Expiration Dates

by Rebecca Serle

If you never stop long enough to sink into something, then it can’t destroy you. It’s easier to climb out of a pool than a well, is the thing.

I do miss the thing I don’t have. It’s strange to feel that, to want something that you’ve never even known before. But that’s love, isn’t it? The belief in something you cannot see or touch or even explain. Like the heart itself, we just know it’s there.

Being single is like playing the lottery. Most of the time all you’re left with from that trip to the convenience store is a bag of chips and a six-pack. But then there’s always the chance. There’s always the chance, however slim, that with one piece of paper you could win it all.

“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.

It’s hard to hold on to people the older we get. Life looks different for everyone, and you have to keep choosing one another. You have to make a conscious effort to say, over and over again, “You.” Not everyone makes that choice. Not everyone can.

A vector is used to transfer genetic material into a host organism.

“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.”

“How dare anyone treat you like an animal?” Hugo says. “The indignity. Don’t they know you are a prince among men?”

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.

We are powerful because we affect each other’s stories, all of us. We are here to impact each other, to knock into each other, to throw each other off-balance, sometimes even off track. I’ve always hated the phrase “There’s a reason for everything.” As if my illness were built into my story; as if it were inevitable; as if it were a good thing and not something I would blink away in an instant if I could. But here, now, I think even if there’s not a reason for everything, there may be a reason for everyone.

Love is a net. It can catch you long after the person is no longer there.

I am all at once bowled over by the reality that there are still new stories to tell. That not everything is known or explored. That there are great and wondrous things ahead. That nothing is promised and yet, and yet…