Promise Me Sunshine

by Cara Bastone

But the thing about losing the person you love the most on earth is—somehow—you still have to do mundane things like tie your shoes and make enough money to continue to exist in this punishing world.

He stands too; it’s clear that parting is imminent. He hesitates and then offers me a hand. Like we’re two golf associates who’ve just decided to commit tax fraud together.

But as soon as I turn the sink off, I realize that the sun will set soon. There’s a cold pit in my gut and tears spring to my eyes. I don’t want to leave here, but I also don’t want to stay.

“There’s never anything we can do to keep someone alive, Lenny. There’s no bargain you can make. It’s an illusion. A terrible illusion. The only thing you ever could have done is what you’re doing right now. Sending her off.”

“I think when you’re depressed sometimes it’s easy to think that everyone is depressed? But right this very second, there are billions of people having happy moments. I kind of forgot about those people. I thought I knew how everything worked. And that all of it was terrible.”

Time heals all wounds, they say. Well, I can picture myself in ten years. It’s crystal clear. I’m still sitting on this curb, utterly disoriented that I’m the one still alive and she’s still gone.

I make a choked sound and fold down over my gut. “I don’t even know.” I’m a sobbing mess. “Today was fine. Today was fine. Good even? This feels so random that it’s hitting me like this right now. It’s been months and I just don’t understand why I’m not getting better. At all. I can’t breathe. I can’t live, Miles. I can’t.”

the point isn’t trying to get where you’re not. The point is just . . . enduring.”

this is the woman who used to ask me what I’d had for lunch that day because she was genuinely curious. She loved knowing the details of my life. Every little boring nothing, she wanted to know. And now . . . literally every aspect of my life is different and I can’t tell her.”

New friends are exhilarating, but they’re also exhausting. I’ve spent the entire day pretending I’m not bleeding on the inside. The emotion fights its way out of me in waves.

“Well . . . maybe I drove some of them away. Some of them ran away.” He turns and smirks at me. “Grieving people are scary.”

“It was hard to know what the point of living was without them. But . . . I wanted to. Keep living. So I did.”

My reaction was because I’m me. And anything new is weird.”