Just for the Summer (Part of Your World, #3)

by Abby Jimenez

It was like there was no peaceful place to exist, no emotional safe space. I could have chaos, or I could have worry. I could be in the tornado, or I could be in the eye. But I could never be out of the storm. It was so, so exhausting to live this way and I had always lived this way because when it came to my mother, I didn’t know how to not care. I never felt calm except for the fleeting time her perfume was strong and I knew she was okay. But I am never really okay.

“I zero percent care about that.”

“I don’t think you’re a horrible person. I think you went through something horrible and that’s who you needed to become to get through it.”

Her expression changed. “What?” I said. “Nothing. That’s just what my face does when I leave it unattended.”

Not everything that comes out of crisis is bad. Sometimes your traumas are the reason you know how to help.

“I want you to know that your empathy is beautiful, Emma. I hope you never lose that. I do hope that one day you get some boundaries though.”

“You cannot keep caring about her more than you care about yourself.”

“You’re not asking too much,” he said. “You were just asking the wrong person. Ask me instead.”

Maddy was like a first responder for my soul.

“You are not what happened to you. You are what you do next.”

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. Taking the end piece of the bread at breakfast so she can have the last middle piece for her sandwich when you pack her lunch. Making sure her car always has gas so she never has to stop at the pump. Telling her you’re not cold and to take your jacket when you are in fact, very, very cold. It’s watching TV on a rainy Sunday while you’re doing laundry and turning her light off when she’s fallen asleep reading. Sharing pizza crusts and laughing about something the kids did and taking care of each other when you’re sick. 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.

It’s one thing to go to therapy and learn skills. It’s very different to have to use them in real life.