Sorry I Missed You

by Suzy Krause

Love was like a sewer: something you knew about but didn’t think about until someone left a manhole cover open and you just tripped right in and your stomach dropped like you were on a roller coaster and you felt thrilled but also like you were going to barf. Messy, painful, disorienting. Amazing.

But when you’re really hoping for something, and when that hope takes up so much space inside your rib cage that it’s hard to eat or breathe in, you have to dismiss the things that make sense to make room for it. It’s a survival thing.

I didn’t get that you could love the people you were with while still agonizing over the unanswered questions about the ones you weren’t with.

hurt relationships can be fixed. Exhibit A.” She pointed at Maude and Richard again. Still hugging. She rolled her eyes—though she was smiling at them. Mackenzie stared at them, too, unconvinced. “But then: closure . . . is it real?”

A mirror was designed so a person could see their own face. A face, with its eyes and nose and mouth and ears on the side, was designed to perceive the world, not to perceive itself. And what did people do? They made a thing that would block the world in front of them and replace that view with their own reflection. There was nothing wrong with mirrors.

That just because someone leaves you, that doesn’t mean that you are not still perfectly fine and valuable, and it definitely doesn’t mean you should leave yourself.