A Million Junes

Letting go is not forgetting. It's opening your eyes to the good that grew from the bad, the life that blooms from decay.

Grief is an unfillable hole in your body. It should be weightless, but it's heavy. Should be cold, but it burns. Should, over time, close up, but instead it deepens.

I was just a moment, and you gave me a million Junes. I was just a moment, and you made me forever.

Maybe for some people, falling in love is an explosion, fireworks against a black sky and tremors rumbling through the earth. One blazing moment. For me, it's been happening for months, as quietly as a seed sprouting. Love sneaked through me, spreading roots around my heart, until, in the blink of an eye, the green of it broke the dirt: hidden one moment, there the next.

To love a handful of people very well, that's a good life.

When people pity you, it's like they don't realize that the exact same thing is coming for them. And then I feel embarrassed and uncomfortable and have to pity them, because, like, do you not realize that it's always someone's turn? You haven't noticed everyone gets a few blows that seem so big you can't survive them?

I promise you. I promise you the stars. I promise you the lake and falls, coywolves and robins. I promise earth and heaven: I will love you long after the last human has taken his last breath. When the stars burn out and the oceans freeze over and the whole world is ash and dust and ice, our names will still be carved into this tree of life, side by side, and I'll still be loving you.

I think once you've felt grief, it's hard not to catch someone else's.

When you've been lost as I have," he once said, "you get good at finding your way home.

I was just a moment, and you made me forever.

It’s almost funny, in a tragic way, that the fiery thing at the center of my universe did die and that I, a girl whose name is synonymous with summer, am expected to live without it.

My inheritance is grief and sunlight and the ability to choose which to hold on to.

Maybe you are Saul's quarter-life crisis, but so what? Maybe he's yours. Or maybe you two are the luckiest people in the world and you've just found your fireworks-in-the-sky, holding-hands-until-you-die Forever Person. Guess what? There are drawbacks either way. Maybe you break up and it sucks, but then you heal and move on and fall in love again. Or maybe this is it, the last person you'll ever have butterflies for, your last first kiss, but you get to grow up together, start your life together sooner. And you know what else? You don't have to be afraid to walk away either way...

(W)rite the things you have the most to say about and the things you're afraid of messing up.

You don't have to be afraid to walk away because... there's no expiration date on soul-love.

We both know that pain comes for us all. It's almost a relief. Because if all of us are going to someday lose the people we love most, or be lost by them, then what is there to do but live?

And I don't know exactly what makes it love, but when I saw you in the House of Mirrors, it was like I already knew exactly who you were. And I should've been wrong-that would've made more sense-but I wasn't, and I love you. I'll always love you. And someday maybe we'll have a bad breakup or grow apart and -curse or not-all the stars will burn out and the planet will have another ice age, but I'll go on loving you because I see you, June O'Donnell, and I can't unsee you.

His mouth slides down my neck, the side of his face settling over my heartbeat. "I hear you," he whispers, kissing my collarbone. "I can hear all of you, rushing around in there. A million Jacks and Juniors and Junes, a city of them.

But not because I hate being pitied. I do, but it's more than that. When people pity, it's like they honestly don't realize the exact same thing's coming for them. And I feel embarrassed and uncomfortable and have to pity them, because, like, do you not realize it's always someone's turn? You haven't noticed everyone gets a few blows that seem so big you can't survive them? And then here is this person looking at you and dramatically murmuring, I'm sorry for your loss. And you have to look at them and hope your eyes aren't saying, Don't be too sorry. You're next. You have to spend all this energy making your face say, Yes it's horrible, and extremely rare. I can't believe I was the person who lost my father. You certainly won't lost anyone. You'll die first, out of everyone you love, on the eve of your hundredth birthday.

There are always at least two versions of everything, June. I've forgotten my own because I love your daddy's so much.

Evil's something you can decide to do every day, and it gets easier every time. But the more good you bring into the world, maybe the more the rest of the world would look like this. Like paradise.

This is how grief works. It watches; it waits; it hollows you out, again and again.

I think life is about learning to dance even when you're sitting still

They met far away from here, but she was a little piece of home to him, so he swept her up and brought her back with him, because he wanted all the home he could have in one place.

You know, I think my favorite parts of life are the things I didn't know I wanted.

I'm happy, so happy to be a tiny fleck of a thing alongside you. We may just be moments, June, but to love a handful of people very well, that's a good life. I was just a blip, a spark, the blink of God's eyes. Because of you, it was more than enough. It was everything.

June, Moments are like cherries. They're meant to be relished, shared - not hoarded. You can clutch one terrible Moment or experience all the rest. Your life is slipping past in brilliant little bits, and I know it feels as though you're holding on to him, as though opening your hand is letting him slip away. [...] But when moments pass and crumble, they become seeds. They grow into new trees. And I promise you, he'll be in every new leaf. He will never be far from you. But if you don't let go of all that [he] did, you'll be haunted like the rest of them. You will miss the chance to live the life you want because you've accepted the one that's been passed down to you.

We may just be moments, but to love a handful of people very well, that's a good life.