The Life Impossible

by Matt Haig

There are two kinds of ghosts that torment you when a young person dies. The ghost of who they were, and the ghosts of who they could have been. His death created a hole right through me that could never again be filled.

That’s the thing with grief. The way it kind of sinks you into death as well. I mean, you are still biologically functioning obviously. You are out there breathing and seeing and talking but you aren’t properly alive any more.

T-shirt which said ‘Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour’ on it. The word ‘eras’ entered my mind and didn’t leave. I thought about how you enter a new one.

You see, the problem was this: I sincerely believed I wasn’t a good person who deserved happiness. I had become who I believed I was. A terrible human. Believing yourself to be bad is very often a prelude to doing bad things.

‘It is dangerous to shine. It attracts the crows.

The point of desperation is often the point of truth. When things are wrong, we need to reach rock bottom in order for change to happen. We sometimes need to feel trapped in order to find the way out. We don’t meet ourselves in the light and air. We don’t understand the radio when the song is playing. We sometimes need to smash the thing to see how it is made.