When she told me this story, I was struck by the fact that she told it from my perspective rather than hers. She felt indicted by my tears, took them as proof that she’d allowed herself to become unfamiliar to me. But I wonder if I cried not because she no longer felt familiar, but because she still did. With her, I was finally home. It was okay to fall apart.
Safe to fall apart; not always recognizable from the outside.
