This Close To Okay

by Leesa Cross-Smith

She smiled and told him she was trying to stop spying on Joel, but he’d changed so much in such a short amount of time that she could hardly believe they were ever together. Montana Joel, she called him, saying it as if he were a new species of Joel that needed to be taxonomized, tagged, tracked.

Had he confused exhaustion for hopelessness? Maybe they felt exactly the same in the cold rain, darkness creeping.

So much of therapy was practicality and giving people a much-needed pass to relax when they needed to or be weird when they needed to. To free their minds from doing what they felt like they should be doing if it always went against what they wanted to do. To ask questions like why when the client had never considered it.

She knew healing—if and when it happened—happened in increments, the same sneaky way the days got longer and shorter. Barely noticeable at times, slow. Tallie had been treading water of her own, in that estuary where sadness spilled out into healing and joy.

Everyone’s life gets so tangled up with everyone else’s. And everyone has dark secrets they don’t want anyone holding up to the light.”

Ti amo pazzamente con tutto il cuore.