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I guess what I want you to know is that there was once a part of me that believed I was invincible, that everyone I loved was invincible. But who doesn’t think that to some degree? I’m not guilty of a cardinal sin. I’m only guilty of being human: a human who can, and it turns out will, die. There. I said it. The thing is, there are so many ways to go. There are the obvious ones, like diseases, botched surgeries, and car wrecks. But there are also not-so-obvious reasons. Like tripping over the laundry basket, tumbling down the stairs, and landing precisely the wrong way. Or getting a paper cut
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They were like neat little rectangular reminders of the many sunrises and sunsets that still lingered on my horizon line, all the time I still had stretched before me to daydream and procrastinate and list out my life instead of actually living it.
I was always rushing. No matter the task, it always felt like some other pressing issue was weighing on me.
But that’s the thing I’ve only recently come to understand about birthdays. They’re not about presents or streamers. They’re not about parties or pictures or petite pastel candles on your cake. They’re about having a brief sense of hope. For that one day, we’re able to close the door on our mistakes and cling to the false idea that we’ll approach the next year wiser. We make wishes. We blow out candles. We tell ourselves this will be our year.
After all, some things are better left as mysteries.
Suzanne likes to pretend she’s having a two-way conversation when, in reality, she’s mostly talking out loud to herself. Her whole life is one ongoing monologue.
That’s the irony of this whole thing: the fact that my nickname is Liv. Live. To live! And yet .
Adulthood is funny. Once you hit a certain age, everyone stops talking about their pasts.
Although we had basically been children when we met, Andrew and I had become adults together—adults who would live in a child’s vision of a grown-up home.
Once we got through the week, the month, the school year, the holidays, the nonsense, the stress, we’d find time to do the things we longed to do. But then we never did. Life, it turned out, could wait.
“You and your damn lists,” she muttered. “Maybe you should turn them into poems.”
“Happy birthday, Liv. We’re officially thirty-nine.” She exhaled loudly for drama’s sake. “I still feel pretty young. How about you?” “It’s hard to say.” I slid my cigar box back behind the bush. “I’m not sure ‘young’ is the right word.” Behind me, our hall light clicked off. Already, a dull ache pulsed in my head from the wine, just another perk of aging. “For the moment, I mostly feel like I need to go to bed.”
It wasn’t my age that bothered me. It was that I knew I wasn’t living up to my full potential.
“You know, it’s okay to be happy and to still have things about your life that you want to change.”
“I know you know what I mean.” I did. You see, there’s a great secret to motherhood: no matter who you are or who you used to be or who you’d once dreamed you’d become, you were supposed to pretend that your children were enough, that you weren’t multifaceted, and that your dreams weren’t three-dimensional. You weren’t supposed to admit that you had any dreams reserved exclusively for yourself at all.
Sometimes it felt like I’d moved on without me, too, if that makes any sense.
The air smelled like garbage and perfume and opportunity. For reasons I could not define, the whole experience felt like chaos. Like poetry.
He smiled. God, I loved that smile. When Andrew smiled at me like that, I felt like a lovestruck kid.
It’s strange to think about people you’ve never met, let alone people you couldn’t even see. But suddenly, I wanted to step inside all their brains and find out if, like me, they had unresolved lists of hopes and dreams.
“Reality is a construct. We all believe what we want.”
I want my life to always feel as full of possibility as it feels right now.”
“Well, when we’re young, we live more authentically. But as we get older and become closer to our deaths, our perception changes. We live in a more fearful state.” I felt everyone staring at me. “It’s ironic because it’s when we’re older—when we’re approaching death and running out of time to live—that we should embrace life. However, most of us do the opposite.”
“It’s not about going back in the past,” Marian said. “It’s about fixing what you still want to fix right now.” “What does that mean?” “Test or no test, I think it’s time you live like you might be dying.” Marian smiled. It was an expression I’d become all too familiar with over the years. “Just in case.”
Already, the wake from my body had ceased. The water had become still. As we walked away, the surface looked as though I’d never even been there at all.
“I’m done putting things on the back burner.
In the dream, we stood together on the edge of a vast cliff. She didn’t speak, but she kept motioning toward me. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to push me over the edge or to pull me toward her. It wasn’t until I woke in the middle of the night, my chest slicked with sweat, that I realized she’d been trying to do both.
I think I have a parallel here
I didn’t want things to feel so chaotic anymore.
That was the thing I was learning about death. Once you acknowledged that it was coming, you didn’t have time to feel afraid anymore.
In the days that led up to that visit, I had started to think about death. My death, specifically. What it might mean if it really was only a few months away. That’s when something strange had started to happen. Some of the fear had started to dissipate. In its place, I was slowly beginning to find my life.
For once, I was too busy trying to live.
it wasn’t the poetry or the publication or the publicity that had made me feel so illuminated. It was the inescapable feeling that I was present, that I was living, that I was alive.
That’s when my reliance on my lists had started—my quest for what I believed would be my perfect life. But they hadn’t ever provided that for me. Instead, they’d made me feel perpetually tired and rushed—not because I was busier than anyone else, but because I was constantly seeking out a better, more elevated version of myself, like I could run and catch up with my past identity, even though it was already behind me.
I needed to understand who I was in that moment, not who I was according to some past list.
“Dreams change,
Life is so strange. At times, it feels so lonely, like we’re isolated with our flaws and fears.
But in the end, you begin to learn that, despite our many differences, we’re all the same.
I’d evolved. Some of my former desires had faded. Some new ones had taken their place. But I was still me.
we aren’t born with one life, but with two. The life we live before we understand loss, and the one we finally live once we realize that, despite our many efforts, our life will ultimately end.
I was so worried about trying to create a perfect life and a perfect ending. But it was only then, while seated on that bench for my private, impromptu party, that I understood that those things don’t exist. There is no such thing as a perfect life. There are only perfect moments.
