Benjamin B

“Too much joy, I swear, is lost in our desperation to keep it.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“The nonacceptance of your body is yet one more expression of the internal shame. The apparent motive for body building is to achieve a beautiful physique; however, the underlying motive is to relieve shame. It’s all about making yourself more acceptable and less flawed, and in short, less shameful.”
― Alan Downs Ph. D., The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man's World

“In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering them is the same: nhớ. Sometimes, when you ask me over the phone, Có nhớ mẹ không? I flinch, thinking you meant, Do you remember me?

I miss you more than I remember you.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“The damaging part of learning to live your life in two parts , whether in reality or fantasy, cannot be underestimated. It is an infectious skill that you learned, one that would eventually spread beyond the bedroom of your life. Life wasn't ever what it seemed on the surface. Nothing could be trusted for what it appeared to be. After all, you weren't what you appeared to be. In learning to hide part of yourself, you lost the ability to trust anything or anyone fully. Without knowing it, you traded humane innocence for dry cynicism.”
― Alan Downs, The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man's World