Happy After All

by Maisey Yates

“Falling in love when everything is terrible is as brave an act as blowing shit up. Except it’s something regular, everyday people can choose to do. A radical act of real-life bravery.”

Don’t postpone joy. I was in pain, and I had every reason to wait until I healed to start enjoying sunsets and pie and new friends. I took it as a sign from the universe. To try to let the joy exist alongside grief.

I know what it’s like to feel like you’re drowning and have nobody there to grab hold of. So even though he isn’t reaching out, I can’t leave him thrashing there. I just can’t.

I also know that grief goes in waves. That sometimes the tide rolls out and you can see all these beautiful things left behind. Sea glass and seashells on the seashore. That sometimes the waves come back in hard and leave you breathless, drowning.

But I’ve learned that you can do things you aren’t suited to, and you can do things you don’t like. You can even become great at them. Even if it never really fits.”

I wonder if I’m sitting in the arrogance of believing I have an endless amount of time to be here in this place, in an emotional stasis, because I’ve certainly never thought beyond the motel. I’ve never thought deeply about how I would change and grow. I’ve just been in this eternal present.

“This whole being a person thing really sucks,”

“No. Though I do think that sometimes in books, happy endings take a different shape than they do in real life. In books, they’re kind of a fixed state. But I think in real life . . . we continue to have conversations. We continue to change. We continue to live in the happy ending, even as life happens around us. I think in books, the characters deal with all their issues, and that’s when they can be together. I think in real life it’s not that simple.”

“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.”

Endings move on a continuum. One thing ends, something else begins.

I’ve never felt happiness that hurt so much. Like Christmas itself, I guess.

In Rancho Encanto, time hasn’t mattered quite so much. It’s like I’ve been sitting, staring at a blank page, unwilling to write any new words because once I do, my foot will be on a particular path. A blank page has limitless possibilities, but at the same time, it’s nothing. I can’t do nothing anymore. I have to choose what story I’m living.

Time just keeps on moving.

I’m different, and my life is different than I planned for. Different doesn’t make it wrong, or bad, or failed. When I accepted that, I found a lot more peace.”

I know what it costs to hope now. To strive for happiness. It is so much heavier, but I imagine when I was younger. When I hadn’t lost anything. I’ve been afraid to imagine my future. Now I’m not. Someday I’ll be like Alice. I’ll look at a young woman, and I’ll know. I’ll have the right words for her. Maybe that’s the only gift I have right now.

My life doesn’t have to be a blank page. It’s time for me to start writing my own story.

I’m very good at running, Nathan. The thing about running is it’s not closure. It’s just leaving things behind. But if you run too fast, you leave the door open, and all kinds of shit follows you. Whether you mean it to or not. Letting shit follow you isn’t the same as working it out either.”

“I consider myself incredibly lucky to have found somebody who accepted me the way that I was. The truth is, somebody who’s been made to feel like you do, all of your life, someone who felt the way I did because of my dad, we are way more likely to keep repeating that cycle in every relationship we have. Because we’ll take anything.”

Time. Time just grinds relentlessly on. And kills the grass and fades the paint. And turns your hair silver. And makes rifts widen. Makes pain turn into a dull ache. Not now. Not with us.

Maybe I still want everything. Or maybe this is the first time I’ve actually wanted everything.

“Marty was the love of my life, of my youth, the one who held me after our greatest loss. The one who formed so much of who I am. When he was gone, I had to find a different life. It stands to reason that for the new woman I was, shaped and changed by my grief, there could have been a love. There wasn’t, and I’m happy with it. I was never motivated enough to search for it.” I’m stunned by this.

“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.”

There’s a song about this. About the strangeness of when a person you used to be intimate with becomes somebody that you used to know. When it doesn’t even feel intense enough for anger. For longing.

I see the fear. Real, deep fear. He is terrified. At this moment, of me. Of himself. He is 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. The only way to find a life that isn’t shrouded in darkness, that isn’t defined by loss.

“Nathan, the most beautiful thing about your love story is that she had you. You were her happy ending, Nathan. She had you until her end.” Tears make my words sharp. Short. “I am so glad. But you didn’t end when she did. So you have to decide what your life looks like. You have to decide what else there is. I don’t really want to be second best to someone who isn’t here anymore. Who does? I’m not asking you to promise me forever. I’m not asking you to promise me everything. I’m just asking you not to end it entirely. Not to cut us off. I’m asking you to leave the door open.”

“That’s not true,” I whisper. “It just isn’t. Because your heart can break in a thousand different ways. When the sun rises too beautifully, or a child that isn’t yours cries. When you drive by a house that you’ve never lived in, but you wish that you did, or you see a life that makes you ache, even though it could’ve never been yours. When you hear a song that breaks your heart. When you look around at what you didn’t do. It hurts so much more than any of the things you did. Because life goes on. And on and on. There is nothing you can do to protect yourself if you actually want to live and have there be any point to it.

You are in my blood. You are in my breath. You’re in my heart, and that is the most unforgivable part.”

“Is it so bad? Loving someone?” “Losing them is,” he says. “It’s so bad. It tears you in half.