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“I wouldn’t worry about it. She’s like black mold, she always comes back.”
I pulled my face back. “A date? What happened to George?” “He’s gone, Justin. May God rest his soul.” I blinked at her. “Your boyfriend died?” “He’s dead to me.”
The moment Emma came into view, my entire world slipped into slow motion. My brain took a screenshot. I felt the moment freeze and save. She was beautiful.
I felt like I was buffering with her sitting next to me. Like all I could do was loop around and around over the fact that she was here.
Sometimes the best way to show love or be kind to someone is to meet them where they are.”
“Maybe home isn’t a place. Maybe it’s a person.”
“It was so out of character for her, I don’t get it.” “Be glad you don’t get it. It means your life has been a lot gentler than hers.”
“Unhealed trauma is a crack. And all the little hard things that trickle into it that would have rolled off someone else, settle. Then when life gets cold, that crack gets bigger, longer, deeper. It makes new breaks. You don’t know how broken she was or what she was trying to do to fill those cracks. Being broken is not an excuse for bad behavior, you still have to make good choices and do the right thing. But it can be the reason. And sometimes understanding the reason can be what helps you heal.”
Nobody wants to be the villain, Justin. If you start there, it’s easier to get how people end up who they are and where they are.
“You don’t have to forgive her. You really don’t. You can still love someone that you’ve decided not to speak to anymore. You can still wish them well and hope for the best for them. Choosing a life without them doesn’t mean you stop caring about them. It just means that you can’t allow them to harm you anymore. But if you don’t think your life would be better without them in it, then accept that they have cracks. Try to understand how they got them and help fill them with something that isn’t ice.”
Her expression changed. “What?” I said. “Nothing. That’s just what my face does when I leave it unattended.”
It’s funny how when you find someone you like as much as I liked her, the destination is suddenly wherever they are. Even if there’s someplace better, you wouldn’t go if they couldn’t come.
Every single molecule of my body was in the place where his mouth touched mine. I hadn’t even seen it coming and then suddenly it was everything and all there was.
It shouldn’t surprise you that she continues to be disappointing, yet again, but it always does and I’m sick of seeing you get hurt. You need to lower your expectations waaaaaay down. The bar is on the floor and she’ll bring a shovel, every time.
Not everything that comes out of crisis is bad. Sometimes your traumas are the reason you know how to help.
You can’t negotiate feelings. You can’t convince someone they feel something they don’t.
It was always like that with her. Didn’t remember, couldn’t recall. Like everything’s a secret, like my whole past had been smudged with an eraser. She took a broom and brushed the sand behind us so I could never look back and see where I’d been or where I came from. All I had was where I was going and I could never stop moving forward because of it.
My lack of permanence was my protection. I left people and places, so I didn’t have to play. If I didn’t play, I couldn’t lose.
You can love someone and still not be willing to give up your way of life for them. And then there are those you love who you’d take a bullet for. It’s all the same emotion, just different levels.
“Sometimes I feel like the seasons could come and go and come and go, a hundred years could pass, a thousand, the ground could collapse under us, this house could crumble and go back to the earth, and we would still be standing here frozen in time, because every second I’m with you is eternal. I’ve never felt anything like it.”
“You’re not asking too much,” he said. “You were just asking the wrong person. Ask me instead.”
That if you can frame the terrible things in the best possible way, that’s where true happiness comes from.
“You are not what happened to you. You are what you do next.”
To me, love meant you stayed. But now I understood that love sometimes means you let someone go.
And there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t feel her absence like a void in my soul. I missed her like I missed the sun in the winter.
The best kind of love doesn’t happen on moonlit walks and romantic vacations. It happens in between the folds of everyday life. It’s not grand gestures that show how you feel, it’s all the little secret things you do to make her life better that you never tell her about.
courtney and 7 other people liked this
It isn’t glamorous, it isn’t all butterflies and stars in your eyes. It’s real. This is the kind of love that forever is made of. Because if it’s this good when life is draining and mundane and hard, think of how wonderful it will be when the love songs are playing and the moon is out.
