I Could Live Here Forever

by Hanna Halperin

We talked. We talked all the time. But I wanted him to say something that surprised me. Or look me deep in the eye and ask: Why? And really want to know.

I didn’t need to be the prettiest or the most successful or even the most talented. But I desperately wanted—needed—to be loved.

“I feel bad for anyone in the world who isn’t us.” A smile spread slow and wide across his face. Everything about him seemed to brighten. “I feel terrible for all of them,” he said.

There are certain memories I’d never write down or tell anyone. I know what happens when you write things down. They change shape. Some of the feeling goes away. Things on the page are never as rich as they are in your head, as they were in real life. There are parts of my mother I could never bear to lose.

It’s fine while it’s happening, but afterward, when I’m by myself again, I feel blank and flat—like a half person, and I badly want to feel alive again.

I remember my mother as someone who was always searching for something. She seemed lost. Like she’d ended up in our house, in our family, by accident.

Home looked the same but I didn’t recognize it anymore. It was just a group of people.

The only thing I wanted was to be known completely by someone, to know someone completely.

Being in love made the heaviness go away. And being alone again after having been in love was even worse than the original loneliness.

He had a full beard grown in and he was wearing the orange puffer coat.

It didn’t make me less loving, but it made me pickier. At the end of the day, you have to decide what you want to accept in a relationship.”