At the beginning of "The Crack-Up," Fitzgerald talks about how it's always the blows from outside that we remember and blame for our holes, when really it's the blows from inside, the tiny bad decisions and the wrong turns hitting with their soft fists, that do the most damage. The blows that, when we stop to notice them, are really the reasons we're all riddled with cracks.
When we finally paused and noticed all of those little breezes blowing through our skin we cast about, hurriedly trying to fill them in with whatever was at hand. Blue skies and green grass and ice cream, bourbon and high fives and jokes that weren't even all that funny. Fresh asparagus and running fast, slivers of stained glass and sheets of wax paper. All of that just served as wedges, shrill crowbars, pulling us more and more apart until you could see through us from space. Just riddled with holes, all of our goodness leaking out over the sidewalk, mingling in the drains to feed the fish. The only options left were to shatter or to cut new skins out of new cloth.
Those were bright smiles, though, then, bright smiles and brilliant laughter.
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