Shadow Me (Shatter Me, #4.5)

by Tahereh Mafi

I’m lonely but I’m not alone. My body works, my brain works, I’m alive. It’s a good life. I have to make a conscious effort to remember that. To choose to be happy every day. If I didn’t, I think my own pain would’ve killed me a long time ago.

if I considered other people’s mediocre standards a sufficient metric by which to measure my own accomplishments, I’d never have amounted to anything.”

“I don’t think you do, actually. In fact, I hope you don’t. I wouldn’t want you to know how I feel right now. I wouldn’t wish that for you.”

I’m so happy for my friends. I love them, even when they piss me off. I care about them. I want their joy. But it still hurts a little when it feels like, everywhere I look, everyone seems to have someone. Everyone but me.

Instead, I’m a big, raw, bleeding heart, and I spend my days pretending not to notice that I want more. That I need more.

Maybe it sounds weird to say, but I know I could love the shit out of someone. I feel it, in my heart. This capacity to love. To be romantic and passionate. Like it’s a superpower I have. A gift, even. And I’ve got no one to share it with.

I love how she feels things so deeply that sometimes even joy manages to wound her. It’s who she is. She’s all heart.

They clearly have crazy chemistry. Their relationship never made a lot of sense to me—I couldn’t understand how someone like Warner could be an emotional partner to anyone, much less someone like Juliette: a girl who eats, sleeps, and breathes emotion. I rarely saw him emote anything. I worried that Juliette was giving him too much credit, that she put up with too much of his bullshit in exchange for—I don’t even know what. A sociopath with an extensive coat collection?

Because it’s not the pain that’s unendurable. It’s the hopelessness. It’s the hopelessness that makes you reckless.