We All Want Impossible Things

by Catherine Newman

So many of my assumptions about people turn out to be wrong! I try to make a mental note of this.

“Bitch recipe hoarder,” Edi says, “But also, oh my god! What a sweetheart!

If there’s a metaphor for our friendship, it might be this. The blind faith. The absolute dependability. The love like a compass, its north always true.

A worldwide crescendo of grief, sustained day after day, and only one tiny note of it is mine.

Is it better to have loved and lost? Ask anyone in pain and they’ll tell you no. And yet. Here we are, hurling ourselves headlong into love like lemmings off a cliff into a churning sea of grief. We risk every last thing for our heart’s expansion, even when that expanded heart threatens to suffocate us and then burst.

“I’m sorry,” I say vaguely. I’m not entirely sure what for. Being a weirdo, being a skank. Being the happy-saddest person who ever lived. “Don’t be, darling,” she says. “Life is messy. I certainly don’t expect tidiness from yours or anybody else’s.”

Fly, be free! I want to say. I want to say, Stay with me forever! Come to think of it, these are the two things I want to say to everyone I love most.