On the Way to You

by Kandi Steiner

“Life isn’t supposed to be safe,” she added with a laugh. “If it was, they wouldn’t call it living. They’d just call it existing. And you’ve existed long enough, baby girl. It’s time to live.”

I think I knew, even then, that the greatest adventure of my life was about to begin.

“And I don’t want to die before I’ve even had the chance to live.”

The way I saw it, life was too short, too delicate to spend time and energy being miserable.

“It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it?” he asked, speaking over the sound of the wind whipping through the car. “How beautiful everything is when it’s dying.”

This is the stuff life is made of. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss it, and wake up seventy-two and grumpy.”

“Well, it’s like with my grams. Sometimes I smell something or hear something that reminds me of a time with her, and it hurts, but… in a good way. In a way that reminds me she was here, and alive.”

“You can’t just have one favorite book. That’s like me asking you to choose a favorite arm.”

“I don’t know. I want someone I can laugh with, and go on adventures with. Someone who will challenge me to be better but also support me when I’m weak. I want someone who shares their deepest fears with me, shows me their scars willingly — someone who trusts me to heal them, just as I trust them.” I bit my lip. “And I want to feel a rush every time our skin touches. I want to lose entire afternoons with them under the covers. I want someone who I can’t wait to share good news with, and someone who I know will hold me when the bad news comes.”

“I want that kind of love that leaves you breathless when it hits you, and makes you want to throw up at the thought of losing it. The kind that makes you so happy that it hurts at the same time, like it’s painful to think that out of all the people in the world, you somehow found the one meant for you.”

“Kalos is a Greek term for astounding beauty, inside and out. I read once that there isn’t an English word that can be used as a synonym, because of the level of beauty the word is said to describe. I liked that, a word that didn’t have an equivalent. I liked that only one culture took the time to give that kind of beauty a name.”

He kissed me like it was a privilege, like he didn’t want to rush, like we had forever.

“Sometimes, we have to trust the ones we love, the ones who love us, even when it’s hard to do.” Her eyes skirted to my tent, to the journal, before they found mine. “Because even though marriage brings us together as a unit, there are still two individuals who make that whole. And they need to be able to have their own things, their own time, their own privacy.”

Every guy plays by their rules — so pay attention.

“I’ve been disappointed before,” I argued. “But that doesn’t mean I have to expect to be let down again. Every day is a new day, you know? A new chance.”

“I can’t tell you how much it meant to me that you didn’t leave, didn’t get mad, didn’t look at me like I was broken or sad or like you pitied me. I gave you nothing, but you understood.”

“I think when we let go of the materialistic shit we think we need, the stuff we grew up looking for because we thought happiness existed under their price tag, that’s when we start living a better life. A free, meaningful existence.”

It isn’t death that’s scary. It’s living without actually living at all, breathing without purpose, existing without essence.

“Living is hard, it’s the more difficult choice, but I can’t not choose it,”