By my Bedside
By my bedside, three books sit stacked, not neatly but in the way of things that are regularly touched, pages splayed open like silent screams, their spines worn and softened by fingers that have turned them over time and time again. They aren't decorations or companions; they are bruises I poke at when I want to remember something deep within me, or even when I want to forget. They sit there, each like a shard of a broken mirror, reflecting back fractured pieces of who I am but never the whole. And if someone had the patience to fit these fragments together, they might understand me in a way I don’t dare to myself.
The first, A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, is a book I’d give anything to read for the first time again. This one hits like a punch in the gut, relentless and unforgiving, yet somehow tender in its brutality. It takes pain and cracks it open so slowly that you almost don’t notice at first. Then you do, and it’s too late; you’re already drawn into the lives of Jude and Willem and all their unspoken suffering. It’s the kind of book that doesn’t just show you suffering; it makes you sit across from it, lets you feel its breath on your skin, as if you’re meant to break with them. It’s raw and it’s real, and after reading it, I felt hollow, stripped bare of whatever pretense I’d been hiding behind. There’s something almost masochistic in wanting to experience that kind of hurt all over again, but I would, in a heartbeat, to feel the kind of truth that digs down to your bones and leaves you with scars you almost cherish. It’s a story that speaks to parts of me that I don’t know if I even like. But that’s the beauty of it, I think—that it’s brutally honest, even about the pieces you’d rather not claim.
Then, there’s Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman, a book as soft and seductive as it is cutting. Where A Little Life is like swallowing shards of glass, Call Me by Your Name is more like dipping into honey that turns bitter on your tongue. It feels less like a story and more like a memory that’s both yours and not yours, a love letter you were never meant to read yet somehow understand completely. The language in it flows like a whispered confession, delicate and desperate, like a lover afraid to say too much and risk losing everything. There’s a kind of ache here that’s different, more languid and lush, a yearning that sits heavy in the chest but doesn’t quite suffocate. I remember finishing it and feeling as though someone had opened me up and left me raw, as if the words themselves were breathing life into parts of me I’d kept hidden. This book is the kind of longing that makes you want to reach through the pages and pull it close, to live in the ache and sweetness of it forever. I’d give anything to experience that feeling anew, to let the story of Elio and Oliver wreck me again, to know desire as something pure yet agonizing, as a song you hum to yourself even after it’s over.
And then, there’s How Not to Kill Yourself: A Portrait of the Suicidal Mind by Clancy Martin. This one I don’t reach for in hopes of reliving something profound or beautiful; it’s here because it feels necessary. It doesn’t offer comfort in the traditional sense. Instead, it’s brutal and unflinching, staring down the darkest parts of existence and daring you to keep reading. Unlike the others, I don’t want to go back to this book as a first-time experience. This one feels more like a mirror that you hold up to your own grief, a mirror that doesn’t let you look away from the parts of yourself you’d rather not face. It’s ugly, and it’s honest, and it speaks to something primal—the part of me that wonders how to survive in a world that often feels unkind, unbearable. It’s like sitting in a darkened room, confronting thoughts you rarely let breathe in daylight, but that somehow find solace in the silence of early morning hours. I need this book not because it’s beautiful but because it’s real, because it doesn’t flinch in the face of despair. It reminds me that I’m not alone in the silence, that there’s a strange, shared humanity even in suffering.
Together, these books form a portrait of me, not in the way of happy memories or cherished moments but in the raw, unedited truth of who I am when no one’s looking. They are three distinct voices whispering fragments of a story I live but rarely tell, pieces of a puzzle that, when laid out, show a jagged, messy mosaic. They are the pieces of me that don’t fit neatly together, and yet, somehow, make sense in their dissonance. They are my insomnia, my moments of yearning, my encounters with despair—all bound between pages that hold the same weight as confessions. They remind me that I am built of longing, of wounds both fresh and healed over, of an understanding of suffering that feels too deep to put into words.
I can’t imagine replacing them. To take one away would be like denying a part of myself, erasing the way these books have intertwined with my own story. They lie by my bedside as silent sentinels, bearing witness to the nights I can’t sleep, to the days I feel too much and then nothing at all, to the times when I reach for them simply to know I am not alone. There’s a strange comfort in their presence, a feeling that I am known and seen by something that doesn’t demand I explain myself. They are not just books; they are reflections of my own contradictions, my unspoken fears, and the parts of me that I can’t easily put into words.
In their pages, I am a thousand things: vulnerable, desperate, loved, broken, healing. They are my confession, my solace, my reminder that others have walked this path before me, and some have even survived. These books don’t ask anything of me but to bear witness, to hold their stories close and let them seep into my skin, into the parts of me I’ve forgotten or never known. They are not here to make me feel better; they’re here to remind me that feeling at all is what makes me human.
And so, they stay by my side, my night-time companions, my morning’s first glance, the parts of me I’d rather not face but can’t bear to let go of. In them, I am known, in all my jagged, messy, brokenness. And for as long as they stay, I am never completely alone.
