Close Your Eyes and Count to 10

by Lisa Unger

“The female is usually the strongest,” said Gustavo. “In any species.

buzzards were seen in some cultures as a symbol of transformation and change, the ability to release the old and embrace the new.

In others, a harbinger of destruction.

Note to self: never get the cheap stuff.

To stand at the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment,

Esperança—that’s

Hope. It was a tricky thing, powerful enough to lure you across an ocean, and so easy to lose.

Life. It takes its toll, leaves its scars.

Never, ever let them see you cry.

Pain is inconvenience, nothing more. It’s a construct of your mind.

Was it, though?

The universe speaks to us in all sorts of ways. Listen,

Change is relentless, Miller used to say. Even when things seem like they’re standing still, they’re in constant motion. The good. The bad. Nothing lasts.

And only a grown woman

who’d been to hell and back knew what a gift it was to own yourself, to know yourself.

There’s a day, she’d told him. There’s a last, best day. The day when everything is as good as it’s ever going to be. And if you’re not paying attention, you might miss it. It’s the day when you’re healthy, and everyone you love is okay, and maybe the sun is shining, and you’re doing something stupid like making a cup of tea or reading a book on the porch. And there’s a whole list of things you want but don’t have, and that might be what you’re thinking about. And not a single one of them matters. Because everything that’s important is right there. And, Mav, it’s so easy to miss it completely.

What is the greater evil? To commit a heinous act? Or to do nothing at all? The truth is rarely simple.

There is no why in math. It just is. Relish in that simplicity. Because for too few things in life is that true.

We think we’re motivated by all sorts of things—money, success, fame. But when shit gets real, we’re all reduced to praying for something as simple as another good day with the people we love.”

“Drink,” said Cody. “Hydration is everything.”

“We’re worthy of life and love because of who we are, not because of what we do. You’re enough,

“We’re always looking for our heroes, aren’t we?”

“Maybe a lot of us, women especially, go through life pleasing people. First we try to be what our parents want us to be,”

“Then maybe our boyfriends or husbands. Then everyone—social media, our kids, the neighbors. It’s not even conscious all the time. It often takes a moment of reckoning before we ask ourselves, Who am I? What am I doing here? What do I want?”

“There’s something I know for sure,” she said after drawing and releasing a breath. “We don’t get away with things. We can run and we can hide. We might escape justice or the law, for a time.

“We can’t escape the truth of ourselves?” “Something like that.”

some questions didn’t have answers. And you just had to live with it.

Sometimes closure is a thing we find within, he’d said. It’s not necessarily given by another person. It can be something we give ourselves.