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mysweetheartjude · 7 months
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Merely existing is difficult enough
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mysweetheartjude · 8 months
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At night, he prayed to a god he didn't believe in, and hadn't for years: Help me, help me, help me, he pleaded. He was losing himself; this had to stop. he couldn't keep running forever.
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mysweetheartjude · 8 months
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"I think I turned out pretty normal, all things considered, don’t you?" and Willem had heard the strain, and the hope, in his voice.
"No," he said, and Jude winced. "I think you turned out extraordinary, all things considered or not," and finally, Jude smiled.
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mysweetheartjude · 8 months
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"What can I do?" Willem asked.
"Nothing," Jude said. They were quiet. "But Willem—will you stay with me for a little while?"
"Of course," he said. Beside him, Jude trembled and shook as if chilled, and Willem took the comforter off his own bed and wrapped it around him.
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mysweetheartjude · 1 year
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"Have you forgotten him?" he yearns to ask. “Have you forgotten him? Have you forgotten how much I need him? Have you forgotten I don't know how to be alive without him?"
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mysweetheartjude · 1 year
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That he died thinking he owed us an apology is worse; that he died still stubbornly believing everything he was taught about himself —after you, after me, after all of us who loved him —makes me think that my life has been a failure after all, that I failed at the one thing that counted.
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mysweetheartjude · 1 year
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He would have traded any of them for Willem. JB, instantly. Richard and Andy—poor Richard and Andy, who did everything for him!—instantly. Julia, even. Harold. He would have exchanged any of them, all of them, to have Willem back.
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mysweetheartjude · 1 year
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It isn't only that he died, or how he died; it is what he died believing. And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.
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mysweetheartjude · 2 years
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He wanted the reminders to stop; he dreaded the day they would.
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mysweetheartjude · 2 years
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He woke missing Willem so profoundly that he felt he was going blind.
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mysweetheartjude · 2 years
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Merely existing is difficult enough
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mysweetheartjude · 2 years
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He hopes for infection, something swift and fatal, something that will kill him and live him blameless.
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mysweetheartjude · 2 years
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And although he hadn’t fretted over whether his life was worthwhile, he had always wondered why he, why so many others, went on living at all; it had been difficult to convince himself at times, and yet so many people, so many millions, billions of people, lived in misery he couldn’t fathom, with deprivations and illnesses that were obscene in their extremity. And yet on and on and on they went.
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mysweetheartjude · 2 years
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Sometimes he wonders whether this very idea of loneliness is something he would feel at all had he not been awakened to the fact that he should be feeling lonely, that there is something strange and unacceptable about the life he has.
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mysweetheartjude · 2 years
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Willem comes over and sits on the edge of his bed, and they hold each other’s hands in silence. He is about to say something, make some stupid joke, when Willem begins to cry, and not just cry, but keen, bending over and moaning, sobbing like he has never seen anyone sob. “Willem,” he says, desperately, “Willem, don’t cry: I’m going to be fine. I really am. Don’t cry. Willem, don’t cry.” He sits up in the bed, wraps his arms around Willem. “Oh, Willem,” he sighs, near tears himself. “Willem, I’m going to be okay. I promise you.” But he can’t soothe him, and Willem cries and cries.
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mysweetheartjude · 2 years
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‘My sweetheart,’ Harold says again, and he wants him to stop; he never wants him to stop. ‘My baby.’
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mysweetheartjude · 2 years
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My phone rang, and although it wasn't a sinister time of night, and although nothing had happened that I would later see as foreshadowing, I knew, I knew.
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