Beautiful Ugly

by Alice Feeney

Some people think hiding their grief will make it go away, but in my experience it only makes it hurt more. Grief is only ever yours; it’s not something you can share,

The problem with reaching the top is that there is only one

direction left to go: down.

We need to talk is never a good start to any conversation.

Grief is a patient thief and steals far more than people who have never known it realize.

“Success is often the result of a series of failures. Try to remember that. You never learn anything from success, but failure can teach you everything about a person.

“People rarely know what they have until they lose it. They spend their lives searching for a better one, wanting more, needing more, blind to the fact that they already had it all. I think sometimes it’s only when something gets taken from a person that they appreciate what they had.

don’t. I keep my thoughts to myself because silence cannot be misquoted.

It’s the not giving up that separates the winners from the losers.

The night sky here is so clear and the stars are so much brighter than I have ever seen them anywhere else. It’s strange to think that this spectacular night sky is always above us, wherever we are. We’re all just too busy looking down to remember to look up.

Wives think their husbands will change but they don’t. Husbands think their wives won’t change but they do.

Children are expensive and high-maintenance and they don’t come with an off switch. None of our friends with kids are happy and they all look permanently exhausted.”

But places, like people, can often seem nice at first, until you get to know the real them and see them for what they are.

There’s no vaccination for heartbreak and there’s no cure.

Life is beautiful and life is ugly and we have to learn to live with both sides of that same coin and see the light in the darkness. The world is Beautiful Ugly, relationships are Beautiful Ugly, love is Beautiful Ugly. Understanding that makes life easier to live with.”

The three basic fundamental fears that all humans experience are: Fear of death. Fear of abandonment. Fear of failure.

“Nobody said it was easy, but love is always worth fighting for, isn’t it?

But I do, so I remind myself what my nana always told me when I was scared as a child: there’s no need to be afraid of the dead, it’s the living you have to watch out for.

“Then I dried my tears and told her that I would destroy you.”

The way I see it, you’ve been served a triple-decker shit sandwich with a side of completely fucked, but it’s exactly what you ordered.