Song number eight on The Way We Fall‘s unofficial soundtrack is Sarah Bettens’ “All Of This Past”:

Keeping with the chronological pattern, to me “All Of This Past” represents the beginning of the Mortality section of the novel. Kaelyn is coming to grips with being alive when so many have died (“I like it here/But it scares me to death/There is nothing here…” “And I have searched for the reason to go on/I’ve tried and I’ve tried/But it’s taking me so long”). She’s thinking about the past (“All of this over and gone/And never coming back/All of this forgotten/Not by me”), but also trying to move beyond it, to prove to herself that she deserves to be there (“Hope is always fear/For the pain it may cost…” “I can hear myself singing that song/Over and over until it belongs to me”).

It’s definitely a melancholy song, but I can here moments of hope in it, like the glimmers of hope Kaelyn is starting to feel again.