Justine

“or furniture I wanted to buy or even people I was attracted to (well, I’m referring to those things a little) but, rather, a sensation I can only describe as the ache of not being there”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“In certain moments—driving on the 405 freeway through the brown, flower-flecked hills of the Sepulveda Pass; preparing to dive into the ginlike waters of the pool at the Rosebowl Aquatic Center, where the San Gabriel Valley heat roils off the concrete and my skin gets too tan and my hair bleaches out and some part of me morphs back into the sun-dried child I was in the very beginning—I have to ask myself why it all feels so familiar. Is it a sign that I have truly transformed, that I have become not just a Californian but, in a general sense, Californian? Or is it simply a resetting of the bones of the Californian I’ve always been?”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“But one person’s more-sad doesn’t cancel out another person’s less-sad. The fact that an earthquake took out a whole city block”
― Mary Laura Philpott, I Miss You When I Blink: Essays

“To have an old dog is to look into the eyes of the sweetest soul you know and see traces of the early light of the worst day of your life.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion