Only Mostly Devastated

by Sophie Gonzales

To everyone who, in their quest to be cared for by another, forgot to care for themselves. Your needs matter, too.

“Sometimes we only get to be friends for a little while. That’s why you’ve always gotta make it count, right?

There’s something about music, don’t you think? It makes everything feel so much easier, and nicer.

“I really like music, I guess. So sue me.” “Yeah, well, I really like you. So sue me.”

I wanted to ask him to hug me and convince me it’d be okay.

Will nodded carefully, and all at once I wanted to take it back. No. Don’t leave. Say something that’ll make me cave. Say something to convince me I shouldn’t be hurt anymore.

It’s funny how you can spend weeks, or months, or sometimes even years preparing yourself for a nightmare that’s more “when” than “if.” Then just when you’re fooling yourself that you’ve accepted the world’s end, and you’ll roll with the impact when it hits … suddenly, it might be hitting, and you’re not rolling. You’re collapsing, sitting where you stood, totally overwhelmed by a loss you were never really ready for.

The girls were at a basketball game. I would’ve totally gone, but the thing is, I’d rather floss with barbed wire than watch a live sports match, so I declined with regrets.

“Sometimes I think I don’t like him very much.” Lara shrugged. “Hate away. I’ve hated Renee for over a year now, I think. Doesn’t mean I don’t love her.” “Isn’t that a contradiction?” “Nope. Apathy is incompatible with hate. Love works okay.

All this time, I’d been wondering when my needs would start to really matter to him. Maybe I hadn’t spent enough time wondering when my needs would start to really matter to me.

“Yeah, fine as a man who’s been gently corrected on the internet,

But they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t have done any of that, because in stories guys fight. They fight for the person they care about, and they don’t give up, ever. In real life, though, sometimes you beg for them to care, and they just don’t. And then they go quiet. And they let you walk away without much of a fight at all.

“It’ll get easier. That’s the beautiful thing about the universe. It puts you through trials, but it never gives you anything you can’t handle.

And life was too short to play chicken with something as important as the person you loved.

Maybe our Happily Ever After hadn’t worked on the first shot. And maybe Happily Ever Afters weren’t a singular event. Maybe they were something you had to work at, and build, and never give up on, as long as they were something you still wanted.