The Love That Split the World

by Emily Henry

Life felt like a blender that wanted to eat me.

God is a thing I think I see in glimmers all over: an enormous and vague warmth I sometimes catch pulsing around me, giving me shivers and making tears prick my eyes; a mysterious and limitless Thing threaded through all the world and refusing to be reduced to a name or a set of rules and instead winding itself through millions of stories, true and made up, connecting all breathing things.

Funny thing about belonging to two worlds: Sometimes you feel like you belong in zero.

I shrug. “Maybe it would’ve been better to let him hate me.” “Then you should’ve tried getting a worse personality and an uglier face.”

Being around Beau is like a really good version of being alone, as easy but more fun.

But I tell Alice the truth, because for the first time, I want the counseling to work more than I want to hide the parts of me I’m scared of.

It’s true that nothing has the potential to hurt so much as loving someone, but nothing heals like it either.

This hurts, but it’s good to move and be all the things I am but can’t explain. It’s good to let my body bear the tension instead of my mind.

I know what I feel, but saying it aloud feels risky, as if I’m daring the world to come at me.

She may be a bitch, but she’s a genuine bitch with heart.

I must be gawking. The idea that an eighteen-year-old girl who’s afraid of the dark might actually encompass a hole in time is almost funny. In an I-want-to-sob-in-the-shower kind of way.

And sometimes, we don’t talk about things because we don’t want to be comforted. We don’t want anyone to tell us it wasn’t our fault, or that they forgive us, or that we did the best we could. We want to hold on to that pain because we think that’s what we deserve. We worry that if we let it go, we’re dishonoring it.

“There once was a man named Abraham, and God spoke to him freely,” Grandmother says. “Like you talk to me,” I say. “Sort of like that,” Grandmother says. “Maybe more like Megan and God talk, in quiet thoughts and deep, intense feelings.

“Young people always think old people are annoying,” she says. “But we don’t care, because we think they’re annoying.”

the world’s going to keep right on being terrible and beautiful all at once.”

thank you for being the kind of people who fight through the hard things and appreciate the good.