Finding Eden

by Mia Sheridan

"But what I did know was that I loved a girl. And I knew I loved her in a way I'd never, ever recover from. I knew I loved her to the very core of myself. And I knew she loved me back."

"I'm all your firsts," I whispered, "and all your lasts."

We whispered the words of love and devotion that we still felt, reassured each other this was real, and true, and that we'd never be separated again. Our souls clung to each other as much as our bodies did. And yes, there was healing.

"I love you, I love you," I chanted between kisses. "I'll never stop loving you, you beautiful, tortured man. I know the goodness in you, Calder. I do, more than anyone. I know the tenderness of your heart, and I know all that was taken from you. I know the dreadful sorrow inside of you. I live it, too. I know. I know. But I also believe we are going to be okay—we are going to love so hard and with so much intensity, that it's going to melt away all the pain. And if now and again, the pain comes back to haunt us, then we'll come back here, to The Bed of Healing. And we'll spend as much time as we need just escaping from the world. That's our plan because I swear to you, my beautiful, sweet love, everyone deserves a love story that doesn't hurt."

As I thought about it, I realized that it would have been true. No matter where Eden and I had been placed together in this world, we would have fallen in love. Whether we'd been two college freshman, two farm hands, two gypsies—two anything—the falling in love part of our story would have been the same. She would have pulled my heart from across a gymnasium, or a cornfield, or a traveling caravan.

A small chill went down my spine when I thought about the fact that right here, this was the place where the idea that would change my and Eden's life forever was born. And yet. This was also the place where the idea that would bring Eden and I together came to be. It was hard to know how to feel about that. Sometimes it seemed so much of the beauty in life resulted from the ugly. And how did you make sense of such things? How could you be thankful for something when so much suffering was necessary to bring it to you? Or was that the very thing that defined real beauty–light after darkness? And maybe that was the whole point. If you constantly sought beauty in the most obvious places, in only the brightest of circumstances, perhaps you weren't really looking for it at all.

"Sometimes tragic and awful can be funny, too. Sometimes it has to be."

I studied the man lying next to me, the one I had fallen in love with because he gave me the things that were in his mind as if I had every right to them, because he was decent and fair and good. I had fallen in love with him as he carried his best friend twenty miles to safety. I had fallen in love with him because he knew how to tease in a way that felt loving, because he laughed easily and loved deeply, and because he looked at me in a way that made me feel precious. Love beat through my blood. "We were the love," I whispered. "In that moment, we were the love."

"Maybe it's not so much about one reason or one purpose. Maybe it's like this." I considered my words, looking out the window at the seemingly endless cornfields in front of us, the endless golden sky. "We all attach things to our hearts, kind of like how I pinned all those articles up on the back of my closet door, or how you covered your studio with paintings of me." I smiled a small smile at him. "We all attach things to our hearts, the things we value, the things we need, the things that make us who we are. But maybe . . . maybe it's only when our hearts are broken, that those things can fall inside. Maybe it's only then that those things truly become part of us, and it's only then we truly understand and recognize pain in others because we've experienced it, too. And we've let it make us better, more loving. Perhaps that's what real mercy is. Perhaps that's the purpose to the pain."

"I love you, Butterscotch. You have the most beautiful heart of anyone I've ever met. And maybe you feel like a mess sometimes, and life is a mess sometimes, but the way I see it, you're the beauty that came from the mess."

"I love you, Morning Glory. It's always been your heart that kept me alive. Your love. Your sweetness. I painted you to keep you alive, and that's what kept me breathing, too."

It felt like a mere formality. It felt like a miracle. It felt like destiny.

And as I stood there with my family, I realized, in the end, it was the beauty that had taken over. It was the beauty we looked upon. And when we walked away from Acadia that day, it was the beauty we attached to our hearts.