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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.
In a world where you can choose anger or empathy, always choose empathy,
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.” She blew a soft breath through her nose. “Maybe it is.”
“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.”
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.
Not everything that comes out of crisis is bad. Sometimes your traumas are the reason you know how to help.
But my foolish heart would hope anyway. It didn’t know how not to.
“You didn’t leave,” I whispered. “I will never leave you,”
“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.”
“What do you think she’ll be like?” she whispered, after a moment. “Who?” I said gently, holding her to my chest. “The girl you’ll meet after me. Your soulmate.” My heart shattered into a million pieces. If you had asked me yesterday, I would have said it was her. Instead she’d end up being the one who got away. Not a soulmate, just the love of my life. And unfortunately they’re not the same thing.
SIX MONTHS LATER
HUH WDYM
“So, when are you two moving in together?” “I keep asking her,” Doug said. “She tells me to shut up.”
But I wasn’t small anymore.
The last thing I wanted was for you to feel abandoned. I know what that’s like.” “I didn’t feel abandoned,” she said, looking me in the eye. “’Cause I knew if I ever called you, you’d come.”
The love stories sold us the wrong thing. 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
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“Not just for the summer?” “No. Forever this time.”
