Or Maybe I'd Do What I Always

I Have A Lot Of Rage About Things That Didn't Happen To Me, Tied Up With Watching An Immigrant, Working-class Father Struggle To Make His Way Through The World - And Seeing How Society Was Modeled To Keep Him In His Place.

It Had Occurred To Sean Once - On A Bender About Ten Years Before With Some Buddies, Sean And A Bloodstream Full Of Bourbon Turning Philosophical - That Maybe They Had Gotten In That Car. All Three Of Them. And What They Now Thought Of As Their Life Was Just A Dream State. That All Three Of Them Were, In Reality, Still Eleven-year-old Boys Trapped In Some Cellar, Imagining What They'd Become If They Ever Escaped And Grew Up.

Your First Family Is Your Blood Family And You Always Be True To That. That Means Something. But There's Another Family And That's The Kind You Go Out And Find. Maybe Even By Accident Sometimes. And They're As Much Blood As Your First Family. Maybe More So, Because They Don't Have To Look Out For You And They Don't Have To Love You. They Choose To.

Grief, He Said, Is Carnivorous.

And Often The Worst Thing Wasn't The Victims--they Were Dead, After All, And Beyond Any More Pain. The Worst Thing Was Those Who Loved Them And Survived Them. Often The Walking Dead From Now On, Shell-shocked, Hearts Ruptured, Stumbling Through The Remainder Of Their Lives Without Anything Left Inside Of Them But Blood And Organs, Impervious To Pain, Having Learned Nothing Except That The Worst Things Did, In Fact, Sometimes Happen. (mystic River)