More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Two weeks later, he killed himself. There was a time when I thought he’d taken the easy way out, the despicable coward. Now I’m not sure I blame him. Part of me yearns for easy, for burdenless, for something other than this vicious cycle of pain. And I’m all too aware of the common denominator right at the center of it. Me.
In a way, I think the spectrum of love is a lot like the color spectrum. What is love but a distribution of pigment and feelings when light is dispersed. Warms and cools, pastels and darks. Fiery crimson to parallel our passionate, bleeding heart. Pink for sweet kisses, yellow for friendship, green for envy.
Rock bottom inches dangerously close, I can almost taste the gravel on my tongue. I would know—I’ve been there before, choking on mouthfuls of debris and piss-poor decisions, face-planting into the rubble. Part of me wonders if it tastes any different the second time around. Third time, fourth time. At some point, a rock is bound to sever something vital.
“Nobody is born strong, Cal. Nobody.” Moving closer, I skim my gaze over his taut features and strengthen my voice as I finish, “But, we’re all born fighters. And sometimes, the thing we’re fighting for is strength.”
What I’m starting to realize is that things meant to happen are just going to happen. There’s no preparing, no preventing. They just happen. And the risks we take, the memories we make, are the only things that count. That’s all that matters. Everything else is going to happen anyway.
Guilt is powerful—I don’t think it ever goes away. It changes a person.”
Her scars are a testament to everything she’s survived.
Everyone has demons. Monsters lurking around every corner, whispering in your ear, hiding under your bed, living just beneath your skin. The key is turning your demons into friends. Companions. Don’t let them scare you. Don’t let them chase you. Let them run with you. Only then, you will win.
“Do you…believe everything happens…for a reason?”
“No,” she says, just a vibration against my skin. A calming purr. “But I believe we’re capable of finding reason in everything.”
Her love language is every love language because love is just a way of life for her.
It never occurred to me that I ever had any real friends before. People said they cared, people even showed they cared. But when you don’t see yourself as being worthy of good things in your life, you become ignorant to those things.
“The only thing stronger than fear is our tenacity to overcome it.”
“And then when you experience that worst possible thing, you see it happening again. And again. You see it everywhere, in everyone you get close to. You wonder if that text or phone call is going to be the last one you’ll ever get. You wonder if you’ll ever see that person again when they walk out your front door. You lose touch with the present moment, with all the moments that make us live and thrive and breathe. You’re always in your head, dreading the next moment, and the one after that, when all we should be doing is cherishing the ones we have.”
I haven’t moved on, but I’ve moved forward. And I think that’s all we can ever do. We store the past away, seal it up tight and carry it with us, but we don’t live in it anymore. We learn from it. That’s how we keep going,”
“Of course I love him. Loving someone else doesn’t lessen the love I felt for your father,
Within the tangled roots of grief, we stand to lose so much. But no one ever acknowledges what we stand to gain. Strength. Perspective. Appreciation. Resilience. Those things are often buried, overpowered by grief’s mighty right hand—suffering.
There’s beauty in the breakdown, a glimmer of light hidden in the smoke.
