Ashley’s Reviews > Totally and Completely Fine > Status Update

“It wasn’t just about getting off—I could do that on my own—it was about the other things. The little similarities that you learned when you were naked in front of someone. The secrets you couldn’t hide from each other when your bodies were fused. When you came together and came apart. There were something there. Something important. To me, at least.”

“I’d known back then that those times were precious and fleeting. It’s what they warned all moms. I just hadn’t realized that when she outgrew that need, she’d also move completely out of arm’s reach. That when she stopped wanting it—stopped needing it—that was the time when I would miss it the most.”

“The collective consensus was that it would be better if we all moved on. That the funeral had been the period on the end of that sentence. That it was our responsibility - to the community, to the world, to ourselves - to be okay now. To I just get over it.”

After the funeral, it was as if my father had never existed. No one spoke about him. We never saw that college friend of his again. We didn’t get stopped on the street anymore. We just got those sad, poor-you looks as ppl hurried away from us as if grief were contagious. As if mentioning my father would kill him all over again.”

“I resented him. Resented anyone who thought they knew what it meant to lose my dad.”

Gabe: She’s very good [at cooking]. Bakes too.
Ben: I can’t do either. However, I have been told that I’m quite an accomplished eater.

“He made it sound filthy. I didn’t mind at all.” 🌶️

“She didn’t know that grief felt like the slowest moving quicksand, pulling me down inch by inch, rib by rib. She didn’t know how there were evenings when I lay down in bed & couldn’t recall a single thing I’d done that day. She didn’t know that my head, my heart, my body, were still completely disconnected from one another&I couldn’t even remember what it was like to be a whole person.”