Expiration Dates

by Rebecca Serle

“Get a man to do it. That way, they can be good for something.”

“To meet the right person, to be with someone I want to see in the morning and naked. To not be afraid to have a bad day around them. To be happy, I guess.”

The thing no one ever wants to say about dating is this: It’s hard to be real, sure. It’s harder to let someone else be.

read in a magazine one time that every woman should spend five minutes a day staring at her naked body. I’d rather hurl myself off a balcony.

“You never want to be a stranger in your own family,”

Being with Hugo felt like having the sun shining down on you and you alone. When I was with him I felt wrapped in this vortex of warmth—like a greenhouse of flowers in full bloom. Everything was hot and bright and growing.

“The problem with love is that it’s not enough,” she says. And then she looks up at me. Her eyes are still soft. “But it’s also nearly impossible to let go of once you’ve found it.”

“If all I got was you, it would be more than enough for me. I just want to know what you want your life to be like. I want you to always make choices based on what you want, not what you think you can or can’t have.”

We have to be cracked open sometimes. We have to be cracked open sometimes to let anything good in. What I see now, emerging in the mirror, is this one, simple truth: learning to be broken is learning to be whole.

“But the thing is, Daphne. No one’s time is promised. Not yours. Not Mom’s. Not mine. Not Jake’s. It’s just the way it is. We are all dying. Every day. And at some point it becomes a choice. Which one are you going to do today? Are you living or are you dying?”

But being surprised by life isn’t losing, it’s living. It’s messy and uncomfortable and complicated and beautiful. It’s life, all of it. The only way to get it wrong is to refuse to play.