"He was gone, and I did not have time to tell him what I had just now realized: that I forgave him, and that she forgave us, and that we had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth. There were so many of us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can’t know better until knowing better is useless"
John Green's Looking for Alaska moved me in the most unexpected way. I didn't feel strongly for the book in, say, the first half where I felt like I was simply reading about a bunch of gifted kids and their issues. I'll be quick to acknowledge that it is a fantastic book, yes, and that the characters were so well-explained, their quirks became very fascinating. But I thought it won't really be my book. I've had so many good reads in my reading life and some books end up just like that. Another good read. Very little books mean so much to me, I didn't realize Looking for Alaska will be one of them.
Things took a turn when I started reading the "after". I don't know how long it took me to finish reading but I did remember going over and over every page, trying my hardest to disconnect myself from the story. I couldn't. It spoke to me because I was also ridden with guilt, racked by what I should've done and what I didn't do. I'm nowhere near Alaska's self-destruction but like her, I don't speak of my pains or my regrets. Because when the person you could've saved is already dead, who is left to atone you? It isn't a secret that I'm still reeling from a death in my family but it's also a sort of open secret that I forced myself to carry on without much thought. I chose (and I still do) to get of the labyrinth of suffering the same way Alaska Young wanted to. Straight and fast. I thought building a wall between myself and my feelings and inevitably going after the next step made everything easier. I didn't leave any room for thinking, regret or blame. Unlike Pudge and the Colonel, I didn't want to look into the reason why my dad was POOF, gone. Because he already was and I know that what I will know about his last moments, his thoughts, his feelings will only hurt me more. I didn't want any pain. All I wanted was to get of the labyrinth. Straight and fast.
I can say many things about this book to explain just how poignant it is for people like me but this book will most likely be loved by anyone who reads it. Whether out of motivation from suddenly remembering that we are all going, the many Famous Last Words or the quintessential search for the Great Perhaps, I just know this book will be well-loved. I have faith in that. But in a nutshell, it was Pudge's final paper for Dr. Hyde's class that got me the most. And even though Pudge was writing about Alaska, I felt it was a letter from the universe, addressing questions I had but was too afraid to ask. This book was a godsend and I cannot be anymore pleased that I read it at the right time, this time.
" When she fucked up, all those years ago, just a little girl terrified into paralysis, she collapsed into the enigma of herself. And I could have done that, but I saw where it led for her. So I still believe in the Great Perhaps, and I can believe in it in spite of having lost her.Because I will forget her, yes. That which came together will fall apart imperceptibly slowly, and I will forget, but she will forgive my forgetting, just as I forgive her for forgetting me and the Colonel and everyone but herself and her mom in those last moments she spent as a person. I know now that she forgives me for being dumb and scared and doing the dumb and scared thing. I know she forgives me, just as her mother forgives her. And here's how I know:I thought at first that she was just dead. Just darkness. Just a body being eaten by bugs. I thought about her a lot like that, as something's meal. What was her--green eyes, half a smirk, the soft curves of her legs--would soon be nothing, just the bones I never saw. I thought about the slow process of becoming bone and then fossil and then coal, that will, in millions of years, be mined by humans of the future, and how they would heat their homes with her, and then she would be smoke billowing out of a smokestack, coating the atmosphere. I will think that, sometimes, think that maybe "the afterlife" is just something we made up to ease the pain of loss, to make our time in the labyrinth bearable. Maybe she was just matter and matter gets recycled.But ultimately I do not believe that she was only matter. The rest of her must be recycled, too. I believe now that we are greater than the sum of our parts. If you take Alaska's genetic code and you add her life experiences and the relationships she had with people, and then you take the size and shape of her body, you do not get her. There is something else, entirely. There is a part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere because it cannot be destroyed.Although no one will ever accuse me of being much of a science student, one thing I learned from science classes is that energy is never created and never destroyed. And if Alaska took her own life, that is the hope I wish I could have given her. Forgetting her mother, failing her mother and her friends and herself--those are awful things, but she did not need to fold into herself--those are awful things, but she did not need to fold into herself and self-destruct. Those awful things are survivable, because we are indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.So I know she forgives me, just as I forgive her. Thomas Edison's last words were: "It's very beautiful over there." I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere and I hope it's beautiful. "
I may not get out of the labyrinth soon but in bringing me atonement, giving me back the hope I once had and reminding me that I am still indestructible beyond my belief, this book has already helped me get halfway through. It brought me a few steps further into closure, this story that I felt was written after my heart. Definitely, most definitely, this book is one of mine.
Hello, father. It was like reading a note from you. I hope it's beautiful out there.
