How to Make Friends with the Dark

But there isn't a single word in the universe that you can think of that would describe the way you feel right now.

You are carrying so many heavy feelings. There just isn’t enough room for them all.

There’s so much I wish I didn’t have to know about living.

this book is for the grievers this book is for the left behind this book is for every broken heart searching for a home

Books are good. I can live life safely and without peril in a fictional universe.

It could be disappointment, too, Tiger, and you need to prepare yourself for that. But if it's disappointing, it doesn't have to be devastating, does that make sense? Life has this, life has that, and then something else comes along again, like a wave. We ride the waves. You go down, you go up, you go down, sometimes you just drift.

There was a silence and then Alice, the oldest person in the room, cleared her throat. Alice has watery eyes and fluffy white hair and favors sweatpants and sweatshirts with glittery stars and flowers. Alice lost her mother when she was ten. That is a whole lifetime without a mother, to get used to not having a mother, and yet here she is. All these years later. Still grieving. Alice said, “Write me a letter telling me how to live for the rest of my life without you.” She paused. “That was sixty-four years ago, and I still would like to know.” I’m writing this down because someday I will be Alice, with a whole lifetime spent without a mother, a lifetime of walking around with a Grand Canyon of grief in my heart, and people should know what that feels like.

Sometimes I feel like those guys in that weird play Hoffmeister made us read. I think about what those two odd guys said. You must go on. I can’t go on. You must go on. Because what other choice is there, really? You have to make friends with the dark.

You have to make friends with the dark.

Things get away from you sometimes, and you can’t get them back.

Sometimes you need to open yourself to the possibility of the miraculous, Tiger Tolliver. Sometimes you just do.

It’s sort of like that poem: I thought I was done with death, at least a little bit, but death wasn’t done with me.

Sometimes you’re so hungry, so thirsty for something to fill you up, you’ve craved it for so long, but when you finally have it, it hurts going down. It’s not a medicine for what ails you. It might just be the thing that is keeping you sick.

There are things happening inside me that I don’t even have words for, and I usually have words for everything, even if I don’t say them out loud. A shiver suddenly breaks us apart. A sharp chill rushes through me, when just a second ago, I was warmer than I’d ever been. My teeth start chattering.

What’s really important is the essence of the life lived. A college degree isn’t going to tell me how well somebody lived, now is it? Does having a boat mean you lived a good life? Or a summerhouse? What about saving each valentine your son made or even working a roadside jam stand? A million, what do they call it?—selfies—on some silly website. What does it all mean, in the end?

[...] who tests you on a novel? The whole idea of reading a novel, or a poem, is to come up with your own ideas about it.

I want to hurt everyone right now. I want to break things so the world looks like how I feel inside: splintered into a million bloody and sharp pieces.

There's so much I wish I didn't have to know about living.

I'm alone. Everyone here has someone but me.

Last night scared me, how calm I felt, thinking about killing myself. The S word

All superheros were sad kids. The sadness made them strong and then they rose up and helped people.

You have to tell me those things... You're my mom. It's in your job description.

Sometimes you're so hungry, so thirsty for something to fill you up, you've craved it for so long, but when you finally have it, it hurts going down. It's not a medicine for what ails you. It might just be the thing that is keeping you sick.

Somewhere in those hours, those minutes, those seconds, your mom was, and then she wasn't

Write me a letter telling me how to live for the rest of my life without you.

If you looked at yourself in a mirror right now, could you see pieces of bone close to the surface? Is this how it will feel every day from now on? That you’re walking around with barely any skin, your bones and heart open to everyone, now that your mother is dead?

have no idea how I am going to live with such a giant piece of sadness in my body all the time, knowing it will never get any smaller.

There will always be this emptiness inside you and beside you, where your mom is supposed to be, and only you will know the emptiness. Other people won’t be able to see it. They’ll see you, moving around the world, just like before. You’ll look alive on the outside but be dead on the inside, flicking your wings and watching everyone through the jar.

I never knew trying not to cry would be actually, physically painful, but it is.