Midnight at the Blackbird Café

by Heather Webber

Pain changed people. I couldn’t go back to the way I’d been, because I wasn’t the same person who’d left.

Grief was a capricious companion. Sometimes distant and aloof. Sometimes so overwhelming it was hard to think a straight thought. Its mood changed at whim, making it emotionally exhausting to keep up.

Seems to me there’s a whole lot of people around here carrying around a heap of pain tied to the past. Might be time to start letting that go and start healing.

The therapist told me to be patient, but I was losing patience fast. I wanted to be … normal, even if I didn’t know what that was anymore.

“It was a choice. I could either keep dwelling on what had happened, letting it define me, or take the valuable—and sometimes painful—lessons I’d learned from the relationship and move on.