The Break-Up Pact

by Emma Lord

When you have a sister, you don’t realize how much of the way you think, the way you exist, is framed not just by your own thoughts, but hers. Don’t realize how much of her colors the way you look at the world until she isn’t in it, and you’re staring at all the same people and places you’ve known your entire life and trying to recognize some new version of them, with the old colors gone.

Back then it felt like the grief would swallow us whole. It’s different now, more like the waves at our feet—constantly ebbing and flowing, swollen one moment and quiet the next. A tide I can dip my feet into and let myself feel, or a swell that will hit me from behind when I least expect it.

“I don’t think anyone ever gets to be settled in life. I think you just find people who weather it with you.”