Read: 2026-08-19
Recommend: 6/10
I was always mesmerized by her beauty, but I didn’t realize she had struggled with love and her relationship with her mom.
Here are some text that I highlighted in the book:
We still worked at XYZ together. He told me how sometimes, when he watched me talking to a table or serving a customer a drink, he’d feel so much insane love for me that he was overwhelmed with the urge to run and crash into me, like a damn linebacker. He never actually did it, but sometimes I’d glance up at him from my table and I could see it in his eyes. Like we both knew. Later we marveled at and theorized about that feeling. About how that’s what love was, wasn’t it? That’s why sex was what it was, we thought. You felt so wild about a person that you wanted to literally meld into each other. It was a need so strong it hurt. Painful that we had to live our lives in separate bodies.
It was the first time I truly “got out of my head” and lost myself in Lady Macbeth. Everything felt like it dropped in, and what had once seemed so hard didn’t take effort at all…. It took a freedom and surrender that I discovered in the safety of Jennie’s faith, her hands holding mine. It was a thrilling moment.
People often ask me, “Why do you love bunnies so much?” and I always want to ask back, why do we love anything? Listing reasons almost cheapens the love, in my opinion. I don’t have an explanation for love. It’s also kind of an insulting question. Like, no one ever says, “Why do you love your dog?” Why is it that love for certain kinds of animals is understood, but others require explanation? As if they’re saying: It’s unusual! Hardly anybody loves bunnies, so please explain to me, how could a bunny possibly be as lovable as the love you give her? But everything and everyone is lovable to someone, even if it doesn’t make sense from the outside. Love is not something earned through merit. It’s something that happens with time. Even with the humans I’ve loved, that’s what it often boils down to: time. All that stuff at the beginning of the relationship, the thrills and passion and attraction and drama… sure, that’s wonderful, and I’ve called that love before. But real things don’t have shortcuts. Those sublime whirlwind weeks often feel like love, but real love doesn’t truly happen until the wind dies down and everything becomes a little plain. That takes time. So time, and everything that happens in it, is probably where you find real love. Forgiveness is somewhere in there too.
In my experience, there are two options for dealing with a wounded heart. The first is numbing and avoidance: alcohol, drugs, casual sex. This can be a temporary reprieve, but if you’re not careful, that recklessness can harden you. Make you feel brave in false ways. The second option—the one I’ve found to be most helpful—is to accept the heartbreak and use it to instruct you. It’s the more painful option, but its effects are beautifully effusive. So often, we equate our identities with Things: a job, a boyfriend, a fashion choice, our untouchable taste in music. But when we’re stripped of Things, it forces us to reckon with our true identities. Who are we without those Things? Since I was a teenager, I always had a boyfriend. But suddenly, left without George in my life, I felt aimless and insignificant.
Mom’s Taiwanese peers often ask her how she raised me to become so successful and her answer has always been: “I didn’t do anything! I just let her do whatever she wanted.” Her style of parenting was hands-off; she never pressured me. Mom wasn’t a tiger mom or even a stage mom. She was Penny Lane!