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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Within hours of my best friend’s death this summer, I had faced an onslaught of emotions so intolerable, I felt like a foreigner in my own mind. Grasping for some semblance of order, I began naming my different moods. Example: “A Zombie Just Ate My Body,” which is like being frostbitten and stun-gunned and about 94 percent dead inside. At least that one is bearable, unlike “Get That Serrated Knife Out of My Chest,” which is as painful as it sounds.
Sometimes feeling things makes you remember you’re alive. And sometimes that is too much to handle.
This person is a shell of my best friend. The same on the outside but not within.
Digital books have no weight, no heft. This is part of why I love physical books.
“Oliver is—was—my chlorophyll,” I say simply. I wait for Levi to make fun of what I said. But he doesn’t. Then a moment later, it comes. “Oliver helped you produce oxygen which you then released as a waste product?” I sigh. “No. He converted light into energy.”
It’s strange to miss someone who isn’t dead or gone, but is simply across the room. It’s a new sensation, one I categorically dislike. Like there’s a hole inside me, an empty space I can’t fill.
