Crying adds something: crying is you, plus tears. But the feeling Colin had was some horrible opposite of crying. It was you, minus something. He kept thinking about one word - forever - and felt the burning ache just beneath his rib cage.
Interpretation
This quote explores the depth of emotional loss and longing.
John Green's quote poignantly captures the essence of loss and the emptiness that follows when a significant part of oneself is missing. The contrast between crying, which represents a release of emotions, and the 'opposite of crying,' suggests a profound pain that is not expressed outwardly but is felt deeply within. The mention of the word 'forever' indicates a longing that transcends time, emphasizing how the absence can linger indefinitely, creating a sense of enduring ache.
In practice
In a speech about love and loss, you might reflect on how we carry emotional scars.
Always' was a promise! How can you just break the promise?" "Sometimes people don't always understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said. Isaac shot me a look. "Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway. Don't you believe in true love?" I didn't answer. I didn't have an answer. But I thought that if true love did exist, that was a pretty good definition of it.
Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should.
I find it really offensive when people say that the emotional experiences of teenagers are less real or less important than those of adults. I am an adult, and I used to be a teenager, and so I can tell you with some authority that my feelings then were as real as my feelings are now.
I don't think pandemics make us afraid of death, I think they make us afraid of oblivion. They force us to grapple with the futility of effort. Also they make us barf which isn't fun either... Wash your hands, cover your coughs, and find a way to hold in balance the futility of effort with the necessity to struggle.
So often we try to make other people feel better by minimizing their pain, by telling them that it will get better (which it will) or that there are worse things in the world (which there are). But that's not what I actually needed. What I actually needed was for someone to tell me that it hurt because it mattered. I have found this very useful to think about over the years, and I find that it is a lot easier and more bearable to be sad when you aren't constantly berating yourself for being sad.
We kiss. Her hands are freezing on my face, and she tastes like coffee and the smell of the onion is still stuck in my nose, and my lips are all dry from the endless winter. And it's awesome.
Above all, I am motivated by the most mysterious drive we ever experience -that of love - I don't think there's any influence on my life that compares with love.
How amazing is it that when a young gay or lesbian person has their first crush, no matter where they live in the country, they can imagine that all the way to marriage? When I first experienced a crush, in Texas, there was maybe a second of butterflies that were then dammed in by the fear of what that meant.
I was a heavy heart to carry_x000D_ My beloved was weighed down_x000D_ My arms around his neck_x000D_ My fingers laced to crown._x000D_ I was a heavy heart to carry_x000D_ My feet dragged across ground_x000D_ And he took me to the river_x000D_ Where he slowly let me drown_x000D_ My love has concrete feet_x000D_ My love's an iron ball_x000D_ Wrapped around your ankles _x000D_ Over the waterfall
What I say is that the supreme and singular joy of making love resides in the certainty of doing evil.
I testify that no one of us is less treasured or cherished of God than another. I testify that He loves each of us—insecurities, anxieties, self-image, and all. He doesn’t measure our talents or our looks; He doesn’t measure our professions or our possessions. He cheers on every runner, calling out that the race is against sin, not against each other.
A boy spends his time finding a girl to sleep with. A real man spends his time looking for the one worth waking up to.
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