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Jesus Christmas, fortify, Beatrice!
“That means a lot, that you told me.” “It means a lot that you didn’t act like you see me differently now.” He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear as the wind whips it across my face. “I don’t see you differently. I see you better.”
People shouldn’t take on something to love and expect it to be convenient for them. You have to meet a living creature where they are, and love them for who they are, not who you want them to be.” A faint smile tugs at my mouth. “I don’t think most people come at other humans that way, Bea, let alone animals.”
Art can only reveal, only make us more truthful. It’s just that sometimes being truthful feels like it’s made things worse. Because when you face the facts, then you have to live with them. Eventually, you have to do something about them.
Romance’ means happy endings. ‘Love story’ means they took a romance novel, cut out the back ten percent, and replaced it with misery.”
“I realized it’s even more powerful,” she continues, “when I can show the sensuality of those so-called imperfections. How we can appreciate ourselves and desire each other not when we’re perfect but when we’re us.
Again, this isn’t a matter of preference. It’s a matter of the space being inaccessible while it sounds like this. I know you don’t mean any harm in it, and it’s your choice whether or not you decide to alter your”—I glance over my shoulder at the empty easels—“client experience.
What if painting makes me feel the way it used to? Like my heart’s in my hands, pouring itself out with each stroke of my brush. Like life’s deepest meanings and truest truths can be captured in light and shadow and the daunting work of good perspective. What if that feeling turns my heart as soft and tender as it once was? And what if someone once again crushes it in their grip?
“The bee’s path journeys from the head to the heart. To remind myself what I learned in therapy—sometimes thoughts lie, but our hearts don’t. It reminds me my heart knows best.”
I’ve picked up on a few things since marrying Bill. He and I are very different people who don’t often communicate the same way, and we used to let that come between us. But we’ve learned it’s the things that went unsaid, rather than the things we did say, that have hurt the most over the years. Once we talked, every time, it was always better, even if it took a little while.”
What you asked for hurt, but just because something hurts doesn’t mean it’s wrong—it just means it’s hard.
“I’m sorry everything ended—” “Awfully?” she says through a teary laugh. “Me, too. But good fodder for the novel I’ve always wanted to write. That’s what Grandma said—‘You have nothing to say, Juliet, because nothing’s happened.’ ”
