Holding Up the Universe: A poignant, exhilarating love story from the New York Times bestselling author

by Jennifer Niven

“Atticus, he was real nice.…” “Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.” —To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

As long as you live, there’s always something waiting; and even if it’s bad, and you know it’s bad, what can you do? You can’t stop living. (Truman Capote, In Cold Blood)

“People are shitty for a lot of reasons. Sometimes they’re just shitty people. Sometimes people have been shitty to them and, even though they don’t realize it, they take that shitty upbringing and go out into the world and treat others the same way. Sometimes they’re shitty because they’re afraid. Sometimes they choose to be shitty to others before others can be shitty to them. So it’s like self-defensive shittiness.”

It’s the suddenness of life changing in an instant that makes me anxious when I sleep and makes me tell myself to breathe when I’m awake.

Yes, it seems okay. “I went to bed that night thinking, Last night she was here. This morning she was here. Now she’s gone, and not for a few days, but forever. How can something so final happen in an instant? No preparation. No warning. No chance to do all the things you planned to do. No chance to say goodbye.”

Two broken, lonely people who maybe aren’t so broken or lonely anymore.

“It’s not moving on, Libbs. It’s moving differently. That’s all it is. Different life. Different world. Different rules. We don’t ever leave that old world behind. We just create a new one.”

This is what I know about loss: It doesn’t get better. You just get (somewhat) used to it. You never stop missing the people who go away. For something that isn’t there anymore, it weighs a ton.