Everything Must Go

by Camille Pagán

I told myself, When you really want something, you’re willing to wait for it. Be patient. What I didn’t know then was that every time you defer your dream, it grows a bit weaker, a little less urgent, until one day you’ve all but forgotten it’s there. Really, if Belle hadn’t died, I wonder if anything about my life would’ve changed. I didn’t have what I really desired. But things were easy, and you can almost mistake that for happiness.

I held his gaze for a long time. My beautiful, brilliant Josh. He hadn’t meant to hurt me. He had done his best. It was just that his best wasn’t enough for me. Not anymore.

“Nothing,” I said, trying to shake off the feeling that was creeping in. But it was no use; sadness was already spreading through me like quicksilver. Grief was funny that way—just when you thought you’d made it to shore, it pulled you right back under.

But I was beginning to understand that the goal wasn’t always to make things simple and painless. Sometimes embracing the pain, and yes, the mess, was what it took to get to where you really wanted to be.