But I hadn’t needed to lose everyone. I didn’t need to become an island. I have my family; I have Aimee’s family. I have these new friends in London. It’s not impossible to meet new people and grow to love them as much as I loved Aimee. No one will ever replace her. But there are people out there who I can love and like in new ways. And if my little brush with surreality proved anything, it’s that there are infinite lives and possibilities. Aimee isn’t nothing now that she’s gone; her loss doesn’t need to be a black hole or even a blank space. She just isn’t here.

Out of all the lives I might have, I believe I can make this the one that feels right. I simply have to build it. Nothing as simple as fame could give me what I need. What I need is to be around people I care about. To let people love me. To have small moments, knowing that they’re the biggest ones, and not ignore them because I’m too busy looking way off in the distance, either future or past, for some imagined thing.

I’m not here waiting for life. I’m in it. It’s happening now! Look out!

I’m out to dinner at a restaurant called Home with the entire cast of the show. The dinner was a surprise put on by Nelle, who plays one of my sisters. I told her—well, over the last few months, I’ve told all of them—about Aimee. I’ve cried about a hundred times—it’s really my new thing—and they’ve been so nice about it. In fact, it’s kind of become one of the running jokes of the show that we’re here to put on a good performance, yeah, but we’re also here to work through some trauma.

Tonight is Aimee’s birthday. Nelle asked me to dinner to commemorate it, and when we got to the restaurant, all my new friends from the show were there at a big table with balloons to celebrate.

“I’m so glad it’s a good surprise,” says Nelle. “It seemed like such a banging great idea, and then I was horribly afraid it would be like a living nightmare showing up to see fifteen people on a night like this.”

I had mentioned to Nelle that I wanted to start doing something every once in a while to remember Aimee, even if it means getting junk food and watching a fun movie on her birthday. I don’t want to do the intense grief thing of growing morose on every birth-and-death-day. Not at all. I don’t want some annual memorial with heavy words and thoughts. I just want to remember her whenever I can, big or small.