Eat. Pray. Love.

“I disappear into the person I love. I am the permeable membrane. If I love you, you can have it all. My money, my time, my body, my dog, my dog's money. I will assume your debts and project upon you all sorts of nifty qualities you never actually cultivated in yourself. I will give you all this and more until I am so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover is by becoming infatuated with someone else.”

“It begins when the object of your affection bestows upon you a heady, hallucinogenic dose of something you've never even dared to admit you wanted. An emotional speed ball of thunderous love and excitement. Soon you start craving that attention with the hungry obsession of any junkie. When its withheld you turn sick, crazy, not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged this addiction in the first place, but now refuses to pony up the good stuff. God damn him. And he used to give it to you for free. The next stage finds you skinny, shaking in the corner, certain only that you'd sell your soul just to have that one thing one more time. Meanwhile, the object of your adoration is now repulsed by you. He looks at you like someone he's never met before. The irony is that you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out, you're a mess, unrecognizable even to your own eyes. You have now reached infatuation's final destination: the complete and merciless devaluation of self.”

“It's one of the quietest and loneliest places in Rome. The city has grown up around it over centuries. It feels like a precious wound, like a heartbreak you won't let go of because it hurts too good. We all want things to stay the same. We settle for living in misery because we're afraid of change, of things laying in ruins. But then I looked around in this place, at the chaos it's endured, the way it's been adapted, burned, pillaged, and found a way to build itself back up again and I was reassured. Maybe my life hasn't been so chaotic, it's just the world that is and the only real trap is getting attached to any of it. Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.”