"This is how I feel."

Bits and pieces from our conversation last night keep coming back to me. You'd finally gotten around to finishing This Is How You Lose Her. There are certain lines in there, you said, that just break your heart.

"Oh yeah? Like which ones?" I said, already dreading the answer. Watch it be the same one. Please, not that one.

"Well, in the story where the two women are talking, and one asks the other if she loves him and she says something like, when the lights go on and off, and you stop what you're doing and wait because you can't really do anything until the lights go back on, that's how it feels. And I just thought, yeah. I can totally see that."

All I said is that I remember that one too, as I recited to myself, "I told her about the lights in my old home in the capital, how they flickered and you never knew if they would go out or not. You put down your things and you waited and couldn't do anything really until the lights decided. This, I told her, is how I feel."

This is how I feel.

But of course. He chose that one.