Places I Stopped on the Way Home: A Memoir of Chaos and Grace

by Meg Fee

I laugh now because it is almost always in this way that good things happen—one person walks towards another—a small, seemingly unimpressive act that gives way to better things.

And when we walked down the street he placed the palm of his hand against the back of my neck in a way that I have spent every day since hoping another man will do without me having

to ask.

Language, endlessly malleable, and frighteningly insufficient and still human.

I

believe in love. In the mess of it, and the grace of it, and—frankly—in the mundanity of it. In crawling into bed night after night next to it. Because sometimes you just need a person to be quiet with, and sad next to.

“The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.”

There is this construct in psychology called transactive memory. It is the idea that we store information and ideas—memories even—in the minds of the people around us. I cannot help but wonder if this is true of joy and sadness too? If it is possible to share emotion in this way? And what must it feel like when a person you love carries your heaviness, if only for a moment?

About doubt and how it is a thing that multiplies in the absence of a warm hand or the sound of a person’s laugh or a quiet, full look.

Meet me in the place beyond failure. In the heartbreak and humility of a shitty hand of cards. Tell me about the thing you did exactly right that didn’t work, and how you learned that control is an illusion. Because sometimes a child hits his head on the kitchen counter and has to be rushed to the hospital, blood on the backseat, and it’s no one’s fault. Because life is neither tidy, nor fair: cancer coming just two months after a wedding. Tell me you know—really know—that there is no way to protect against heartache, and so you won’t even try. Point to the line in the sand, and say, This is the thing that split my world into a Before and an After, and this is how I carried on. Take my hand and remind me that there is joy even in what is broken. Because all I really want to know is that you are kind and good and whole—that you have suffered sadness, but no longer wear it. That you’ll cup the back of my neck and kiss me hard and ask me to dance on the subway platform, to hell with anyone who might see. That you’ll show up, even when showing up isn’t convenient or easy, and carries no guarantees.

I cry standing in front of it because beauty and love are their own dark arts, and humanity never ceases to surprise me.

When you seek out stability for fear of failure, you have already lost.

Our job is not to create a masterpiece, but to give voice to that which only we can give voice to. Our job is to go to work doing that which we feel called to do. Despite our fears—despite the nagging notion that we are not enough, or too much, or fraudulent, we show up. We take risks. We wrestle with our wants and our needs and the blank canvas. And we let the wrestling change us. Because in the space of that change—in the space of who we once were and who we become—is the divine. Everything else is a trick of the light. Sometimes in wrestling with the blank

canvas we get a Starry Night, and sometimes all we get are the honest, imperfect words that this writer offers up because they are all she ha...

More than one thing can be true at the same time. I have spent the last decade or so in search of home—the

place, the person, the meaning of the word. The French have no word for home. They have words for “at my place” and “in my country,” but not for “home,” which is far more ambiguous, and I can’t help but think they are on to something. For thirteen years I have been scything the tall grasses that I felt sure obscured it, gripping tightly to the handle and grasping at anything that looked the part, secretly a little desperate for another person to guide me there. And only now am I realizing that home is like anything important—it cannot be contained or circumscribed; it is within and without. It is larger than language allows for.

Give yourself permission to not be good at something. To write messy and imperfect words. To kiss a boy in the bar for no reason other than you want to. To let your legs shake during yoga. Stop apologizing for your height, for wanting to wear heels, for the actual space you take up in the world. Stand up straight. Uncross your arms. Regard as much as you can with awe.

Carve out a life on your own terms. Say Thank you and I love you and I’m sorry. “Heave your heart into your mouth.”11 Try new things. Reinvent. Try again. Show up. Celebrate the small successes. Make sure your identity isn’t based on something you might lose. You are not the size of your waist or your health or your job or someone else’s opinion of you. You are not the worst thing that has ever happened to you, and you are not the best, either.