Happy After All

by Maisey Yates

“We can always lose something. Hell, we can always lose everything. I think the truly miraculous thing about life is that we keep loving anyway.”

Each and every time we have to hit these mini crises, and if we want to move past them, we have to drain a little poison out of the wound. A little bit each time, and next time maybe we won’t fall as hard.”

“Life. It is so very . . . life.”

I don’t have to imagine that I’m in a TV show, or in a book, because right now my reality is better than any story anyone could ever make up.

I realize, with no alarm or fear, that this is changing me. I don’t know if a fling is supposed to change you.

The community has experienced hardship. I guess you can’t keep the bad things out no matter how hard you try sometimes.

“There’s nothing wrong with me,”

She is old. And it’s beautiful. Wonderful. Just like her.

“I hope you know. It’s okay to want everything.” “What if I can’t have everything?” “You’ll survive. You’ll keep on living. You’ll smile again. You’ll dream again. You get to be my age, and you realize that you had everything that was meant for you. So you might as well want it all, then see what comes.”

I can’t live in the pointlessness.

“It’s a lesson, though, isn’t it? You can’t make yourself safe. Existence is risk. Caring is dangerous.”

I think that maybe I didn’t know love until he looked at me.

terrified, because his world ended. And to dream, to hope, to wish, to build something new is extraordinarily terrible, and I know it. It’s also the only way.