The Rest of Us Just Live Here

by Patrick Ness

I thought I could organize freedom. How Scandinavian of me.

that it’s not the answer to everything but it’s the one thing that’s going to make the questions more bearable.”

“Why do we even have paper anymore?” “Books,” Jared says. “Toilet paper,” Mel says. “Because paper is a thing,” I say, “and sometimes you need things rather than just thoughts.”

That could happen tomorrow. It could happen five thousand years from now. Life, eh?

The rest of us just have to live here, hovering around the edges, left out of it all, for the most part.

We’re all a little obsessive, us Mitchell kids.

“No one in this family is screwed up,” says our mother, coming through the front door. “That’s the official campaign line and we’re sticking to it.”

It’s just us family now. Embrace the warmth.

I can relate, though not to being Catholic, which I’ve apparently decided mooses are).

“What if I go crazy?” I finally whisper. I feel Jared shrug. “At least it’ll piss off the Senator.” We laugh. A little.

And if you don’t know, you don’t want to.

This doesn’t define me or any of the people I love, okay? It’s just life. And we’ve moved on.

they seemed to start resenting the healthy daughter just sitting there, the one that they’d sacrificed so much for, no longer needing the sacrifice, if she’d ever really needed it in the first place.

This is the part of your life where it gets taken over by other people’s stories and there’s nothing you can do about it except hold on tight and hope you’re still alive at the end to take up your own story again.

You needed to know it, but for the rest of this, I’m choosing my own story. Because if you can’t do that, you might as well just give up.

You see how lucky I am? Knowing that people love me? So lucky. So stupidly lucky.

what’s in your head is still illness but way more complicated than any muscle ache;

“The thing about scars, though,” she says. “Nothing you can do except wear them with pride.”

Mel—who has that combination of total self-belief and utter self-doubt that is more common than people think—is

I feel like something awful’s going to happen anyway. I feel that all the time. Even when I’m happy.”

“There’s nothing like a bunch of Gods to show you how alone you really are.”

but when you choose your family, you get to choose how it is between you, too. This is how we work. I hope you get to choose your family and I hope it means as much to you as mine does to me.

We could keep being too afraid to say we don’t know stuff and then the future will come and eat us anyway and we’ll regret not doing all that stuff we wished we did.

“The mistake of every adult, though, is to think darkness and hardship aren’t important to young people because we’ll grow out of it. Who cares if we will? Life is happening to us now, just like it’s happening to you.”

We share our craziness, our neuroses, our little bit of screwed-up-ness that comes from our family. We share it. And it feels like love.

“We’re each other’s questions, aren’t we? The question that never gets an answer.”

“Do you really believe in fate that much, Mikey? Do you really believe it exists only to punch you in the face?”

“Why does everything have to mean something, though?” Jared asks. “Haven’t we got enough life to be living?”

“Everything’s always ending. But everything’s always beginning, too.”