“Where do we go from here? I started off this crazy weekend by trying to make sense of these moments—these moments that you know you’re going to remember—but like anything else, nothing exists without its opposite. So maybe it makes a certain kind of sense that I ended up thinking about the moments you know you’ll forget. Or, more accurately, try to remember incorrectly. How do we all learn how to do that? Relive something again and again in our heads until it takes on a slightly different light, a less truthful tone, until the memory can’t injure us as directly, until it joins the ranks of the more manageable.”

“I think about how we can’t always live in the moment because moments pass, and when we’re lucky, we have the kind of moments that we can’t help wanting to go back to. We think about them, remember how they felt, and when more time passes we tell stories of these moments that are worth reliving.”

“There’s this moment when I first wake, a moment where I forget that you left me, that you didn’t want me. And for just a second, everything is perfect and I reach for you, but you’re not there. And then I remember, and I can’t breathe. So I lock away all of the want and need, all of the pain, until I can breathe again. And if that makes me a cold bastard, so be it. It’s what I have to do to survive.”

“But I do know that the world is the most beautiful place and that we're lucky to be here. I know that we have to live every moment, because we won't be here forever, and that I wouldn't want to be anyway. Because knowing something's going to end makes you appreciate it more, makes you want to savour every moment.”

“It's somehow worse, now, after I've slept, because of that one moment-you know the one- when you're just waking up and you forget the new reality. Forget how your life has spontaneously combusted and instead think it was all just a bad dream. That everything's going to be okay. Until you remember. You jolt up, look around, and realize nothing is ever going to be okay again. That's exactly where I'm at right now.”

“There are things we never tell anyone. We want to but we can’t. So we write them down. Or we paint them. Or we sing about them. It’s our only option. To remember. To attempt to discover the truth. Sometimes we do it to stay alive. These things, they live inside of us. They are the secrets we stash in our pockets and the weapons we carry like guns across our backs. And in the end we have to decide for ourselves when these things are worth fighting for, and when it’s time to throw in the towel. Sometimes a person has to die in order to live. Deep down, I know you know this. You just can’t seem to do anything about it. I guess it’s a sad fact of life that some of us move on and some of us inevitably stay behind. Only in this case I’m not sure which one of us is doing which. You were right about one thing though. It’s not fate. It’s a choice. And who knows, maybe we’ll meet again someday, somewhere up above all the noise. Until then, when you think of me, try and remember the good stuff. Try and remember the love.”