Brook > Recent Status Updates

“Obviously, a golf ball is not a deadly weapon: it’s not a crossbow or dagger or assault rifle. Balls—all kinds of balls—rarely kill people. (Excluding, arguably, balls as testicles. History is awash in testicle-fueled carnage.)”

“I want to feel the compassion I’m faking, and when she stands up and stumbles a little, I suddenly do. I don’t want to be a woman who kicks another woman when she’s down. I want to be better to her than she was to me so she can be better than she was to me.”

“Pain pushes you until vision pulls you.”

-Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

“The older I get, the more I realize you can only connect the puzzle pieces of your life in hindsight. In the moment, you can’t see the bigger picture. You can’t see how your people are shaping you.”

“The truth is I’ve only ever had one addiction. The white whale of addictions: escape. From as far back as I can remember there has always been a better place than wherever I am. A better me than whoever I was.”

“Control was antithetical to life. To be alive is to be battered about. To endure and adapt and keep stumbling onward despite it all.”

“Because the thing is, no matter what else I’ve tried, no matter how many anxiety-soothing methods [therapist] has taught me, the only thing that ever *actually* helps my brain relax is reading about people who are trying to make the world better.

Hearing about people who are doing important things.

Knowing that change, however small, is possible.”

“Things in nature merely grow. There is no suicidal or angry rose, there is no depressed or rebellious lily. Plants have but one goal: to live. In order to live, they grow when they can, and go into dormancy if needed. They live until they die—and either they die as destined by nature or are cut down by other elements in nature. A garden is a placeholder. Flowers are placeholders.”

“…things in nature merely grow until it’s time for them to die.”

“What can I say to a young person who has strong convictions but a failure of the imagination? Not much, really. The world, it seems to me, is governed by strong conviction and paltry imagination and meager understanding.”

“There was no part of her beauty that didn’t make me question mine.”

“‘Vernice,’ she said, ‘stop acting like me and you knit with the same needles.’

‘Why do you say things like that?’

‘Nobody is saying that we are not girlfriends. I am just saying that we got different circumstances.’”

“‘Don’t ever let no man murder you,’ she said. ‘If you let a man kill you, I will not bring you flower the first.’”

“But this is how life works—the women who would be capable mothers too often don’t want kids. And too many of those with children probably should have just sat that one out. Luckily, most were in between. Maybe not baby-crazy, but willing.”

“…but she was also a storyteller, and an English teacher once told her that being a storyteller is a sort of pathological emptiness—when you feel something, you’re not satisfied until you’ve made other people feel it, too. You can’t just experience it yourself. You have to *share* it.”

“Allie told herself she’d solve one problem at a time. That’s all anyone can do. When plans went awry in unfamiliar places, she often remembered something her grandfather used to say: It is permitted you in time of grave danger to walk with the devil until you have crossed the bridge.”

“‘Tess, survival is victory. Maybe you think you don’t deserve it, or maybe you’re beating yourself up for fighting back because that’s how the world tells women to feel when they take charge of their fates. You aren’t disposable. You don’t owe anyone anything. No one else was looking out for you that day. Your last best hope was *you*.’”

…no one ever really knows anyone…think of people in layers, like a Russian nesting doll. We all have exterior versions of ourselves, polite and polished and professional…And there are interior layers, the parts of ourselves we only show our closest friends and family, and then even deeper, the secret person nested inside. The true self. Who we are in the dark, when no one’s looking and the light are out.”

“…the human mind is the ultimate unreliable narrator.”

“Washington has always found it disturbing how little it actually takes to unravel our minds—merely darkness and quiet.”

“Grief has aftershocks…They hit unpredictably when your guard is down. It can feel like a form of torture, rediscovering your loved one’s absence from every tedious angle…”

*spoiler alert*

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“Allie saved you. She bought you a few seconds to escape. That’s her gift to you…Your best friend loved you, and in that terrible moment she proved it. She’s a hero. Don’t take that away from her by blaming yourself.”

“It’s not fear or weakness that holds most people back from entering such dangerously confined spaces, but simple evolved instinct. Like jumping off a building or inhaling water, your body just *knows* it’s a bad idea and fights you if you try it.”

“Remember, when you feel afraid, think of all the little things your body is doing…For example, your pupils dilate so you can see better. Your breathing becomes more efficient so you can run faster. Blood pumps to your brain and muscles, so you’re stronger and more alert. Remember that being afraid doesn’t make you weak. In a measurable way, it actually makes you stronger. Fear is power.”

“You can’t smile your way out of some situations, because some people don’t listen to nice. You have to learn to stand up for yourself.”

“…but it’s always hardest to get up and do the thing the morning of. At six a.m. on a weekend, your bed is always softest, your coffee warmest, your half-read novel the most enticing. Safety is cozy.”

“Some people say Jesus is their copilot. Tess was stuck with some asshole named generalized anxiety disorder.”

“‘She’s a tough gal,’ the incident commander had texed earlier. ‘She’s got sisu.’

Odd word choice.

Washington had to look it up—apparently sisu is a Finnish term for grit and determination in the face of hardship. There’s no English-language equivalent for it, because sisu isn’t derived from any single act of bravery. It’s tireless, sustained, long term.”

“She could merge, soon, with the ground itself, and there was so much longing in that knowledge, that sweetly speckled hallucination. Like those people who died in snow, the temptation to sink and sleep in the murderous ground must be resisted. Why? She did not know, except her instinct told her: *resist.* Resist.”

“She dreamed of an animal freedom.”