After You

You don't have to let that one thing be the thing that defines you.

I loved a man who had opened up a world to me but hadn’t loved me enough to stay in it.

The only way to avoid being left behind was to start moving.

You learn to live with it, with them. Because they do stay with you, even if they’re not living, breathing people any more. It’s not the same crushing grief you felt at first, the kind that swamps you, and makes you want to cry in the wrong places, and get irrationally angry with all the idiots who are still alive when the person you love is dead. It’s just something you learn to accommodate. Like adapting around a hole. I don’t know. It’s like you become … a doughnut instead of a bun

Too many people follow their own happiness without a thought for the damage they leave in their wake.

It is important not to turn the dead into saints. Nobody can walk in the shadow of a saint.

You never know what will happen when you fall from a great height.

No journey out of grief was straightforward. There would be good days and bad days.

Losing him was like having a hole shot straight through me, a painful, constant reminder, an absence I could never fill.

You’re going to feel uncomfortable in your new world for a bit. It always does feel strange to be knocked out of your comfort zone . . . There is a hunger in you, Clark. A fearlessness. You just buried it, like most people do. Just live well. Just live.

Life is short, right? We both know that. Well, what if you’re my chance? What if you are the thing that’s actually going to make me happiest?

I think people get bored of grief,” said Natasha. “It’s like you’re allowed some unspoken allotted time—six months maybe—and then they get faintly irritated that you’re not ‘better,’ like you’re being self-indulgent hanging on to your unhappiness.

Sometimes the illusion of happiness could inadvertently create it.

I swallowed. “Mum, you’re not going to get divorced, are you?” Her eyes shot open. “Divorced? I’m a good Catholic girl, Louisa. We don’t divorce. We just make our men suffer for all eternity.” She waited just for a moment, and then she started to laugh.

I want to tell him that I don't know what i feel. I want him but i'm frightened to want him. I don;t want my happiness to be entirely dependent on somebody else's to be a hostage to fortunes I cannot control.

I’m still a doughnut, okay?” I said. “I want to be a bun. I really do. But I’m still a doughnut.

moving on means we have to protect ourselves.

Hey, Lou!” she yelled. “I meant to say to you. Moving on doesn’t mean you loved my dad any less, you know. I’m pretty sure even he would tell you that.

Sometimes for our sanity own sanity we just have to look at the bigger picture.

Sometimes I look at the lives of the people around me and I wonder if we aren’t all destined to leave a trail of damage.

When someone we love is snatched from us, it often feels very hard to make plans. Sometimes people feel like they have lost faith in the future, or they become superstitious.

none of us move on without a backward look. We move on always carrying with us those we have lost. What we aim to do in our little group is ensure that carrying them is not a burden, something that feels impossible to bear, a weight keeping us stuck in the same place. We want their presence to feel like a gift.

With that kiss, I tried to tell him the enormity of what he meant to me. I tried to show him that he was the answer to a question I hadn’t even known I had been asking. I tried to thank him for wanting me to be me, more than he wanted to make me stay.

Our eyes locked. And in that moment everything shifted. I saw what I had really done. I saw that I could be somebody’s center, his reason for staying. I saw that I could be enough.

But then I knew better than anyone how the persona you chose to present to the world could be very different from what was really inside. I knew how grief could make you behave in ways you couldn't even begin to understand.

No. Really. I’ve thought about it a lot. You learn to live with it, with them. Because they do stay with you, even if they’re not living, breathing people anymore. It’s not the same crushing grief you felt at first, the kind that swamps you and makes you want to cry in the wrong places and get irrationally angry with all the idiots who are still alive when the person you love is dead. It’s just something you learn to accommodate. Like adapting around a hole. I don’t know. It’s like you become . . . a doughnut instead of a bun.

You don’t have to let that one thing be the thing that defines you.

How could I convey the way those short months had changed the way I felt about everything? The way he had skewed my world so totally that is made no sense without him

My voice, when it emerged, cracked a little. “I’m not in love with a ghost.