Life is a Song

You completely redefine my idea of what love is and should be. That it needn’t be possessive, volatile or detrimental to your well-being, but can be selfless, honest, and consistent. That it should balance and enrich your life, not tear it to pieces.

“What do I love most about you? You make me laugh. God, you make me laugh. And I don’t mean a little chuckle or titter or giggle or snort. I mean the kind of laugh that commands and consumes you. The sort that booms and bellows and spreads like wildfire. The kind you can feel in your soul.”

“The next time you find yourself in a dark place I want you to pick yourself up, step outside, look long and hard into the deep night sky and take comfort in the knowledge that the absence of light makes nothing in this universe any less astonishing or magical.”

At 19, I read a sentence that re-terraformed my head: “The level of matter in the universe has been constant since the Big Bang.” In all the aeons we have lost nothing, we have gained nothing - not a speck, not a grain, not a breath. The universe is simply a sealed, twisting kaleidoscope that has reordered itself a trillion trillion trillion times over. Each baby, then, is a unique collision - a cocktail, a remix - of all that has come before: made from molecules of Napoleon and stardust and comets and whale tooth; colloidal mercury and Cleopatra’s breath: and with the same darkness that is between the stars and inside our own atoms. When you know this, you suddenly see the crowded top deck of the bus, in the rain, as a miracle: this collection of people is by way of a starburst constellation. Families are bright, irregular-shaped nebulae. Finding a person you love is like galaxies colliding. We are all peculiar, unrepeatable, perambulating micro-universes - we have never been before and we will never be again. Oh God, the sheer exuberant, unlikely face of our existences. The honour of being alive. They will never be able to make you again. Don’t you dare waste a second of it thinking something better will happen when it ends. Don’t you dare