Mariana Zapata

You're a treasure I will value every day for the rest of my life.

Grief was the final way we had to tell our loved ones that they’d impacted our lives. That we missed them so, so much. And there was nothing wrong with me mourning my mom for the rest of mine, even as l carried her love and her life in my heart. I had to live, but I could also remember along the way.
The people we lose take a part of us with them... but they leave a part of themselves with us too.

'[…] I like you both ways, angel. All ways.'

Some people came out of trauma with thick scar tissue. They could handle anything. They had been through the worst and could take any kind of hit because they knew they could survive.
On the other hand, there were people like me, who survived but with thinner skin than before. Some of us ended up wrapped in an organ even more delicate than tissue paper, with bodies and spirits buoyed only by our will to keep going. And coping mechanisms. And therapy.

Sometimes, maybe even more often than just sometimes, you were better off alone.
Sometimes you had to learn to be your own best friend. To put yourself first.

'Every single thing that has ever happened in my life has led me here, Sal. Destiny is a ladder, a series of steps that takes you where you’re supposed to go. I am the man that I am, and I have done the things that I’ve done, to get me to you.'

'You know your reputation is just what everyone else thinks of you, your character is what you really are.'

'The only people in the world who can hurt you are those you let have that ability, Van. […]'

What no one tells you is that the road to accomplishing your goals isn’t a straight line; it looks more like a corn maze. You stopped, you went, you backed up, and took a few wrong turns along the way, but the important thing you had to remember was that there was an exit. Somewhere.
You just couldn’t give up looking for it, even when you really wanted to.
And especially not when it was easier and less scary to go with the flow than actually strike out on your own and make your path.

Una no podía dejar de ver las expresiones o el movimiento de los ojos de los demás, ni podía taparse los oídos y dejar de escuchar lo que la gente pretendía susurrar, pero se oía de sobra.

Las preocupaciones por ser un fracaso y una decepción no eran algo que pudieras solucionar y punto. Estaban ahí. Todo el tiempo.

Los celos y la amargura era lo que sentían quienes no tenían nada mejor que hacer. Lo sabía. Una no conseguía hacer nada con su vida si se pasaba el rato comparándose con los demás. También lo sabía.

- I love you so much I splend all day with you, and it still isn't enough for me. He kept going.
I stopped breathing.
- I love you so much, if I can't skate with you, I don't want to skate with anyone else.

"No shit, Sherlock. The idea of you being upset over that waste of breath pissed me off. You deserved better." He smiled and pressed our hands tight against his side. "If you were going to cry for anyone, it was going to be me."
"You're an idiot."
"I know."

Love to me was honesty. Being real. Knowing someone's best and worst. Love was a push that said someone believed in you when you didn't.

"You're enough. You will always be enough. Hear me ?"

"You could need a kindney replacement and not ask anyone you know for one, Jasmine." He shook his head, a frown crossing his mouth. "You think I don't know you?"
Well. Shit.
"You are so stubborn. So fucking stubborn it drives me insane. You know how many times I've wanted to choke you ?"he asked, shaking his head in clear exasperation.
I blinked. "Probably half as many time as I've wanted to choke you too."

"Nobody else is going to take as good care of you as I will."

Ivan snickered. "That doesn't mean much. You're little too, but you're heavy as hell."
"Oh shut up. I'm not that heavy." I turned to look at him over my shoulder as I extended my arms out to my nephew.
"You are. You're the heaviest partner I've ever had."
"It's all muscle."
"Is that what we're going to call it?"

And he hugged me. He hugged me so tight to him I couldn't breath, and I hated myself. I hated myself for being a hypocrite. For not being nicer. For expecting the worst all the time. I hated myslef for so many things, I wasn't sure I could count them all and survive.
And the arms around me somehow got even tighter, until every bone in my spine was curved into every bone in his upper body.
"You're the best figure skater I've ever seen," this man whispered directly into my ear, his hold the strongest thing I had ever felt in my life.