I Let You Go

“My steps feel lighter now and I realize it’s because I’m running toward something, and not away from it.”

“Such a small impact on the world, yet the very centre of my own.”

“Five years of someone's life is too much to lose over a throwaway comment.”

“Gradually, without my noticing, my grief has changed shape; from a raw, jagged pain that won't be silenced to a dull, rounded ache I'm able to lock away at the back of my mind.”

“I want to fix an image of him in my head, but all I can see when I close my eyes is his body, still and lifeless in my arms. I let him go, and I will never forgive myself for that.”

“I wonder briefly if I have become immune to physical pain: if the human body is not designed to handle both physical and emotional hurt.”

“You must remember that he was a boy. That he had a mother. And that her heart is breaking.”

“I don’t trust my instincts anymore—they’ve been wrong so many times before—and so the safest thing to do is to stay well away.”

“Freeze or reheat. Thinking of you. I still don’t know who it’s from. Many of the condolence cards that arrived after my parents’ deaths came with stories of the cars they’d sold over the years. Keys handed to over-confident teens and over-anxious parents. Two-seater sports cars traded for family-friendly estates. Cars to celebrate promotions, big birthdays, retirements. My parents played a part in many different stories.”

“Everything has changed. The instant the car slid across the wet tarmac, my whole life changed. I can see everything clearly, as though I am standing on the sidelines. I can't go on like this.”

“It’s reactive, not proactive. We shouldn’t be sitting back, waiting for intelligence to come to us: we should be out there looking for it.”

“They speak to each other through the magistrate, like warring children communicating through a parent, their words are extravagantly emotive illustrated with flamboyant gestures that are wasted on the empty court room”

“They reach the quiet street where home lies just around the corner, its seductive warmth a welcome sight.”

“Cuando uno se marcha de un sitio es fácil imaginar que la vida sigue igual que siempre, aunque en realidad no hay nada que siga siendo igual durante mucho tiempo.”

“I denied anything was wrong: first because I was too blinded by love to see the cracks in my relationship, and later because I was too ashamed to admit that I had stayed for so long with a man who hurt me so much.”

“Jenna, you've done something terrible, and you will pay for it every day for the rest of your life. I think that's punishment enough, don't you?”

“It is a small thing, but I am slowly beginning to think that perhaps I am not as useless as once I believed.”

“I never thought I would run away. I never thought I would need to.”

“it is my only chance of getting through this is one piece.”

“La façon dont une personne traite les animaux en dit long sur elle.”

“The grief I feel is so physical it seems impossible that I am still living; that my heart continues to beat when it has been wrenched apart.”

“down the damp inching up the walls outside, or the slipped slate tiles on the roof.”

“Una huella tan pequeña en el mundo y, sin embargo, el centro absoluto del mío. Incapaz”

“In the time he’d been a copper, political correctness had reached a point where anything remotely personal had to be skirted around. In a few years’ time people wouldn’t be able to talk at all.”