Dark Matter

by Blake Crouch

always puts me in mind of that F. Scott Fitzgerald line: Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.

It’s the beautiful thing about youth. There’s a weightlessness that permeates everything because no damning choices have been made,

no paths committed to, and the road forking out ahead is pure, unlimited potential.

We’re all just wandering through the tundra of our existence, assigning value to worthlessness, when all that we love and hate, all we believe in and fight for and kill for and die for is as meaningless as images projected onto Plexiglas.

Nothing exists. All is a dream. God—man—the world—the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars—a

dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space—and you…. And you are not you—you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought. MARK TWAIN

One of the things I love most about Daniela is her honesty. She has a direct link hardwired from her heart to her mouth. No filter, no self-revision. She says what she feels, without a shred of guile or cunning. She works no angles.

“I take so many moments with you for granted. I walk out the door to work, and I’m already thinking about my day, about the lecture I have to give, whatever, and I just…I had a moment of clarity getting on the train about how much I love you. How much you mean to me. Because you never know.”

What a miracle it is to have people to come home to every day. To be loved. To be expected.

Until everything topples, we have no idea what

we actually have, how precariously and perfectly it all hangs together.

I’ve always known, on a purely intellectual level, that our separateness and isolation are an illusion. We’re all made of the same thing—the blown-out pieces of matter formed in the fires of dead stars. I’ve just never felt that knowledge in my bones until that moment, there, with you. And it’s because of you.

But it’s all, in the end, just life. We see it macro, like one big story, but when you’re in it, it’s all just day-to-day, right? And isn’t that what you have to make your peace with?”

We’re so clearly at the end. Everything we’ve built—our house, our jobs, our friends, our collective life—it’s all gone. We have nothing left but one another, and yet, in this moment, I’m happier than I’ve ever been.