Melo

“I expected them (men) to see my drunken wordiness as a kind of coy gesture, as though I were saying, “I’m just a child, innocent to my own foolishness. Aren’t I cute? Love me and I’ll turn a blind eye to your faults.” With those other men, this tactic earned me brief sessions of affection until I became soured and saw that I had defiled myself by appealing to them in the
first place.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen

“The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him?

No, thank you,' he will think. 'Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, although these are things which cannot inspire envy.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“It takes growing older
to see some things
imagined were real.
Back then or even now.”
― Sandra Cisnerossneros