 “All I know about being good, I learned from TV. And in TV, flawed characters are constantly showing people they care with these surprising grand gestures. And I think that part of me still believes that’s what love is. But in real life, the big gesture isn’t enough. You need to be consistent, you need to be dependably good. You can’t just screw everything up and then take a boat out into the ocean to save your best friend, or solve a mystery, and fly to Kansas. You need to do it every day, which is so… hard.

When you’re a kid, you convince yourself that maybe the grand gesture could be enough, that even though your parents aren’t what you need them to be over and over and over again, at any moment, they might surprise you with something… wonderful. I kept waiting for that, the proof that even though my mother was a hard woman, deep down, she loved me and cared about me and wanted me to know that I made her life a little bit brighter. Even now, I find myself waiting.” - 🐴 