Yes, the world is full of unspeakable cruelty. But the answer wasn‘t to never feel hope, or bliss, or love—but to savor every fleeting, precious second of those feelings when they came. The answer wasn‘t to never love anyone. It was to love like crazy whenever you could.
It‘s a strange thing to know about yourself, but there it is: I‘m at my very best when things are at their very worst.
You can keep telling girls to be polite, to keep a level head and it‘ll all work out in the end. But don‘t be surprised when they figure out that you‘ve been feeding them lies. Don‘t be alarmed when they grow tired of using their voices and playing by your rules. And don‘t be shocked when they decide that if they can‘t win a fair fight, they‘ll just have to fight dirty.
When Casey was born, Leah remembered looking down at the wet, red face and thinking, I would die for you, and the fierce attachment that followed in being a mother had frightened her.
Once you‘ve seen how broken someone is it‘s like seeing them naked—you can‘t look at them the same anymore.
A God who did everything we thought was right and good wouldn‘t be the creator of the universe. He would be our puppet.
And so the argument was begun, progressing more in the silences than in the speeches, like a chess game played by mail.
He wanted to tell Luke that he was brave. Maybe the bravest kid ever outside of a boys adventure book. He wanted to tell Luke that he was strong and decent and his folks would be proud of him. He wanted to tell Luke that he loved him. But there were no words and maybe no need of them, or telepathy. Sometimes a hug was telepathy.
This is what I‘ve found about life, as I‘ve gotten older: you start to lose people, Angela. It‘s not that there is ever a shortage of people—oh, heavens no. It is merely that—as the years pass—there comes to be a terrible shortage of your people. The ones you loved. The ones who know the people that you both loved. The ones who know your whole history.
The only anger I ever expose to the world is through implication, by suggesting that I‘m on the brink of no longer being able to contain my fury. That is what a woman‘s strength looks like when it‘s palatable: like she is containing herself.
The truth was that it had made him see that everyone who died alone had their own version of that chair. Some drama or other, no matter how mundane the rest of their existence was. And the idea that they‘d not have someone there to be with them at the end, to acknowledge that they‘d been a person in the world who‘d suffered and loved and all the rest of it—he just couldn‘t bear the thought of it.
One thing I can say for sure is that I don‘t want you to be moral absolutionists. If what I‘m telling you of our story means to you that the people it involves are either saved or damned, then you‘ll have misunderstood me.
I‘m here, I said, and it felt shockingly comforting, those words. When I‘m panicked, I say them aloud to myself. I‘m here.
