The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours readi… - Cheryl Strayed

I never got to be in the driver’s seat of my own life,” she’d wept to me once, in the days after she learned she was going to die. “I always did what someone else wanted me to do. I’ve always been someone’s daughter or mother or wife. I’ve never just been me.” “Oh, Mom,” was all I could say as I stroked her hand. I was too young to say anything else.

You are obliged to tell the people you’re sleeping with whether or not you’re sleeping with them exclusively. There are no exceptions to this rule. Ever. For anyone. Under any circumstances. People have the right to know if the people they are fucking are also fucking other people. This is the only way the people fucking people who are fucking other people can make emotionally healthy decisions about their lives.

The wanting was a wilderness and I had to find my own way out of the woods.