The Keeper of Happy Endings

by Barbara Davis

People always find a way to justify their hate—and give others an excuse to fall in line. They put words in people’s mouths, plant them like viruses, then watch them spread.

You think you’re the only one, singled out by fate to suffer. You’re not, of course, but it feels that way. The rest of the world is moving forward, living their lives and dreaming their dreams, while you’re frozen, forever suspended in that terrible moment when your world stopped turning and the ground suddenly fell away. You exist in a void, where everything’s empty and endlessly dark, until little by little the light becomes unbearable.

There’s a particular brand of sympathy that comes with shared sorrow. An invisible thread that connects us, wound to wound.

Pain has a way of hardening us, each new heartbreak laying down a fresh layer of protection, like the nacre of a pearl, until we think ourselves impenetrable, immune to both our present and our past. What fools we are to believe it.