The Wedding People

There is no such thing as a happy place. Because when you are happy, everywhere is a happy place. And when you are sad, everywhere is a sad place.

I just mean, a story can be beautiful not because of the way it ends. But because of the way it’s written.

Your husband is not going to take care of you the way you think,” Phoebe says. “Nobody can take care of you the way you need to take care of yourself. It’s your job to take care of yourself like that.

Life is strange. Always thinking that this one thing is going to make you happy. Because then you get it. And then you’re maybe not as happy as you imagined you would be. Because every day is just every day. Like the happiness becomes so big you have no choice but to live inside it. Until you can no longer see or feel it. And so you start to fixate on something else.

I think we talk about happiness all wrong. As if it’s this fixed state we’re going to reach. Like we’ll just be able to live there, forever. But that’s not my experience with happiness. For me, it comes and goes. It shows up and then disappears like a bubble.

She doesn’t see the point in staying alive only to do all the same things that made her want to die.

She is so good at predicting what will happen in books, so bad at predicting what will happen in life. That is why she has always preferred books - because to be alive is so much harder.

Having a mother helps you believe that everybody wants to hear every little thing you think. Having a mother helps you speak without thinking. It allows you to trust in your most awful self, to yell and scream and cry, knowing that your mother will still love you by the end of it.

yes, sometimes she read too much. Sometimes, she read books instead of living a life,

becoming who you want to be is just like anything else. It takes practice. It requires belief that one day, you’ll wake up and be a natural at it.

She didn't understand how she could love herself. She didn't understand what people even meant when they said they loved themselves. She honestly didn't believe them. How could you love yourself? How could you love yourself when you know every single horrible thing you've ever thought?

Love is visible—it paints the air between two people a different color, and everyone can see it.

And maybe that’s it: You do things in the moment for the person you hope you might be two years from now.

It is not an easy thing to do, walk away from what you’ve built and save yourself. Destroying Phoebe’s marriage felt like destroying herself. Walking out of the classroom felt like killing the twenty-two-year-old who tried to save her own life by applying to graduate school. It is so much easier to sit in things and wait for something to save us. For the past two years, Phoebe sat in the bad things the way she used to sit in the snow as a child. An hour would go by and it would be very hard for her to get back up. Eventually she looked down at her toes and became confused: Why are they frozen? It was her father who picked her up, said, It’s time to come inside. But now she has to learn when it’s time to come inside. She has to learn to check in with her toes when nobody else is looking. To care for them when no one else will.

Phoebe didn't think she'd end up being a woman like this. But if the last few years have taught her anything, it's that you really can't ever know who you are going to become.

But Phoebe is starting to understand that on some nights, Lila is probably the loneliest girl in the world, just like Phoebe. And maybe they are all lonely. Maybe this is just what it means to be a person. To constantly reckon with being a single being in one body. Maybe everybody sits up at night and creates arguments in their head for why they are the loneliest person in the world.

You honestly expect me to believe that people go on vacations without making a spreadsheet of fun first?

No, Phoebe will never be a mother. Phoebe will never know what it’s like to create life inside of her. But there are other ways to create. Other ways to love. Other reasons to live.

I didn’t want to be saved from myself. Nobody does! All we want is permission to stand there naked and be our damned selves.

I mean, I just lived my life in such a small way... It was too small. I was so convinced there was only one way to live my life.

There are some people in this world who remind you of exactly how you like to speak. She hasn’t met a person like this in a long time, not since she met her husband, which was why it was so painful when she started to forget how to speak to her husband. When she looked at him, she was too often reminded of what not to say, what never to mention, like ovulation, or depression, or anything that might carry a hint of sadness. Perhaps that’s why she didn’t tell him that Harry died. She didn’t want to give him any more proof of her unlovability, of her failure. Perhaps that’s why she just put a blanket over Harry and ran away, too.

To collect is to care more than most. But it is also to hoard. To take things out of the world and make them only yours.

This is the gift random strangers can give you, Phoebe is realizing - the freedom to say or be anything around them. Because who cares? He doesn't know her, will never know her.

Phoebe prefers this new way of talking. And maybe this is just one of the really nice things about getting older. Maybe this is the part of her life when she gets to start saying what she means, for better or worse. Because no amount of truth can be worse than the feeling she got after years of hiding from it.

That is why she has always preferred books—because to be alive is much harder.

because she didn’t know if it was better to be correct or fun, and why did it feel like she always had to choose between the two?

This sounds like exactly what she wants, what she has secretly always wanted. To read books when she wanted to read books. To be sad when she was sad. To be scared when she was scared. To be angry when she was angry. To be boring when she felt boring.

And maybe that’s it: You do things in the moment for the person you hope you might be two years from now. You don’t kill yourself when you are sad because one day you might not be sad, and you might want to go surfing with a man you really like?

Nobody was ever really watching, except Phoebe. Phoebe was the only person waiting in the dark to condemn herself for every single thing when the day was over.

Seems more plausible that Hell is some revenge fantasy concocted by unhappy people so they could punish all the happy people in their minds.