On the Way to You

by Kandi Steiner

“I was dying in that town,” I finally said, my voice low. I wondered if he could hear me over the wind. “And I don’t want to die before I’ve even had the chance to live.”

What if there is no answer? What if I am just not a happy person. Period. The end.

She looked at me like she couldn’t answer because in order to list what made her happy, she had to know she was happy in the first place.

“You’re brave. And you’re living. That’s more than most people can say.”

“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.”

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.”

And honestly, I don’t really have an answer for why some days differ from others. All I know is that there are days when I laugh and joke and drink and make the most of the hours I have, and then there are others where…”

“It’s like I can’t open my eyes wide enough.”

“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.