if my brain's been sneaking around behind my back.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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c273ad3
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attractive women in the early stages of disrepair, fighting to keep age at bay with facials, compression undergarments, and aggressively fashionable skirts bought off the rack at Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom. They run on treadmills, these women, work out with personal trainers and play tennis at the club, but still their hips widen, their legs thicken, their breasts sag. Genetics help some more than others, but they are all like melting ice ..
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Jonathan Tropper |
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87a279e
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It wasn't that she didn't love me, I knew that she did, and that actually made it worse. If someone leaves you because they don't love you, it's a tough break, but as they say, life's a bitch, get a helmet. But if someone loves you and leaves you anyway, you enter a whole new realm of self-doubt and recrimination, what psychologists call the what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-me syndrome.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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2c18fcc
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The reason wisdom is meant to be imparted is because you acquire it only after it's too late to apply to yourself.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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ca86cb1
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Over the course of a fifty-year marriage, one bad year isn't very significant. Your marriage might still be there to be saved. But you'll never know if you keep indulging your hate and anger like the world owes you reparations.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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e4ff3b5
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Oh, people will come, Ray," Phillip intones, doing his best James Earl Jones. "People will most definitely come."
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Jonathan Tropper |
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1fa8418
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It was one of those playful arguments that we would carry with us unresolved into old age.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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d040c1e
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Jen was in turmoil; she was grappling with self-esteem issues and a failed attempt at anorexia. I was in the right place at the right time, and the gods were finally ready to cut me some slack.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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d5334a7
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This is just your time, son, that's all. Your time to hurt and bleed and tear apart your notion of what makes you who you are. Life knocks us all on our ass at some point. And then we get back up, and we make some changes, because that's what men do. We adapt. And when we're done adapting, we're better equipped to survive.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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64a775b
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But moving from conversation to violence is just as hard as moving from flirting to kissing. There's that leap you have to take, to shed your inhibitions and expose your naked impulses.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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aa27b13
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As soon as he saw her face, he knew what it would look like when she ended it.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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915e790
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The self-help books and websites haven't come up with a proper title for spouses living in the purgatory that exists before the courts have officially ratified your personal tragedy.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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da489f7
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Healing is a deeply private process and, honestly, you're not welcome to be a part of it. But you will have given me a short furlough from the dark, sorry prison of my mind, and that gift, precious in its own right, is really the best you can hope to offer.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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48d671e
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And nothing can be resolved until each of you has come to appreciate the other's position
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Jonathan Tropper |
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213d496
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Dad didn't believe in God, but he was a lifelong member of the Church of Shit or Get Off the Can. So his actual death itself was less an event than a final sad detail.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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0dbd054
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the only thing you can ever really know about anyone is that you don't know anything about them at all.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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50864a6
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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. We were that couple for a while, nauseatingly impervious assholes, busy staring into each other's eyes while everyone else was trying to have a good time.
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Jonathan Tropper |
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ec3feff
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This is the age," she explained to me once as we walked home from school, "when we're the purest forms of ourselves we'll ever be. We haven't been complicated by everything yet. I want to keep a clear record of who I am, so that down the road I'll be able to see who I was. Maybe I can avoid losing myself completely." She sighed, biting her lip pensively. "Things happen," she said. "Small things and large things, and they just keep changing ..
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journaling
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Jonathan Tropper |