Natalie > Recent Status Updates

“How are you supposed to believe right’s right and wrong’s wrong if everyone around you says the opposite? You’re supposed to think you’re smarter than all of them?”

“Sometimes—sometimes good, or at least decent, people do bad things. And sometimes they actually believe they’re doing what’s right.”

“I thought—think it’s brave to believe in love. I mean, the lasting kind. To try for that, even knowing it can hurt you.” “And what about you?” “What about me?”
“You don’t think you ever will again?”
“It doesn’t matter if I believe it can work or not,” he said. “Not believing in something doesn’t stop you from wanting it. If you’re not careful.”

“I didn’t want to feel these things. It wasn’t fun anymore, now that I was thinking it all through, where it would end up—with me attached and jealous and him having shared about as much about his life with me as you might with a hairdresser. But then he would say things like that.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time I was seeing through rose-colored glasses, assigning meaning where there was none. I was being stupid. After everything with my dad, I should have known better. I’d just barely started to heal, and I’d run right out and gotten a crush on the one person who was guaranteed to prove right every single fear I had about relationships. I needed to let this go.”

Relatable!

“I wasn’t mad at him. I couldn’t be. I was furious with myself for wandering down this path. I knew better.”

“And even if things had gone further that night, it wouldn’t have precluded him from disappearing for days.”

“I’d finally found a friend, someone I could talk to, who’d seemed to want to be around me as much as I wanted to be around him, and now he was just gone. Because we’d kissed.”

Relatable on so many levels…

“My world felt empty. Like there was no one in it, except sometimes Gus, and nothing in it except this book, and the bet. And no matter how much better this book felt than every iteration of it that had come in the last twelve months, it wasn’t enough. I was on a beautiful beach, in a beautiful place, and I was alone. Worse, I wasn’t sure I’d ever stop being alone again.”

“Every moment of every day, I was tripping backward while the rest of the world marched forward.”

“I needed to keep my head straight and eyes clear—no romanticizing allowed. As soon as things got complicated, Gus would be gone.”

The reality of liking someone nowadays…

“It’s shit like this that makes it impossible for me to believe in happy endings. You never get the paper umbrellas you were promised in this world.” “Gus,” I said. “You must be the paper umbrellas you wish to see in this world.”

“You called from a party and dumped your girlfriend? Why would you do that?”
“Why do you think, January?”

Erm, give me a moment… 😁

"He fit so perfectly into the love story I'd imagined for myself that I mistook him for the love of my life."

"Again and again he told me I wasn't myself. But he was wrong. I was the same me I'd always been. I'd just stopped trying to glow in the dark for him, or anyone else."

“For me, the best usually came from the unexpected, from mistakes and mishaps. It didn’t take inspiration to dredge up a list of plot points, but to find that moment—the perfect moment that defined a book, that made it come alive as something greater than the sum of its words—that required an alchemy you couldn’t fake.”

“I lied,” he whispered against my ear. “I have read your books.”

“Happy endings don’t matter if the getting there sucks.”

“Come on, January. I remember you.”

My two emotions reading this: 😆 😮

“Sure, love happens,” he said finally. “But it’s better to be realistic so shit’s not constantly blowing up in your face. And love is way more likely to blow up in your face than to bring eternal happiness. And if it doesn’t hurt you, then you’re the one hurting someone else.”

“Sometimes heartbroken women found their happy endings.”

“Once we've started letting go of chaotic thoughts, we can be grateful for life as it unfolds, moment by moment”

“Follow your intuition and allow your desire to be realized in the way that works best for everyone.”

“It's better to be clear about what you want to happen - and open-minded about how it will happen. Don't cling to anyone or anything. Allow other people to follow their own paths.”

“Good things start to happen when you seek out your incompletions.”

“Many of us think or say we want something to happen, but deep down we're resisting it. If we really want it to happen, we have to complete with the resistance as well.”

“Unless you're enlightened, your inner space is far from empty. It contains lots of pain patterns/incompletions. As long as they remain in your inner space, they'll keep manifesting in the world around you - in the form of things you don't want.”

“Once you surrender, you can relax and enjoy the process. Your mind will become quieter because you're no longer resisting what's happening now, harking back to the past or fantasizing about the future. Then your intuition will tell you what to do.”

“Ultimately, you have a choice. You can either:
1. Try to achieve everything through mental and physical effort.
2. Surrender and follow your intuition, only thinking and taking action when necessary.”

“when we let go completely, things fall into place. Life unfolds naturally. Surrender isn't the same as giving up or doing nothing. It just means that we stop trying to make the world conform to our fixed ideas about how things should be. When we surrender we create space for something much more exciting to happen.”