Where There's a Will (Lost Boys, #1)

by Jessie Walker

There’s only so much time a person’s allowed to grieve before it becomes an inconvenience, I’ve come to learn. Before the clock speeds up, and the world goes on spinning without you, you either pull yourself out in time to catch up, or you get left behind. That’s just the way it goes.

Grief is a bitch like that. Taking all that was once good, it cuts through like a knife—leaving a scar that is vile and ugly and permanent. Leaving memories that were once pure and light, forever stained by the bitter taste of loss.

That defining moment where life, as you knew it, shattered. Severing your life into a Before and After.

I swore to myself I’d never return to this place.

“Nightmares, for instance,” I go on. “No one actually wants to relive what happened to them, but like any organ that’s been damaged, the brain wants to find a way to heal. Because that’s exactly what trauma is: a brain injury. There’s like actual neuroscience and whatnot behind it”—I wave him off—“but that’s neither here nor there right now. The point is...the brain wants to fix what’s been broken.” I give him a considering look. “Figure out where it all went wrong, even if it’s only in our dreams.”

It becomes this sort of...obsession to take control back. Figure out where it all went wrong and flip the script. Change the ending.”

“One of the first steps in therapy, actually, is accepting that you’ll never be able to erase what happened. Even if you get your revenge, or escape what you couldn’t the first time, or whatever it is you’re after...the trauma will still be there. It’s just a temporary fix.

Despite what our brains are conditioned to believe, what’s broken doesn’t have to stay broken. We can change. We can be whole again.”

How can you be traumatized from something when it’s all you’ve ever known?”