When the World Tips Over

by Jandy Nelson

Her mother had told her once that the great loves of one’s life weren’t necessarily romantic. Dizzy had thought she had three great loves already, then: her best friend, Lizard; her mom, Chef Mom; and her oldest brother Wynton who was so awesome he gave off sparks. But what now? She didn’t know people could stop loving you. She’d thought friendship was permanent, like matter.

He only found himself, his real self, in novels, not even in the stories and characters, but in the sentences, the lone words.

No one he knew read like he did, like his life depended on it.

I never want her to know that a life is an abandoned unfinished story.

There’s an invisible artery joining the hearts of mothers and daughters through which pain is transferred from one generation to the next.

She didn’t know what people were supposed to do with the leftover love that no one wanted anymore.

If people bear the trauma of their ancestors, doesn’t it follow they also bear their rhapsodies? If there is generational pain passed down, mustn’t there also be generational joy? If there are family curses that drop through time, mustn’t there also be family blessings that do the same?

He was such a rough draft, had no idea what parts of himself would make it, what crap parts would be cut.

Do you follow your destiny or your heart when they aren’t one and the same? Which pull is stronger?

If only we could have joys without sorrows, blessings without curses.

A real love story is not falling in love once, but again and again through all sorts of incarnations. Theirs was a real love story.

I think it’s possible to live our lives without believing in destiny, without feeling it at work in the choices we make, or the choices that are made for us. But it feels impossible to tell the story of our lives without it. Stories give our lives structure, and that structure is destiny.

he wondered now how much of the yearning at the core of his being, the feeling of emotional exile, all the lonely hope-bitten hours, were because this man had left him. What if the deep-seated fear that there was something wrong or askew at his core began with this man’s rejection and was only reinforced by his siblings?

I was a child who had to face the lack of inevitability in life, the stranglehold of mortality, the revelation that life goes on, but the people you love the most don’t. What does that do to the forming psyche if your first experience of all-consuming boundaryless love is one of such profound loss? If you feel such a love again, do you trust it? Do you sabotage it? Are you ever again emotionally and psychologically capable of letting go of anything? Anyone?

I do believe now that when the world tips over, joy spills out with all the sorrow.

He had to stop blaming others for his life. Yes, his dad abandoned him, and his brother alienated him, but neither was responsible for who he’d be in this family, or in the world. That was on him. As Sandro said to him yesterday, his story of choice has always been a woe-is-me one. He wanted to write a new story now. A big dreamy romantic one like his great-grandfather’s even.