Bekah

“...I’m tired of everyone looking at me with pity in their eyes. I’m tired of feeling like my heart is being ripped out of my chest every damned day. I’m tired of waking up in the morning, and then remembering...”
― A.B. Shepherd, Lifeboat

“the afterlife mattered to me. Heaven and hell and reincarnation. As much as I wanted to know how Alaska had died, I wanted to know where she was now, if anywhere.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“Whoever said that loss gets easier with time was a liar. Here's what really happens: The spaces between the times you miss them grow longer. Then, when you do remember to miss them again, it's still with a stabbing pain to the heart. And you have guilt. Guilt because it's been too long since you missed them last.”
― Kristin O'Donnell Tubb, The 13th Sign

“Pulling through is what people do around here. There is a kind of bravery in their lives that isn’t bravery at all. It is automatic, unflinching, a mix of man and machine, consuming and unquestionable obligation meeting illness move for move in a giant even-steven game of chess – an unending round of something that looks like shadowboxing, though between love and death, which is the shadow? “Everyone admires us for our courage,” says one man. “They have no idea what they’re talking about.”

“Courage requires options,” the man adds.

“There are options,” says a woman with a thick suede headband. “You could give up. You could fall apart.”

“No you can’t. Nobody does. I’ve never seen it,” says the man. “Well, not really fall apart.”
― Lorrie Moore, Birds of America: Stories