sink or swim

She’s the mother I never had. The sister everybody would want. The friend everybody deserves. I don’t know a better person. It’s making me cry because I’m thinking how much I probably never told her that. We’re not like, ‘Oh, you, you’re my dearest friend … thanks.’ The therapy I didn’t have and don’t need is because of my thousands and thousands of hours on the phone with Gayle. I get to release the day by talking it through. And I just realized she’s the friend everybody should have.

—Oprah Winfrey about her best friend, Gayle King

Maybe mistakes are what make our fate… without them what would shape our lives? Maybe if we had never veered off course we wouldn’t fall in love, have babies, or be who we are. After all, things change, so do cities, people come into your life and they go. But it’s comforting to know that the ones you love are always in your heart and, if you’re very lucky, only a plane ride away.

Remember when you were a kid and your biggest worry was, like, if you’d get a bike for your birthday or if you’d get to eat cookies for breakfast? Being an adult, totally overrated. I mean seriously, don’t be fooled by all the hot shoes and the great sex and the no parents anymore telling you what to do. Adulthood is responsibility.

—Grey’s Anatomy

Moreover, I have boundary issues with men. Or maybe that’s not fair to say. To have issues with boundaries, one must have boundaries in the first place, right? But I disappear into the person I love. I am the permeable membrane. if I love you, you can have my everything. You can have my time, my devotion, my ass, my money, my family, my dog, my dog’s money, my dog’s time — everything. If I love you, I will carry for you all of your pain, I will assume for you all of your debts (in every definition of the word). I will project upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have never actually cultivated in yourself and I will buy Christmas presents for your entire family. I will give you the sun and the rain, and if they are not available, I will give you a sun check and a rain check. I will give you all this and more, until I am so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else.

I do not relay these facts about myself with pride, but this is how it has always been.

—taken from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love