Heaven Adjacent

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

“A thing is exactly what it is, no matter how you try to twist it.”

Until I drove out with the intention of staying out, I had no idea how much I’d been hating it. I held it down for too long. Put it away so I could live there. But now it’s out and I can’t put it back away. It’s too big.”

You never know what someone else is thinking.

Trouble was, it was something-related—everything was—but Roseanna had no idea what that something might be. She had quite purposefully avoided poking it or asking it any questions.

Roseanna looked down into the face of the little girl, who looked back. Willa’s concern seemed to fall away, and her face lit up from the simple experience of seeing Roseanna again. Roseanna wondered how that must feel to be so utterly in the moment. So open to whatever life chose to bring you next. So willing to drop whatever had been weighing on you.

“More like my part of how I’m handling it. I think you’re right. I think you were right all along, and you tried to tell me. And it’s not so much that I didn’t agree, or that I didn’t see your point. It was more that I refused to look. Which is a very bad quality in a person.”

There was something to be said for the company of those who know you well.

Still, the eyes said it all.

I’d help you in any way I possibly could, but there’s not a damn thing I can do, and we both know it.

“I get it,”

“There was just no other way out.”

He had wanted to downplay it. His face had said so. Who wouldn’t want to minimize this? Now he was no longer able.

She waited, but he never asked the question. It just hung there in the air, unspoken. Which seemed to create an even greater pressure, though it made no logical sense that it should.

sometimes things happen that shouldn’t happen. And sometimes there’s not a damn thing we can do to stop them.

Thought about how afraid everyone is of change, and how sure they feel that their adaptation to change cannot, will not, happen. Then something new comes along, and a couple of weeks later it feels as though life has been exactly that way since the beginning of recorded time.

I miss you. Which seems strange, because we’ve spent so much time without each other

Maybe everything deteriorates in time, and maybe that doesn’t make it any less worth having while it lasts.

But the intention was there.

There’s a logic to it. You have to follow the logic. He’s furious because you did something he never in a million years would have done. You walked away from something that’s the most important thing in the world to him. And he doesn’t understand why. He can’t understand it. So in his mind it devalues everything he’s built with you.

To me I guess it seemed more like a little lie you tell to make things feel even more true.

There is no better way to learn how desperately you hate waiting than to think the waiting is over and then find out you were wrong.

that revelation seems to have gotten lost.” “They always do,” he said. “That’s not very optimistic.” “I’m not saying you’ll never see it again. Just that it’s not very realistic to think you won’t go back and forth on this. It’s just how emotions are. They rise and fall. Chunks of them fly up when you least expect it. Even if you do get it that you’ll manage one way or another, it makes a huge difference to your situation how these next few days go. You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t stressed out about it.”

“How do you know all this?” she asked her son. “Just from living, I guess.” “I’ve been living a lot longer than you have.” “But I take my feelings head-on. Everything just comes up and out like a bad dinner. I mean, I deal with things to a fault.”

it felt like a relief to simply let go.

Sooner or later you have to recognize the old patterns. But even that wasn’t enough, she now realized. It wasn’t sufficient to simply watch them play out while thinking, Yes, indeed, that is my pattern, and then continue to do it that way all the same. No. Sooner or later you had to get up off your sorry butt and do a little better for yourself.

“It’s not a matter of whether I’ll like it or not. You just have to tell me the truth. You don’t have to filter it through the net of what you think it will please me to hear. That’s how we got in all that trouble in the first place.”

And, also, she would have a chance to learn to let things like that be. Because, really . . . how was she ever going to be happy if she couldn’t learn to let things like that be?

excessive solitude is not a proper goal. So many of the little things served as reminders these days.

Life is dicey,”

But if it’s a win, you just shut up and take it.

Her smile was not forced or painted on. It wasn’t even fully on purpose. He just brought a smile to her face, a natural and unplanned reaction.

are you really still here just to help me at this point? And I ask that with no lack of gratitude, but I still have to ask. Or has it started to feel safe here because you’re postponing doing that relationship work?”

I just didn’t like it very much. It wasn’t making me happy.” “Then you were smart to move on.”

I didn’t lose anything I couldn’t afford to lose.”

“I guess that was a kind of math only you could do. So, look. The thing about the noise. How much you hate it. I’ve been watching you. And I think that might not be true anymore. You still say that. But I’m not sure I think you still mean it.”