You better not cry - Augusten Burroughs

It had been only a couple of hours. But I knew.

I may not have known the facts of him; I couldn't have told you his favorite color, his birthday, or how he liked his coffee. I couldn't have said if he was a Republican or a Democrat or whether he was allergic to cats; but I knew the him of him.

I also knew that one didn't have a second date with this man and then a third, each time getting to know him a little bit better or seeing another "side" of him.

George was vertical, not horizontal. All of him was right there from the first moment. He didn't have "sides"; he had fathoms. If you didn't know him after one date, you couldn't know him. In this way, he was a treasure perfectly hidden right before my eyes. He was the wreck of Sussex in my backyard swimming pool.

I could only be truly crazy if I walked away from such a find.

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I struggled in my apartment that night, his phone number in my hand. I knew that if I called him, that would be it -my life would change. I had never felt such an irrational thing about a person I'd only just met. But I knew it was true.

My attraction had been immediate and profound. And it had nothing to do with the way he looked. My attraction was to what resided between his lines.

And attraction is our most ancient drive, it is why we are. Attraction is the very point of gravity; timespace itself bends to allow it. It is attraction in its pure form that holds the galaxy together.

Attraction is our glue.

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I knew this: there was only one of him in the world.

One hour with him was denser than all the years spent with everybody else I had ever known.

My instincts were not mistaken.

My instincts had been with me as I crawled from the swamp; my brain only showed up later. It was my instinct I would trust. Even if it defied logic.

Especially if it defied common sense. I wanted nothing to do with common.

But extremely rare and precious specialty items often carry an extraordinary price. I knew this, too.

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It was reckless and insane to feel this way about a person I didn't even know. My mind was hurling itself against the walls of my skull in protest. But beneath my sternum that night, I felt a kind of wisdom. I very nearly heard advice: Acceptance, when it comes, arrives in waves: Listen with your chest. You will feel a pendulum swing within you, favoring one direction or another. And that is your answer. The answer is always inside your chest. The right choice weighs more. That's how you know. It causes you to lean in its direction.

I thought, I don't know who he is, but I know he is mine.

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There were people who had so much strength that you could borrow some, just by being in the same room with them.