Quotes by Jael McHenry

“Youve got to watch out for yourself because nobody is going to watch out for you.”

I find the title How to Be Good. Curious, I open it up. Im disappointed to find its fiction.

there is something intriguing about knowing how things are going to turn out, but being constantly surprised about how theyll get there.

I tell myself I’m fine on my own, but am I? No friends to fall back on, no relationships, no support. Left to my own devices, I have no devices.

I will take a new approach to death, because what is important about death is not the dead. It’s the living. Those of us left behind.

Im completely out of control, and I can hear the beginnings of the chant, get/out/, but now that Im not being touched maybe I can master it and I shut the world out: separating an orange into skinless sections. Peel it, but not with your fingers. Level off the top and bottom. Set it on the board. Remove the peel in strips with a paring knife, pushing down from the top to bottom with slow, curved strokes. Nick off all the white parts. Cup the cool, wet skinless fruit in your hand. Take care. Dont rush. Press the blade into the flesh of the orange, sink it down, a segment at a time, along the left side of the skin and then the right. Left and right. Left and right. As close as you can to the membrane. Press to the center with your knife, level and easy. If you cut right, the segment will fall out onto the board, triangular, gleaming. Left and right. Left and right. If you rush youll cut yourself. Take care with it. Cut right along the seam, right where the sweet fruit meets the tough membrane. Let and right. Left and right. As close as you can.

I let myself relax into the pattern of the recipe.

It preoccupies me until its time to leave. It seems such the right expression of grief. I am sad, so in whatever small way I can, I will tear myself apart. Theyve taken whats on the inside and made it visible. If I thought it wouldnt be inappropriate Id do it myself.

All I have besides food is grief.

If you don’t know how to deal with emotion, other people’s feelings can hit you like a drug.

Heartbreak is stupid and impossible. Hearts dont break. Hearts squeeze, they wrench, they ache, they shrivel. Hearts pull apart in wet chunks like canned tomatoes.

Shes not quite making sense, but no one does all the time.

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

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 youre happy with that, dont push. It can backfire. You can get yourself in a lot of trouble asking for too much.

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, arent they? The dead dont betray or harm. Theyve already done all they can do. I cant figure out what people mean or who they are or whether they can be trusted, so, forget them. Dont even try anymore. For now at least, forget the living.

I love it, I say. So I learned it. Its an explanation that leaves a lot out. But I learned a long time ago that people dont really want explanations.

But I cant force everything into the arrangement Id like. I cant use denial to make everything simple.

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.

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. Nobodys got it all figured out.

His voice is muddy, thats 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 theres dirt in it too, deep, dark dirt, like the garden in October.