keep meeting me. Lately, he was really into existentialism. The existentialists said you couldn’t make decisions based on preexisting norms or codes, which were always too general for any given case. Rather, every decision you made created you. The decision (existence) comes first, and creates essence.

Nothing extraordinary was happening anymore, or would ever happen again. I was just there with my relatives, living pointless, shapeless days that weren’t bringing me any closer to anything.

Moreover, my policy at the time was that, when confronted by two courses of action, one should always choose the less conservative and more generous. I thought this was tantamount to a moral obligation for anyone who had any advantages at all, and especially for anyone who wanted to be a writer.

This was even more true with my aunts. They didn’t take anything I did seriously; it was all some trivial, mildly annoying side activity that I insisted on for some reason, having nothing to do with real life. I couldn’t challenge or contradict this view, even to myself, because I really didn’t know how to do anything real.

You rationalize the rejection of your peers by telling yourself it comes from other people’s deficiencies rather than your own.

“I thought I wouldn’t be able to find you,” he said. “I never feel like I’ll be able to find you.” I wanted to touch him, to hold him somehow, but I just touched his sleeve.

I didn’t really know what to make of this, though it was certainly true that consciousness could be a trap.

That was the best thing about college: it was so easy to leave. You could be in the place where you lived, having an argument that you had basically started, and then you could just say, “See you later,” and go somewhere else.

she asked him how long until she would be able to function normally, and he said two years. At first, she said, that seemed like forever, but when she thought about it more, it wasn’t that long. “What does ‘functioning normally’ mean?” I asked. “Being able to face the past. Having a normal sex life. Not lying awake all night in fits of anxiety.”