It's Okay to Laugh

Marry a person who loves you a lot, but more important, loves you best, because quality beats quantity any day.

Marry someone patient. Let's face it, you're not always a walk in the park. And when you throw a fit because you can't find your keys and he says did you check your purse? and you say of course I checked my purse, do you think I'm a moron?? and then you really check your purse, and there are your keys, you want a person who will just shake his head and smile, and call you an idiot under his breath. But lovingly.

You won’t do it because you are Superwoman, you’ll do it because it’s your life, and there is nobody who can live it for you.

I'm not so worried anymore, because now I know nobody knows what they are doing in life, and nobody knows what to do when bad things happen, to themselves or to other people. We make it up as we go, and sometimes we are big and generous and sometimes we are small and petty. We say the wrong things, we obsess over all the ways we got it wrong and all the ways that other people did, too. The only thing I know for sure it that it is okay not to know everything, to try and fail and to sometimes suck at life, as long as you try to get better.

His happiness was innate, but mine is not. Mine is a choice that I make, a garden that I tend to every single day.

You may be the person who says the wrong thing, but that’s better than being the one who says nothing at all.

There is no syllabus for life that outlines the steps you need to take to graduate to the next event. This life itself is the lesson and the test and there is no dean’s list and no gold stars. There is just the sum of your relationships and your actions, measured by how you feel when you lie down to go to sleep at night, and how many people heart your tweets. I

Someday, the universe will throw a wrench in the works and your well-oiled machine of a life will grind to a halt. And then it will keep going. Because after you got bored of crying and worrying, you took a deep breath and pushed it back into motion.

There is nothing like people who love who they are, and love what they love.

Grief is lonely, no matter how many other people feel it. They are different, each one, because we’ve lost different people, different versions of the same men. We are each carrying our own load, and it is ours alone to bear.

He will die, I know it, and I go there, though I have no business doing so. Our human imaginations are woefully unprepared for predicting actual pain, but I hack away at it anyway, trying to form a scar before I m even wounded.

We learn as we get older to appreciate the people we love for who they are, and for how they love us.

I'm not stronger than anybody. I mean, physically, I can do three pull-ups, so I'm stronger than some people, but emotionally, I'm the same as anyone else. This strength isn't superhuman. It's the most human thing of all, a muscle we're all born with but need to exercise rarely at best. And lucky for us, it's a tenacious little thing that bounces back from atrophy as soon as you need to flex it.

You don’t actually have to hang out with people who make you feel exhausted or take little digs at you. You know how everyone has a friend who is basically just mean to them, and you can’t figure out why you are friends with this girl who says things like

I can never say it, I can barely even think it, but I know that I am crying because I am afraid that when Aaron is gone, there will still be parts of him I do not know, little things like this that he forgot to share with me. I'd felt that from the moment I met him, before we knew he was sick, but I feel it more urgently now: like I want to just stick a little USB drive into his arm and download everything about him. I want every memory, every feeling, every thought from baby Aaron and child Aaron and punky teenage Aaron, who pierced his ears multiple times.

You check your phone in the middle of the workday. Your person has sent you a text. He wants to know how your day is. He’s just taking a second to say hello to his person, and his person is you.

happiness isn’t something that is handed to you, but something you have a hand in making, every day.

The happiest people in my life are people who did the thing our coaches and parents always told us not to do: They quit.

You’re thankful for the kind things people say, you forgive the dumb things, but you’re crushed by the silence.

Be kind,” we post on Facebook, “for everyone you meet is facing a hard battle.” We attribute that quote to everyone from Aristotle to Marilyn Monroe, and then we go about our business doing our best not to look at the hard things. Unless they’re already over, in which case they’re not a hard thing anymore, they’re an obstacle overcome, an enemy vanquished. Now it’s a success story with a happy ending!

Really, you are. I know it doesn’t feel that way because everyone you know seems to be doing a better job at life than you are, but they’re not. They’re just really good at posting happy things to Facebook and Instagram.

I am done trying to reason with it. For now, at least. There is no reason. There is nothing to understand. There is no could-have or should-have because there is only what is.

I am, I think, finally learning what a prayer is. It is just a thank-you.

When you are an English major, they tell you that you can do anything, but what they really mean is that you could just as easily end up doing nothing.

Yes, it stressed me out to be asked about my plans for my one (ONE) wild and precious life, but I will still like this phrase every time someone has turned it into art on Pinterest or Instagram. I will try not to let it stress me out. I will try to be better. I will try to bring more love to the world.

It is rare and magical when you and your world can accept and love the same version of you. I

Bryce had the same reasons for not being there that everyone who wasn’t there had: they didn’t want to ruin their memories of him, they didn’t want to be sad, they were scared, they didn’t know what to do. Nicole Petty would not stand for that. Because Aaron didn’t want to do any of this, either, but he didn’t have a choice. You don’t get to just come to the wedding and the funeral, but skip the middle part because it might make you too sad. That is against the rules.

The thing is, it is easier for me than it is for some people. I know that even though I miscarried a baby and my dad and husband died a few weeks later, I’m a privileged person. Even grief is a privilege. Some women don’t get to quit their jobs and write a book when their lives explode, they just have to turn up to work the next day and hope they find the time to pick up the pieces of their old lives at a later date.

I was sure, all the time, that I was doing it wrong. I spent a lot of time looking up from my life and craning my neck around to get a glimpse at everyone else’s paper: How were they adulting, and were they doing it better than me?