“She’s a part of me that I don’t understand,” says Jon.
“And you can’t just get over her?”
“She’s like a cancer in my mind and some part of me knows that she’ll be there until I die. Some part of me knows that she’ll kill me. There’s nothing I can do that she won’t be in. I could drink water and it would taste like her lips. I could stare at the sky and the birds flying by would be there like the first time we kissed. And you know what? None of it was real. Not one moment. She’s was my whole life and now I’m left with nothing but the fragment of a broken memory. Less than a moment. I built my heart around her in the time it took to smoke two cigarettes.”
“That’s a bit fucking much, is it really that bad?”
“She ruined my whole life.”
“Were you happy when you were with her?”
“Yes.”
“Then she didn’t ruin anything. What happens or happened to her doesn’t even matter. What happens to you now, that’s the important bit.” Jon is quiet for a moment.
“Thank you, Edward, I think.”
“For what?”
“For not being the rest of the world. For not being alien,” says Jon.
“I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” says Edward.

//Iain S. Thomas, 2012, Intentional dissonance