Reminders of Him

by Colleen Hoover

I take a drink of my coffee and close my eyes and cry because life can be so fucking cruel and hard, and I’ve wanted to quit living it so many times, but then moments like these remind me that happiness isn’t some permanent thing we’re all trying to achieve in life, it’s merely a thing that shows up every now and then, sometimes in tiny doses that are just substantial enough to keep us going.

Her face is a work of art. I wish there was a picture of it hanging on a wall in a museum somewhere so I could stand in front of it and stare at it for as long as I wanted.

I want good things for her because it seems like she hasn’t had a good thing in a long, long time.

There’s still a stigma with the men, but the women never get out with stigmas and badges of honor.

People say you fall in love, but fall is such a sad word when you think about it. Falls are never good. You fall on the ground, you fall behind, you fall to your death. Whoever was the first person to say they fell in love must have already fallen out of it. Otherwise, they’d have called it something much better.

“I fucking love you, Kenna. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. I miss you all the time, even when we’re together.” That stuck with me. “I miss you all the time, even when we’re together.”

So, you decide right now, right here. Are you gonna live in your sadness or are you gonna die in it?”

“Regret keeps you stuck on pause. So does prison. When you get out of here, make sure you hit play so you don’t forget to move forward.”

Leaving me without an answer is still an answer.

We’re all just a bunch of sad people doing what we have to do to make it until tomorrow. Some of us sadder than others. Some of us more willing to forgive than others.

Grudges are heavy, but for the people hurting the most, I suppose forgiveness is even heavier.

She’s so goddamn flawless. I don’t say that out loud, though, because I don’t want to diminish any of the other wonderful things about her by giving her a superficial compliment about her face. It would take away from how smart I think she is, and how compassionate, resilient, and spirited she is.

“I am going to be the best person I can be for your daughter. I promise. I’m going to give her the best life, and when she asks about her mother, I’m going to tell her what a wonderful person you are. I’ll make sure she grows up knowing how much you love her.”

Sometimes I wonder if we’re all born with equal amounts of good and evil. What if no one person is more or less malevolent than another, and that we all just release our bad at different times, in different ways?

Maybe some of us expel most of our bad behavior as toddlers, while some of us are absolute horrors during the teenage years. And then maybe there are those who expend very little malice until they’re adults, and even then, it just seeps out slowly. A little bit every day until we die.

It’s myself I’ve been hard on. But I think I’ve reached the point that forgiving myself finally feels okay.

Maybe it doesn’t matter whether something is a coincidence or a sign. Maybe the best way to cope with the loss of the people we love is to find them in as many places and things as we possibly can. And in the off chance that the people we lose are still somehow able to hear us, maybe we should never stop talking to them.

sometimes we do things for people we love, even though we wouldn’t choose to do those things for ourselves.”

Now that I’ve forgiven myself, the reminders of him only make me smile.