A review by beabaptistaa
Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley

challenging dark emotional funny inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.0

”How do I keep you buried and keep you with me at the same time? This is the biggest riddle of them all.”

um excelente livro que retrata a realidade de perder alguém que amamos. a autora partilha aquilo que passou e ainda passa com o suicídio de um dos seus grandes amigos. 

não achei em momento algum que estava a ler um livro de auto-ajuda. tanto temos momentos sérios como momentos de humor e ironia, o que me fez sentir grande empatia pela escritora, uma vez que também lido desta forma nestas circunstâncias.  não correspondeu bem às minhas expectativas (falha minha !!!!) porque, quando comprei o livro não me apercebi que o amigo tinha  cometido suicido, o que torna todo o processo de luto muito mais complexo (na minha opinião).

”We like to speak of what the dead would've liked. We build totems and write poems when what most people would've liked is not to be dead. A person who dies by suicide does not fit so neatly into this paradigm.”

recomendo imenso a qualquer pessoa, quer tenham vivido uma experiência semelhante ou não, contudo, repetindo, grande trigger warning para suicídio.

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mais quotes preferidas:

Denial is also the weirdest stage of grief because it so closely mimics stupidity. But it can't be helped. I can't be helped. I am holding these losses as an aunt might, as if they are familiar but not quite mine. As if they are books I will be allowed to return to some centralized sadness library.

I's an odd sensation, to be an adult and look up to another adult.

Maybe it's not that we loved these objects too much but that they are all the proof we have of the people who came before us.

I find it hard to believe any suicidal person knows the exact dimensions of what they're hiding. So why would the rest of us have a superior sense? And who among us is categorically happy? Rather, who among us is categorically happy and tolerable? Who lacks a reason to kill themselves? Reasons are not the problem.

The question everyone should therefore ask is not why otherwise healthy people kill themselves but why they themselves should go on living.

The miracle of life is not that we have it, it's that most of us wake up every day and agree to fight for it, to hold it in our arms even when it squirms to get away. It's a miracle, a genuine miracle, that the reverse doesn't happen more often.

Because they would've done it by now? That makes no sense. Is it therefore the people who have never expressed a suicidal thought that warrant our concern? That's most of the population.

The grief does not cotton to being squished. It takes the form of painful blooms in the chest that require attention, often in public.

There's a translucent membrane around everything, a bubble that moves with every step. Russell is so close, right on the other side. Like the ring trapped inside my pinkie, I have the strongest sensation that if I only knew where to push, I could reach through and pull him back. The bubble hardens with each passing day. By living, I am, by default, leaving him.

I am disgusted by the universal truths of grief, by the platitudes. I don't want to make my way through the coming stages (…) I don't want to become more human for this experience.

I sense that the most clear-eyed take I will have about this was in the moments directly following it. That understanding was a gift of proximity.

None of us is the exact same person we were an hour ago.

Anger is a cousin of intelligence. If you are not revolted by certain things, you have no boundaries. If you have no boundaries, you have no self-knowledge. If you have no self-knowledge, you have no taste, and if you have no taste, why are you here?

Outrage and indignation have an intellectual feel, but anger is guttural.

A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty.

The anxiety may have been a blanket but the sadness was a knife.

I find I cannot have an interaction with a new person, a person you would have adored, without wondering if I am meeting the friend you needed. Is this the person for whom you would have lived just a little longer? Is this the person who would have shown you how to keep going? What if I was the wrong friend for you? What if we were all the wrong people for you?

My grief for you will always remain unruly, even as I know it contains the logic of everyone who has ever felt it. Sometimes I close my eyes so that I can listen to it spread. So that I can make it spread.