God-Shaped Hole

So, there are these two books written by the same author.  I read the second of the two she wrote first and then saw that she had written another before it.  So, I went and bought it.  I can't say which one is my favorite.  They are different in their own ways yet the same in some other ways.  Both of the copies of these books that I own have pages turned down that mark sentences or passages that personally mean something to me. 

No matter what is going on in you life sometimes you feel this feeling that can range from amazement about what you experience and nothing but a bottomless hole that you don't know what to fill with.  Not something you talk about much but it is there.  

Let's start with How To Kill A Rock Star.  Not the book you think it is going to be.  Perfect title though.  After you read the book, you realize what an amazing title for that book.  No other title would sum it up as well without giving anything away.  It is different than the other one in that it goes from survival for the two main characters to happiness to the unraveling of the happiness to heart-wrenching sadness and then to hope and finally back to happiness.  The first time I read it I was finishing it up on a Sunday before I left the next day for a three week road trip through the northwest with a friend.  I know they thought I was crazy because at the end when the part comes where the hope begins you start getting a little excited about "what if" and then when you find out that secret that brings about the happiness, I couldn't help but yell "yes". 

Now, God-Shaped Hole. I just got home from being in LA.  Nothing makes me want to read this book more than being in LA.  The setting of the book is LA.  The book talks about some of the places I go and know well.  So, I started reading it when I got home.  I tell myself every time I go that I'm going to take it to read but I'm too busy there to read and that isn't a book to be read in public anyway.  

This is me reading this book:  I finish a certain chapter towards the end and I think about it-do I have time to finish reading the rest of the book because once you go into the next chapter there is no turning back.  You have to have time to finish the book and time for reflecting on it and spending the next hour crying like you did the whole time you were reading the end of the book.  This one goes from survival of the two characters to happiness like they'd never known and thought they never would to the loss of that happiness and then the return of it magnified about 100 times and then finally to heartbreaking sadness with no hope of it ever ending.  One of the main characters has a cameo in How To Kill A Rock Star so you know she found her way.  I would like a book of how she got from the end of God-Shaped Hole to where she was in How To Kill A Rock Star. 

I loved this book so much that I bought a copy of it for my best friend who I knew also struggled with that "God-Shaped Hole". Doesn't have anything to do with this book but though we identified with the same feelings they weren't for the same reasons.   Sometimes I really don't know how but I'm still here fighting and she lost her fight May 12th, 2017.  We spent a lot of time talking about that book after she read it.  She got it.  

Just some quotes from it I particularly get.....

"If you have a desire to write, that means there's stuff in you that wants out.  And if you do't write things down, you just forget them. Think of all of the stuff you've forgotten over the course of your lifetime." -Jacob

I must have got that a long time ago since I've had that desire and followed through with it since I was a teenager. 

"It's never over.  How can something be over that is the essence of what it means to go on in perpetuity-the vicious familial line that runs on an invisible string, linking us to our past and to our future, to what we embrace and to what we try to deny? Take the proverbial scissors and snip at it if you dare, but you're snipping into thin air because the thread lies inside.  To sever it would mean the end of breath and the end of life, which, to some, is just another beginning.  Thus, the cycle continues."  -Trixie

"You can't wait forever for something, and then say it's too late when the time finally comes, even if every shred of incentive inside you has been lost."  -Trixie

"In Hallelujah, Jacob wrote that memories are the patches that make up the quilt of our emotions.  A beautiful way to put it, but wrong.  If that were true, then memories would blanket us, they would keep us warm. My memories were chilling me to the bone." -Trixie

".....all I could think about was how shitty life was.  And how sometimes you stumble upon things-good things-that give everything meaning, and when you do, you should get to keep them.  They shouldn't be taken away.  They shouldn't be swallowed alive and then spewed back out, limp and lifeless.  Not the good things." -Trixie

"And no matter what anybody says about grief, and about time healing all wounds, the truth is, there are certain sorrows that never fade away until the heart stops beating and the last breath is taken." -Trixie

That last part about time healing all wounds being wrong is 100% true.  There are certain sorrows that will never fade and they sure won't be something that disappears ever.  So many people don't know that.  I have a hard time with people who say things like "you choose if you're happy or sad".  No, you don't.  Not always.  The worst sorrows in this world that there is no way you will ever get past or through do exist.  You can't know this until you experience a sorrow like that for yourself. All you do with those sorrows is consider yourself lucky if you can keep your head above water enough to keep swimming.  Some can't like my best friend who lost her fight May 12th, 2017 to her own sorrows.  You can go on about people giving up but you don't know unless you've been there.  She isn't the only person who lost their fight that I knew.  Some sorrows are so deep and profound that you're lucky if you can keep your head above water and keep on living. 

That book is a perfectly written book.  Most of it is nothing but happy but the ending.......
But I love it even more because of the ending.  

The good news is that finally, this author is about ready to release her third book that she has been working on for at least ten years.  It is called Sorrow and it is listed as coming out in all the places that sell books online.  No release date yet but I will wait.  I know it will be just as amazing as the other two.