lit·tle weirds

by Jenny Slate

If I am too sweet for your tastes then just clamp your mouth shut and spin on your heels. I can't add sourness to my sap anymore just to fit onto a menu in a restaurant for wimps // 14

But what am I supposed to do with all of the parts of my heart that are only there to be given? // 36

I jumped out of their hands and into their mouths and I yelled EAT ME way before they even had a chance to get hungry and notice me and lift me up. // 41

I have been lying in order to be a part of something for almost forever. // 43

I want a prize for how well I can love. I want to be a prize for love. // 44

My physical heart feels so exposed, so shallowly planted. It feels like it is in my mouth. // 52

If you don't think it's important to hold hands and you are lukewarm about snuggling, don't bother sniffing around my stall… This exercise is actually too sad to do. All I want to do is disappear deeply into my own thing and you can decide whether or not to join but I'm pretty much going to enter my own vortex. But are you there? Please come close enough so that I can see you, and then I will try to do the rest for both of us, because I have not learned my lesson yet and do not possess the faith to believe in the partner who does his side of the thing. But I would love it if you would, because that would be dreamy and then I would also have that faith. // 56, 57

As the image of myself becomes sharper in my brain and more precious, I feel less afraid that someone else will erase me by denying me love. // 85

And we fell in love and we were together for a long time but it only felt like a zip, because that's what true love feels like. And we saw the sun and sipped our coffee together every single morning with our legs all tangled up under the sheets and we snoozed together every night and were each other's only boo-boo until the day that he croaked. // 105

I feel very lonely sometimes, and I felt very lonely when I bought the house. But I walk through the back door into the kitchen and I say to the oranges that they have made me the happiest woman on earth, and I say to however many ghosts might be watching me that I am so glad to be in the house, and I let my loneliness be there too. // 124

It is not natural to be a master in a casual way, to some of us. // 130

I never really want to argue with anyone ever again, nor am I under any sort of obligation to do so. // 143

Well, I am so sensitive and I am very fragile but so is everything else, and living with a dangerous amount of sensitivity is sort of what I have to do sometimes, and it is so very much better than living with no gusto at all. And I'd rather live with a tender heart, because that is the key to feeling the beat of all of the other hearts. // 162

I am wild and I want to be that and to belong to the greater group and have everyone know that my wildness is nothing but a bit of my colors and has nothing to do with whether or not I can be trusted. // 169

There is nothing sad anymore, there are only tiny and tart truths. // 184

Who knows how to do anything, but it's not nothing that I know all my feelings and I have trust in their changeable nature and I am an expert at making treats out of tribulations. // 187

And sometimes I enact destruction just to reenact my faith that things can be built up again. // 190

You are dear to yourself in the morning and it is the morning now. It is very private to have such a love for yourself. // 208

The reason I think that it will be hard to meet someone who I am actually interested in is that I cannot stand these preliminary moments when you can't deeply know each other and be together forever. My ex-husband says to me on the phone, after I tell him that I am lonely and I think I am weird around men, that I am not weird but that I am trying to force an intimacy that needs time to grow. He is right and he knows me very well. The other problem is that lots of people are simply not the right fit, but somehow I always make it my fault, even though it is nobody's fault at all when you don't fit. // 212

I can't become smaller to fit into a crouching love in somebody else's meager world. // 219