Through [my friends] I discovered what it was to love people. There was an art to it...which was not really all that different from the love that is necessary in the making of art. It required the effort of always seeing them for themselves and not as I wished them to be.
Interpretation
The quote reflects how love involves recognizing and appreciating people as they truly are, akin to the process of creating art.
Lucy Grealy emphasizes the deep connection between love and artistry, suggesting that both require an appreciation for authenticity. To truly love someone, one must see them for who they are, rather than trying to mold them into an idealized version of themselves, just as an artist must capture their subject's true essence.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a friendship celebration to highlight the importance of genuine love.
I spent five years of my life being treated for cancer, but since then I've spent fifteen years being treated for nothing other than looking different from everyone else. It was the pain from that, from feeling ugly, that I always viewed as the great tragedy of my life. The fact that I had cancer seemed minor in comparison.
When I tried to imagine being beautiful, I could only imagine living without the perpetual fear of being alone, without the great burden of isolation, which is what feeling ugly felt like.
I treated despair in terms of hierarchy: if there was a more important pain in the world, it meant my own was negated. I thought I simply had to accept the fact that I was ugly, and that to feel despair about it was simply wrong.
How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?
I am, as ever, a poor sinner, a captive of eternal love, running by the side of His triumphal chariot, and I have no desire to be anything else as long as I live.
His crush went from exciting to depressing, as if he'd gone from the first blush of infatuation to the terminal nostalgia of a former lover without even the temporary relief of an actual relationship in between.
He is dangerous, he is beautiful, I could drown in his understanding.
But the knowledge and love of our Divine Redeemer, of which we were the object from the first moment of His Incarnation, exceed all that the human intellect can hope to grasp. For hardly was He conceived in the womb of the Mother of God, when He began to enjoy the Beatific Vision, and in that vision all the members of His Mystical Body were continually and unceasingly present to Him, and He embraced them with His redeeming love
All night I streched my arms across him, rivers of blood, the dark woods, singing with all my skin and bone ''Please keep him safe. Let him lay his head on my chest and we will be like sailors, swimming in the sound of it, dashed to pieces.'' Makes a cathedral, him pressing against me, his lips at my neck, and yes, I do believe his mouth is heaven, his kisses falling over me like stars.
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