Jael McHenry Quotes

His voice is muddy, that's what it is. Dark and brown and muddy. A note to it like coffee left too long on the burner. And unsweetened, bitter chocolate. But there's dirt in it too, deep, dark dirt, like the garden in October.

Everybody struggles with this stuff, you know. With social discomfort and grief and fitting in. People with syndromes, people with disorders, people with diagnoses, and without. People who would be classified as neurotypical. Idiots and geniuses, maids and doctors. Nobody's got it all figured out.

I preferred to think of myself as a cat. If I think of my behavior as cat behavior instead of people behavior, it pretty much always makes sense.

But I can't force everything into the arrangement I'd like. I can't use denial to make everything simple.

I love it," I say. "So I learned it." It's an explanation that leaves a lot out. But I learned a long time ago that people don't really want explanations.

The scene is most beautiful without people in it. People just screw things up. Forget the whole thing, the world, all the living people, I tell myself, and it has a ring of truth to it. The dead are better, aren't they? The dead don't betray or harm. They've already done all they can do. I can't figure out what people mean or who they are or whether they can be trusted, so, forget them. Don't even try anymore. For now at least, forget the living.

One of my professors in college used to say As the wise man said, Do or do not, there is no try, but the advice columns generally say the opposite. If someone promises to try, and you're happy with that, don't push. It can backfire. You can get yourself in a lot of trouble asking for too much.

This is home, it's the only place I want to be, but at the same time everything familiar feels strange. It's the same as it ever was except without the people who most belong here.