The Littlest Library

by Poppy Alexander

Not that, because that would mean having someone else to share her life with. It was the most wonderful concept of course, but a distant one, like a daydream—something that might happen in other people’s lives, but not her own.

Maybe the antidote to terror was to do the very thing that frightened you; to dare to actively seek happiness. Who knew?

“The only answer to the fear of losing everything is to open up to the possibility of happiness and the possibility of loss. Two sides of the same coin, isn’t it? Better that, than refusing to be happy just in case.”

“If only someone would pay me to enjoy myself. But unfortunately reading, in itself, isn’t a job as such.”

From everything her experience showed her, romance was better left in books.

‘The broken heart. You think you will die, but you just keep living, day after day after terrible day . . .’”

These answers might not be the ones she wanted, but that was life.

“Sometimes we play tricks on ourselves. We find excuses to hide from our feelings because we don’t want to see the truth for what it really is.”