This Close To Okay

by Leesa Cross-Smith

She knew making suicide harder for people who were considering it was sometimes the difference between life and death.

It’s baffling how you can think you know someone and not know them at all.

Depression was a vacuum that sucked out everything—leaving nothing behind except the burdening weight of nothingness.

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.

I never want to get tired or bored of beauty and goodness.

She automatically put everyone else’s feelings and situations in front of her own because she was raised by a self-absorbed mother.

She was an easy forgiver but had realized early on that she and her mom would always have a complicated relationship.

None of us know what’s going to happen one day to the next in this life. We just…keep going,” she said, surprising herself by being so bare with him.

To listen. To ask the right questions.

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

“You have to do things when you have a chance to do them,” her dad had told her when she’d mentioned wanting to go.