Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed Page B

clear that you’ve done it already. Your kind letter is proof. But I encourage you to stop being bewildered. Have the guts to feel lame. Say that you’re sorry for your lover’s loss about three thousand times over the coming years. Ask about her mother sometimes without her prompting. Console her before she asks to be consoled. Honor her mother on your wedding day and in other ways as occasions arise. Your mother-in-law is dead, but she lives like a shadow mother in the woman you love. Make a place for her in your life too.
    That’s what Mr. Sugar has done for me. That’s what some of my friends and even acquaintances have done. It doesn’t make it okay, but it makes it better.
    It’s been more than twenty years since my mother died. So long I squint every time the thought comes to me. So long that I’ve finally convinced myself there isn’t a code to crack. The search is over. The stones I once gave my mother have scattered, replaced by the stones my children give to me. I keep the best ones in my pockets. Sometimes there is one so perfect I carry it around for weeks, my hand finding it and finding it, soothing itself along the black arc of it.
    Yours,
Sugar

HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE’S BOYFRIENDS

    Dear Sugar
,
    I’m a freshman in high school, and everyone knows how high school is—drama, drama, drama. And my best friend (let’s say her name is Jill) is at the center of it
.
    See, Jill’s dating this guy (let’s call him Jack) who has a girlfriend who goes to another school. As Jill’s best friend, I already don’t like Jack. He doesn’t want to break up with the girlfriend for Jill (he and his girlfriend have been together over a year), but, in my opinion, this situation is unacceptable. Jack seems like a nice guy, but there’s that underlying scumbag quality that I just can’t get past. It’s obvious that Jack really likes Jill, but he just won’t drop the girlfriend—or Jill
.
    I don’t know which way I want it to go. On the one hand, I want Jill to be happy, so I want Jack to break up with the girlfriend. On the other hand, I want to punch Jack in the face and I think he would do the exact same thing to Jill that he’s doing to his girlfriend. I’ve been thinking about having a “talk” with Jack, but I’m not sure if that would help the situation. Sugar: How do I make at least one of them see the light and realize that what they’re doing is wrong?
    Worried Friend
    Dear Worried Friend,
    Drama, drama, drama indeed! Oh, but this one’s easy, sweet pea. And hard. But best to learn it now, since, as a freshman in high school, you’re only at the very beginning of these sorts of hijinks. Jean-Paul Sartre famously said that “hell is other people,” which is true enough, but truer still is
hell is other people’s boyfriends
(or girlfriends, as the case may be).
    I’ve been witness to those I care about cheating and being cheated on, lying and being lied to, emotionally abusing and being emotionally abused by their lovers. I’ve consoled and counseled. I’ve listened to long and tedious tales of spectacularly disastrous romantic woe that I predicted from the start because that same friend chose the same wrong person
yet a-fucking-gain
. But the sad news is that this is the way of the world, darling, and there isn’t a ding dang damn thing you can do about it.
    Have you read Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet
yet? People
die
because they want who they want. They do all kinds of crazy, stupid, sweet, tender, amazing, self-destructive things. You aren’t going to make anyone “see the light and realize that what they’re doing is wrong.” You just aren’t.
    And you shouldn’t even try. What’s happening between Jack and Jill is between Jack and Jill. Jill knows that Jack is involved with someone else. She chooses to be in a romantic relationship with him anyway. Jack chooses to deceive a young woman he presumably cares for and string along another. These are not pretty things, but they are