閱 咖啡

Love, Rosie

Cecelia Ahern

2005

ISBN 0-7868-9108-4

ISBN-13: 978-0-7868-9108-5

…so maybe Bethany is now your best friend and I have been relegated to just being your “friend”. At least be that to me, Alex. In a few years time if my name ever comes up you will probably say, “Rosie, now there’s a name I haven’t heard in years. We used to be best friends. I wonder what she’s doing now; I haven’t seen or thought of her in years !” You will sound like my mum and dad when they have dinner parties with friends and talk about old times. They always mention people I’ve never ever heard of when they’re talking about some of the most important days of their lives. Yet where are those people now ? How could someone who you are on talking terms with now? Or in Dad’s case, how could he not know where his own best friend from college lives ? He studied with the man for five years !

..After all, soul mates always end up together…Ex-girlfriends are easily forgotten. Best friends stay with you forever.

It’s hard to grasp things and keep them firmly in your grip because quicker than you know it they slide right through your fingers and you lose control.

Our life is made up of time, our days are measured in hours, our pay measure by those hours, our knowledge is measured by years. We grab a quick few minutes in our busy day to have a coffee break. We rush back to our desks, we watch the clock, we live by appointments. And yet your time eventually runs out and you wonder in your heart of heart if those seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, and decades were being spent the best way they possibly could. In other words, if you could change anything, would you ?

…You deserve someone who thinks about you constantly, someone who spends every minute of every day just wondering what you’re doing, where you are, who you’re with, and if you’re Ok. You need someone who can help you reach your dreams and who can protect you from your fears. You need someone who will treat you with respect, love every part of you, especially your flaws. You should be with someone who can make you happy, really happy, dancing on air happy. Someone who should have taken the chance to be with you years ago instead of getting scared and being too afraid to try.

I think you’re a bit of an onion…A funny onion too….I think it’s because there are many layers to you…and as the years go by, another one is peeled away. I think there’s a lot more under there than people think.

…I know it’s hard for other people to understand what he’s like. All you see is an overprotective paranoid mess, but god does that make me feel safe and wanted. And his stupidity makes me laugh ! We have a long way to go to being the perfect couple, we certainly don’t live in the fairy tale marriage, he doesn’t shower me with rose petals and fly me to Paris on weekends but when I get my hair cut, he notices. When I dress up to go out at night, he compliments me. When I cry, he wipes my tears. When I feel lonely, he makes me feel loved. And who needs Paris, when you can get a hug ?

Please do not torture yourself with questions that you don’t know the answer to. You are going through a really difficult time right now but your are getting on with it, and you do it time and time again. Every knock back makes you stronger.

It’s funny because when you’re a child, you believe you can be anything you want to be, go whatever you want to go. There’s no limit to what you can dream. You expect the unexpected, you believe in magic, in fairy tales, and in possibilities. Then you grow older and that innocence is shattered and somewhere along the way the reality of life gets in the way and you’re hit by the realization that you can’t be all your wanted to be, you just might have to settle for a little bit less, or perhaps a variation of what you once wanted.

…why do we stop believing in ourselves ? Why do we let facts and figures and anything but dreams rule our lives ?

But know my mind is changed again. Nothing is impossible …it was there all the time, I just wasn’t reaching out far enough, that’s all.

So I can’t accept the job of my dreams because my family won’t move with me. Big deal. It’s not as though I bend over backwards for them. It’s not as though I arrange my life to revolve around them. It’s not as though I come home from work tired and still have dinner on the table for them, it’s not as though I perform wonderful supportive wifely chores when there’s a million other things I could be doing. It’s not as though I defend my daughter at school, constantly fighting with the teachers about how she is not Satan’s daughter. It’s not as tough I tolerate George’s mother for dinner every Sunday and listen to her whinge about how the food isn’t cooked right, about my hair, about the way I dress, about the way I have chosen to raise Katie and then have to sit through hours of returns of her favorite soaps. It’s not as tough I’m always the one to take a day off work when Katie is sick or drop whatever plans I’ve made to help people out.

…running away isn’t a way to solve anything.

You can run and run as fast and as far as you like but the truth is, whatever you run, there you are.

….Thank you for reminding me that I’m a woman, that I have hips, that I can be sexy, that I can laugh and have fun.