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.

Like blending your soul with someone else’s for three and a half minutes.

I could picture the tension pouring out of my pores like a noxious gas.

Anyone can play a note. Talent’s what you do with the notes.

“I’m going to play the cancer card.” I snatched the phone back. “Eurgh, no, that’s not fair.” “Neither is cancer.”

Thankfully, Mom and Dad raised me to aim low, to encourage a healthy contentment in hitting par.

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.

“Daggers represent the polar opposite of roses,” she said. “But they’re paired together a lot, like in tattoos and stuff. When they’re paired together, it’s supposed to represent the balance of two different parts making a whole. Because you kind of round out the group.

The world would keep moving, and tragedies would happen, and beautiful things would happen, and we’d invent things and grow and Aunt Linda would never see any of it.

It was just that she’d adjusted to the idea that life would keep on going without her mom, and she’d finally decided to catch back up with it.