Like every child, I adored her. Until I formed a brain and got to know her.
Interpretation
This quote captures the transition from childhood admiration to a more complex understanding of a parent or guardian.
Augusten Burroughs reflects on the evolution of his feelings towards his mother, moving from innocent adoration in childhood to a more nuanced understanding shaped by maturity. This highlights how relationships, especially familial ones, can transform as we grow and gain awareness of the complexities of those we once idealized.
In practice
In a speech about family dynamics, one could use this quote to illustrate how our perceptions of parents evolve.
This is how you survive the unsurvivable, this is how you lose that which you cannot bear to lose, this is how you reinvent yourself, overcome your abusers, fulfill your ambitions and meet the love of your life: by following what is true, no matter where it leads you.
The truth is humbling, terrifying, and often exhilarating. It blows the doors off the hinges and fills the world with fresh air.
Some damage is too severe, some harm endures. And what you have to do is accept it. And by accept it I mean, don’t be the paralyzed person in the bed who is waiting to walk again. Realize, it’s never gonna happen. And find some other way to get around –swing from a vine, get a Mad Max wheelchair. Anything but…wait.
But then, look at me. My brain is incorrectly formed, and I'm shaped like a tube. Plus, I'm an alcoholic, a "survivor" of childhood sexual abuse, was raised in a cult and have no education. So, really, if you think about it, the only thing that separates me from the guy with the stinky foot and no teeth is a book deal and some cologne.
I think part of the reason I'm attracted to Foster is because he's such a mess. I mean, the people I have loved in my life have never been easy to love. I'm not used to normal. I'm used to disaster. I don't know, as messed up as he is, he's also sort of exciting, sort of a challenge. I'm accustomed to working for love.
Time moves only forward, never back. We look forward to a moment and then it arrives and an instant later it is gone. Like something on the surface of a river that we reached for but did not touch in time and it carried on, away. You cannot be a prisoner of your past against your will. Because you can only live in the past inside your mind.
Let us forget and forgive injuries.
Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open.
In this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog.
Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.
I am a strict monogamist: it is twenty years since I last went to bed with two women at once, and then I was in my cups and not myself.
The three short years I spent at Harvard, where I lived with excellent people, taught me not only that I must know how to choose my partners but also that choosing excellent partners is a skill you can learn. Obviously, when you spend time with the best, you learn how to choose among them.
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