“a friendly letter to everyone”
Metadata
Highlights
- When she did what she did she ruined my life, and I’m sorry. When she did what she did she spoiled the movie of the universe. When she went all hope I’d ever had of understanding her evaporated immediately as I learned I never had. (View Highlight)
- The cartoons hadn’t lied: when people die, they live on inside you. Inside me was someone else’s whole life. I carry its memory. I carry the shock of its ending and I carry the burden of sifting through what details of it I remember for clues I will never find. I carry guilt.
I carry the knowledge that it’s not my fault. Even this burden is heavier than you’d think at first.
I carry the responsibility of always fearing a hidden utter sadness at the core of every person I meet.
When she did what she did she made one of me a better person. I care so much about everybody. I hope everyone is okay. I hope everyone is happy. I sometimes feel certain no one is okay, or no one is happy. (View Highlight)
- A ghost is exactly this: her memory diseases me even as it makes me a better person. At an age where we both discussed frivolous, childish subjects daily in leisurely forever-imagining detail, (on purpose or not) she used death to tell me that I would never understand myself. She used death to tell me with a scientific certainty that I will never, under any circumstances, be better than literally anyone in the world, even the worst person. I had given more of myself to her than I have ever been able to give to another person. She took it all and proved to me that it disappears when we die. In this way, when she left she left me alone. She taught me that my own time will always be running out and I need to be giving everything I have to everyone else all of the time or I don’t deserve myself.
I can’t do this. I don’t know how to do this. I do what I can. (View Highlight)
“a friendly letter to everyone”
Metadata
Highlights
- When she did what she did she ruined my life, and I’m sorry. When she did what she did she spoiled the movie of the universe. When she went all hope I’d ever had of understanding her evaporated immediately as I learned I never had. (View Highlight)
- The cartoons hadn’t lied: when people die, they live on inside you. Inside me was someone else’s whole life. I carry its memory. I carry the shock of its ending and I carry the burden of sifting through what details of it I remember for clues I will never find. I carry guilt.
I carry the knowledge that it’s not my fault. Even this burden is heavier than you’d think at first.
I carry the responsibility of always fearing a hidden utter sadness at the core of every person I meet.
When she did what she did she made one of me a better person. I care so much about everybody. I hope everyone is okay. I hope everyone is happy. I sometimes feel certain no one is okay, or no one is happy. (View Highlight)
- A ghost is exactly this: her memory diseases me even as it makes me a better person. At an age where we both discussed frivolous, childish subjects daily in leisurely forever-imagining detail, (on purpose or not) she used death to tell me that I would never understand myself. She used death to tell me with a scientific certainty that I will never, under any circumstances, be better than literally anyone in the world, even the worst person. I had given more of myself to her than I have ever been able to give to another person. She took it all and proved to me that it disappears when we die. In this way, when she left she left me alone. She taught me that my own time will always be running out and I need to be giving everything I have to everyone else all of the time or I don’t deserve myself.
I can’t do this. I don’t know how to do this. I do what I can. (View Highlight)