This Close To Okay

by Leesa Cross-Smith

This was potentially a terrible idea, but it was happening. It was scary and thrilling, and her heart zapped like her body couldn’t tell the difference between panic and excitement. “I didn’t want a sign,” he said. “But you got one,” she said, smiling over at him.

“Sometimes you’re so careless,” her big brother had said. But Tallie wasn’t careless. Lionel was obsessed with perfection, leaving no room for honest mistakes. Her mother and brother often insisted on saying what didn’t need to be said. Hurtful things. It was one of the reasons Tallie had become a therapist—to help people be kinder to themselves and others. To make the world a safer, sweeter place.

She was frustrated with him, felt connected to him. The idea embarrassed her. She had a habit of forming quick, intense connections to people she barely knew.

“Listen to me. I hope you’ve heard it plenty of times before, but it’s okay to not be okay. And it doesn’t make me uncomfortable, you crying. So I don’t want you to worry. I’m totally fine with emotionalism,” Tallie said, her voice soft and sweet as that pink polish.

What did it feel like to have a happy brain? He couldn’t fully remember, although there was a flick of it somewhere inside him. But it was too small, too far away.

Christine: a bucket filled to the top that he’d been asked to carry through a war zone, over fiery coals, in a hot air balloon, on a shaky roller coaster. Their relationship, doomed from the start. She spilled out and over, and there was nothing he could do about it. The inevitability of it had borne down and crushed him. But now, Christine was gone, and none of that mattered. He missed her. And the mere pinch of any kind of forgiveness or mercy flooded his heart with watery light.

He was depressed, and depression wasn’t sexy. She saw so much of it every day that she didn’t have a romanticized idea of it. People died, people were miserable, people gave up. Forgot how important and loved they were. Depression was a vacuum that sucked out everything—leaving nothing behind except the burdening weight of nothingness.

Client seems patient and relaxed, even in stressful situations. Not easily rattled or overstimulated. Comforts others.

so…I’d had serious boyfriends, but being with Joel made me feel like I’d won something in a way I can’t explain. Like in choosing between him and the other man I was seeing…Joel made me feel like it had to be him. How could it not be him? He was Joel! He’d somehow convinced me he was the only man in the world.”

“I’d like to know if the love he feels for her is different from the love he felt for me. If it’s the same love, but it shifted from me to her. Also, I’d like to know how it feels for him to be a father. I know how much he wanted it. Now he has it. What happens when you get what you really want?” “But you’ve gotten what you’ve really wanted before, right?” “I have. But specifically this…having a baby. It was something we wanted so much…together. Now he has it without me. What’s that like? Doesn’t it feel kind of…I don’t know…wrong?” “Heavy.” “Too heavy.”

Did looking forward to something feel like this? Living had felt so much like dying that he could hardly remember. Did it feel like concertina wire unraveling? Like his heart was a cracked, tipped cup, running over?

It’d started after Christine and Brenna were gone. He’d read it was perfectly normal, but that didn’t stop it from sending him into a panic when it happened. The suffocating feeling of doom, the vision of his body going from bloody and hot to stone, cold as tombs.

She felt as if she’d escaped her own darkest period of divorce-depression, but there were cracks that let the shadows creep in. Like if she spent too long looking at photos of Joel’s new life, new wife, new baby. Or if she heard a song that reminded her of Joel or one of their dates or their wedding or any of the weddings they went to together. Any Celine Dion. Any Luther Vandross. Any Faith Hill. Any drippy duets. They were together for practically thirteen years. Thirteen years of a life so easily triggered it might as well have been a loaded gun. She understood the anxiety of mental land mines, and that understanding helped her connect to her clients.

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. Believing in God came easy for her, even in her worst moments. Even when she sat there and listened to her clients tell her their secrets—the hidden, terrifying demons some people kept locked away for so long that when they finally did talk about them, it was as if a cloud of black death wanted to swallow them whole. She’d seen people come out at the other end of that darkness. She knew God was real.

Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice, belting “My Man” onstage. Hands raised, bathed in black, diamond earrings swinging like earthquaked chandeliers. The punchy power in her vulnerability had always bowled Tallie over, especially after her divorce, when she realized how strong she actually was. Even when she thought she couldn’t push through, she turned around and saw that, somehow, she had. She thought she and Joel were forever, and she’d been astronomically wrong about it. At first, she’d been so fucking jealous of Joel’s new life she thought it’d kill her. Literally. It had felt unbearable, and yet she’d borne it.

Judith talked and talked. She told Emmett how she’d quit smoking and felt like she’d lost part of her personality. She was so addicted to nicotine gum that she wondered if she should start smoking again.

Tallie was used to making excuses for her mother. (“She didn’t mean it that way. She comes off rude sometimes, but she has a heart of gold.”) Her whole life, Tallie had suffered through her mom telling her things she should’ve kept to herself. From remarking on her new stretch marks as she bloomed into a teenager to trying to persuade her to take part of the blame when it came to Joel’s affair. (“How were things in the bedroom for you two? Were you closed off? Did you give him any signals that this sort of thing would be okay?”) Tallie became a therapist instead of going to one, and she knew well enough how deeply a trained mental health professional could analyze that decision. She automatically put everyone else’s feelings and situations in front of her own because she was raised by a self-absorbed mother. Judith had a way of making Tallie feel as if her life or problems would never be as important as Judith’s own. Tallie promised herself if she adopted a baby, she’d never make the same mistake. She was an easy forgiver but had realized early on that she and her mom would always have a complicated relationship. She didn’t know one woman who didn’t have a complicated relationship with their mother, and that was at least one thing keeping her therapy practice in business—in fact, she’d never met a client yet who wasn’t able to talk at loquacious length about their mama.

So often, the dark cloud that followed him threatened to wipe him out entirely, making it hard to think ahead more than a matter of days. But. Tallie was the kind of person to make him believe in Monday morning. Emmett

“I can’t explain it all; I really can’t. 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.”

Emmett had known men, both good and bad, who’d made terrible mistakes in their lives, in their marriages. He truly believed Lionel was one of the good ones. He felt a radiating tenderness toward the women of the world for having to deal with all of it, a tenderness toward Zora as she nodded against his shoulder.

Christine would emerge from her dialectical behavior therapy gauzy and backlit with hope. And on they’d go, back home to try again. She’d take her medication and it’d work; she’d hate the numbness and stop. The pattern repeated and repeated, a revolving door of progress and setbacks.

In a little town like Bloom, being a quarter black meant being not-white meant being one hundred percent black meant being an Other. A threat to white supremacy. A blight, a usurper. It was what they’d all feared. And Christine wasn’t just any white woman; she was a Bloom. That was all the evidence that particular jury needed.

His life had turned into some sort of nightmared misunderstanding. Daring to hope was the only thing that’d kept him alive in there. He tried to stay out of trouble when he was locked up. Kept to himself the best he could, was friendly with the guys he could be friendly with. Was nasty to the ones he knew wouldn’t respect him otherwise. *

Once he made the decision to end his life, the obsessive observing was like burning everything in a glass jar before he said goodbye. And although suicide had crossed his mind a lot in prison, it wasn’t until he got out that he’d realized his freedom hadn’t been the answer. He still didn’t know what the answer was. Hell, he didn’t even know what the question was anymore.

#FreeRyeKipling. Rye was arrested and tried because of racism. She could only imagine how hard it’d been for him, growing up in a little, mostly white town like Bloom, marrying and having a baby with the town princess like that.

Therapy or not, you purposely surround yourself with crazy people who suck you dry, Tallulah,” he said. “He’s not a lunatic. You think I surround myself with crazy people, which is a horrible thing to say, by the way, and I think you’re always out there looking for the next new thing. New job, new state, new wife…everything is fine until you get bored, right? Nothing can ever be good enough for you!” “That’s not true,” Joel said softly, shaking his head. Tallie had hurt him, and she was only a little sorry about it.

After love, forgiveness is the strongest glue holding every family together.

The stabby math of grief would never add up. It would always be as if Christine and Brenna had gone on a long trip without him, never to return. But one day. One day, he’d get his ticket, too.

I love filling my books with coziness, warm drinks, and sweet conversations, even when I am making my characters’ worlds crumble around them. In life, I try my best to look for the light and to look for small mercies, even when things are dark and scary. It’s important for me to leave this book on that: a hopeful note. If you are looking for a sign of hope, a sign of light, a sign to hold fast, please let this be it. New mornings mean new mercies! And if things do get too dark for you, please speak up and reach out for help. You are not alone. You matter. You are so loved. x, Leesa National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255 Acknowledgments

This Close to Okay: The Extended Playlist A unique playlist curated by the author for this paperback edition “Human Thing” by Be Good Tanyas “Jesus, Etc” by Wilco “Halloween” by Phoebe Bridgers “Bring It on Home to Me” by Sam Cooke “You Send Me” by Sam Cooke “Just Like You” by Keb’ Mo’ “A Blossom Fell” by Nat King Cole “I Need My Girl” by The National “Head Over Heels” by Tears for Fears “I Feel Love” by Donna Summer “I Put a Spell on You” by Nina Simone “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House “Clean” by Taylor Swift “Nikes” by Frank Ocean “Night Changes” by One Direction “Big God” by Florence and the Machine “Colors” by Halsey “This One’s Gonna Bruise” by Beth Orton “Last Hope” by Paramore “Jesus Christ” by Brand New “Superstition” by Stevie Wonder “Pursuit of Happiness (Nightmare)” by Kid Cudi, MGMT, Ratatat “Holocene” by Bon Iver “Jesus was a Cross Maker” by Judee Sill “Cold Water” by Damien Rice “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” by “Blue Öyster Cult “Not Your Year” by The Weepies “Colorblind” by Counting Crows “Burn” by Usher “Two Ghosts” by Harry Styles “Bleeding Love” by Leona Lewis “Can I Stay” by Ray LaMontagne “Heart Door (with Dolly Parton)” by Paula Cole “Abide with Me” by Aubrey Assad https://spoti.fi/3IAWrem