It took me exactly 131 days to finish this book. Which you must know, is a personal record. Even now, i still can’t quite believe i finished reading it. I thought that day would never come.
The thing is, I’m usually good with words. I almost never run out of them. They’re in my mind, and they’re just as easily out of my mouth. But honestly, how can we talk about the things we think about the most?

There’s a quote from Douglas Coupland that I really love which almost always reminds me of this book;
“And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can’t ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young.”
it would be no lie to say that this quote right here, is somehow a summary of A Little Life.

First things first, this book is probably not for everyone. The whole journey may seem “unnecessary” and “disturbing” for most. More than anything, it may seem “unrealistic”. Which i get it. Really.
So if your capacity for sad stories is low, this is not for you. If you had serious mental issues in the past, this is not for you. If you feel mentally unstable at the moment, This. Is. Not. For. You.

For me, this book was allot of things. Finding every fucking piece of myself in Jude was life changing. Reading about all the shits he went through, and how most of the times, i knew what it meant or how it really felt, was suffocating. He made me go back to my bad habits, which probably was a sign for me to stop reading it, but i just couldn’t stop because i needed an answer. How he knew injustice and still chose law, like i did. How at nights he couldn’t sleep because of his leg pain, like i couldn’t. How his life kept making decisions for him, like mine did. I thought, “if he can make it, i can too.” And at the end, the only thing i could think about was that i hope I’ll be half as lucky as he was. “Lucky” sounds ironic, i know. But trust me, he was lucky.

I know how people criticize this book for “not believing in therapy” and shit. But really, this was not about therapy. First of all, people are free to choose whether they want to believe in something or not. So if Hanya didn’t believe in it, and therefore Jude didn’t believe in it, it’s totally fine because that’s their “opinion”. Plus no one ever said it as a -fact- that therapy doesn’t work. Second, this story is not about someone who doesn’t believe in therapy or getting help. It’s about whether people can be fixed or not. This is about a shattered soul. That if you experience pain and sorrow and hurt in a way that you totally feel broken, can you still be healed? Or at some point, you’ll become a lost cause?

Also about “this is not how depression works. They didn’t know what they were talking about” here’s the thing: Every individual feels pain in a different way. Even facing the same situation, no one, no fucking one, goes through it like any other human being. We all experience pain in our own ways. So yeah, there’s not an algorithm for how depression or sorrow should work.
Jude’s experience was actually pretty accurate if you ask me.

But these aside, despite all the ugly cries and life-time traumas that this book gave me, it also shaped me into someone new. Better or worst, i still don’t know. But what i know, is that my perspective changed entirely. It’s that now i remember Jude, Willem, Harold, Andy, Malcolm and all the other amazing characters of this book ( JB even, with all his imperfections.) in everything i see. It’s that i know, from this point on, i will look at everything in a different way.
It’s that after all the bone-deep sorrows, unanswered hopes, unexpected happinesses, life-damaging regrets, ride or die friendships, broken bonds, unfair pains and unfinished love-stories, this book carved its name and story on my heart and soul. It made me feel things again. And for that, i don’t think even a thousand stars would be enough for it. (I say thousand, you read 5. Bc well, goodreads.)

To my dearest Jude St.Francis;
No one has ever touched my soul, the way you did. No one has ever reminded me of myself, the way you did. For that, i must thank you. For reminding me it’s never too late to hope. For teaching me that we are more than our pasts.
Wish i could tell you that too. Wish i could tell you that even though it may not seem like it, but you really outdid yourself. That you had a happy life, Despite everything that went wrong. That the one soul you hated the most, was loved by everyone around you. You were worth everything you earned. And i can name more than 3 things, you’re better at, than literally anyone i know.
And for all the times that you made me hate myself again. For all the times you made the same mistakes as i did. For all the moments you lost, just because you didn’t know how to win. For all the nights you thought you won’t make it till the sunrise. For all the cuts and burns, all the broken bones and bruises, all the shaky hands and tired body, and most importantly, for all the seconds you had to live with a shattered soul, I love you. I loved you from the moment you called it an “accident”.
And I’ll never stop loving you, dear comrade.
You were always more than enough.
I’m sorry life treated you that way, Judy.