The Midnight Library

by Matt Haig

Nora stared down at the small mole on her left hand. That mole had been through everything she’d been

through. And it just stayed there, not caring. Just being a mole.

A soul-sickness festered within her. Her mind was throwing itself up.

in free fall and she had no one to talk to.

She wanted to have a purpose, something to give her a reason to exist.

No one needed her. She was superfluous to the universe.

The thought was like a ceaseless mind-cramp, something too uncomfortable to bear yet too strong to avoid.

She was antimatter, with added self-pity.

Happy moments can turn into pain, given time.

She wasn’t made for this life.

Every move had been a mistake, every decision a disaster, every day a retreat from who she’d imagined she’d be.

Happy. ...

I had all the chances to make something of my life, and I blew every one of them. Through my own carelessness and misfortune, the world has retreated from me, and so now it makes perfect sense that I should retreat from the world. If I felt it was possible to stay, I would. But I don’t. And so I can’t. I make life worse for people. I have nothing to give. I’m sorry. Be kind to each other.

Nora was only able to think of herself in terms of the things she wasn’t.

The regrets which were on permanent repeat in her mind.

If you had done just one thing differently, you would have a different life story.

‘Doing one thing differently is often the same as doing everything differently.

all that pain of letting people down and letting herself down,

The weight of guilt and remorse and sorrow too strong.

she knew that staying in Bedford was the worse option. And yet she picked it. Because of some strange predictive homesickness that festered alongside a depression that told her, ultimately, she didn’t deserve to be happy.

the pain of me living as the bloody disaster that is myself is greater than the pain anyone else will feel if I were to die.

‘Want,’ she told her, in a measured tone, ‘is an interesting word. It means lack. Sometimes if we fill that lack with something else the original want disappears entirely. Maybe you have a lack problem rather than a want problem.

‘So, you see? Sometimes regrets aren’t based on fact at all. Sometimes regrets are just . . .’ She searched for the appropriate term and found it. ‘A load of bullshit.’

She thought of a study she had read about somewhere, about fish. Fish were more like humans than most people think. Fish get depression. They had done tests with zebrafish. They had a fish tank and they drew a horizontal line on the side of it, halfway down, in marker pen. Depressed fish

stayed below the line. But give those same fish Prozac and they go above the line, to the top of their tanks, darting about like new. Fish get depressed when they have a lack of stimulation. A lack of everything. When they are just there, floating in a tank that resembles nothing at all.

you also have to know what you like.

And sometimes you have to try a few things before that becomes clear.’

‘If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail.

Aim to look and act and think like you.

Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don’t give a second thought when p...

She couldn’t stop smiling. Here was her brother. Her brother, whom she hadn’t seen in two years and hadn’t had any semblance of a good relationship with in far longer,

looking healthy and happy and like he actually liked her.

life isn’t simply made of the things we do, but the things we don’t do too.

the tree that is our life – develops branches. And think of all those branches, departing from the trunk at different heights. And think of all those branches, branching off again, heading in often opposing directions. Think of those branches becoming other branches, and those becoming twigs. And think of the end of each of those twigs, all in different places, having started from the same one. A life is like that, but on a bigger scale. New branches are formed every second of every day. And from our perspective – from everyone’s perspective – it feels like a . . . like a continuum. Each twig has travelled only one journey. But there are still other twigs. And there are also other todays. Other lives that would have been different if

you’d taken different directions earlier in your life. This is a tree of life.

Lots of religions and mythologies have talked about the tree of life. It’s there in Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity. Lots of philosophers and writers have talked about tree metaphors too. For Sylvia Plath, existence was a fig tree and each possible life she could live – the happily-married one, the successful-poet one – was this sweet juicy fig, but ...

It can drive you insane, thinking of all the other li...

too often our view of success is about some external bullshit idea of achievement – an Olympic medal, the ideal husband, a good salary.