Content Warning: Depression, Suicidal Ideation
I always get a little depressed around the winter holidays – the kind of depression that feels like both immense sadness and inexorable rage at the same time. Maybe because it’s the end of the Gregorian calendar year, and I rarely ever feel like I did “enough” in any given year. Maybe because, even at the age of 30, I still feel like a black sheep in my family. Maybe because it’s cold, dark, and wet outside. Maybe all or none of these things play a factor. Regardless, I usually spend my winters plagued with regret and itching to be someone else living somewhere else. Anywhere else.
I first read The Midnight Library1 back in early 2022 after seeing South Korean rapper, poet, and leader of the world’s biggest boyband, BTS’s Kim Namjoon (stage name: RM), read it on season two of the group’s travel series In the Soop. No stranger to passive (and active) suicidal ideation, I remember liking the book and feeling inspired to drop the near-constant “what ifs” and “if onlys” that had plagued me for much of my life, and at least try to accept and make the most of the current iteration of my life.
These days, the book gets a lot of ridicule online from those who feel that Haig’s writing is clunky and heavy-handed, especially with the #ItGetsBetter #NeverKillYourself messaging, which they find patronizing and borderline cheesy. The internet may have a point, but for someone who was at a low point in my life at the time, I enjoyed the book for what it was. Last month, I decided to revisit it to see if it still holds up as someone who isn’t suicidal but definitely still wonders whether being alive is something I enjoy or not.
The book starts with a Sylvia Plath quote, which sets the stage for our Sad Girl™ Protagonist, and I worry that maybe the internet was right and I was remembering the book through rose-colored glasses. The book follows Nora Seed, a 35-year-old woman who is filled with regret and a deep conviction that her life is not worth living. While in the space between life and death, Nora has the chance to explore countless alternate universes where her life played out differently. With her time quickly running out, she must decide to either return to her root life or choose another – for good.
Like Nora, I also tend toward overthinking and regret. I’ve carried a lot of shame around my life choices, dropped it, and picked it up again. I’ve felt that I would be much happier if I had only worked harder in school, kept the well-paying job, or moved to a different city. I’ve felt like I was born in the wrong timeline, as though I was a visitor from a different reality in the multiverse, trying desperately to make the wrong life fit me. Or even worse, that this was the right place and I was simply the wrong person.
A quote that stood out to me, both during my initial read and this reread, is one Haig repeats throughout Nora’s tale:
“The only way to learn is to live.” - Matt Haig
For years, I lived solely inside my head, preferring my imagination to the demands of the physical world. I devoured self-help book after self-help book, collecting as much knowledge as possible to help me build the ideal life. The only problem? I never actually applied any of this knowledge. I just kept reading, making plans I’d never follow and imagining myself living my dream life. But knowledge without application can only take you so far. I was “learning,” but I wasn’t living.
After re-reading The Midnight Library (and Tiny Experiments by Dr. Anne-Laure Le Cunff), I decided to challenge myself to actually take action towards my goals for once in my life. I’ve always wanted to be a writer, and I’ve wanted to get back into reading for ages, so I launched this newsletter and committed to posting weekly for 12 weeks. I’ve wanted to improve my health for a while, so I signed up for a gym membership and committed to going three times a week for 90 days.
In the past, I would’ve spent days or even weeks researching the best writing certificates or ideal workout and diet regimens. This time, I gave myself 48 hours to pick an exercise program, and then I got to work. Three weeks in and I already feel stronger, more capable, and more confident. Nora’s tale helped me realize that every life has its unexpected ups and downs. Still, I can mitigate the lows and increase the likelihood of the highs by being an active participant in my life rather than passively reacting to external circumstances between hours of scrolling YouTube Shorts.
I had completely forgotten the sheer number of Henry David Thoreau quotes littered throughout the story – Nora is a philosophy grad, and Thoreau is her favorite – but I didn’t mind it. In fact, a couple of quotes seemed to sum up my motto for 2026 perfectly:
“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” - Henry David Thoreau
“All good things are wild and free.” - Henry David Thoreau
After a brief stint in Chicago, where I thought I’d found my forever home, I returned to my small West Tennessee hometown four years ago, and I’ve felt trapped here ever since. The second I crossed the Tennessee state line, I felt the acres of farmland trying to crush me from inside out, binding me to the expectations of my family, former teachers and classmates I haven’t seen in years, and a version of myself that feels lazy and irresponsible if I’m not constantly striving to live up to the “smart girl” label I’d been saddled with in kindergarten and could never quite free myself from.
The truth is, I don’t want to be the smart girl who climbs the corporate ladder or joins the nonprofit industrial complex to garner money and/or prestige. I don’t want to work a “normal” job, with rigid bureaucracy, office politics, and rules that don’t make sense to my neurodivergent brain. I don’t want to be the smart one, or the responsible one, or the one who lives out all my ancestors’ greatest dreams. I’ve tried that route more than once, and it always feels like death by a thousand cuts.
What I do want is to write for a living. To fund my international travels and tiny experiments with the thing I do best, the thing I’m most confident in, and the thing that makes me feel most alive – writing. To meet interesting people and attempt to get to know them as my tongue stumbles over languages that are not my own. To discover what my genuine interests are when monetization and potential virality aren’t driving my choices. To be wild and free.
SPOILER ALERT: At the end of The Midnight Library, Nora decides that her root life – the one that she’d been dying to escape – is indeed worth living and that it wasn’t her life itself but her unnecessary regrets paired with a lack of agency that had pushed her to end things for good. Nora’s experience in the library taught her what some of us take an entire lifetime to learn: that life is only worth living if you choose to make it so.
The Midnight Library is clunky in some places and heavy-handed in others – sometimes patronizing and borderline cheesy. It’s also a damn good book that’s helped me remember that my life – my silly, boring, imperfect life – is worth living. Twice.
Yours in living,
Mina
P. S. You can purchase your own copy of The Midnight Library and support local, independent bookstores here: The Midnight Library at Bookshop.org (affiliate link - see footnote below)
P.P.S. For my fellow library card holders, follow the link to see if your local library has a digital copy in the (free) Libby app: The Midnight Library on Libby.