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.

“What, then?” “Nothing,” I say. But I immediately wish I would have said, “Everything.”

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.

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

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

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.

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