RTINW: "Eat, Pray, Love" Edition

So for probably the past year V has been telling about this book Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I had heard of the book...I vaguely remember seeing the author on Oprah but I remember not being particularly interested in reading it. But then V told me this book was amazing and she kept insisting and insisting that I read it. So over the past few weeks I finally read this book...and damn. I love it.

Reading is a passion of mine. A hobby of mine. But also a skill. Give me a Harry Potter book and some fruit snacks and I can knock 600 pages out in 24 hours. But with Eat, Pray, Love it was almost like a good meal...or good sex. I wanted it to last forever. So I savored it. I'd force myself to stop reading it, just so I wouldn't finish too quickly.

So in honor of this book that I am now in a co-dependent relationship with, I thought I'd share some of the realest things I never wrote but am SO glad that I read:

1. "In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place."
2. "People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it."
3. "Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it."
4. "I don't want us to take anything from each other."