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Then she laughed and I wondered if this—finding someone you can laugh with when everything hurts—was the stuff happily ever afters were made of.
but all of that goes out the window in this moment when I realize that I not only love Yasmen, but I want to love her for the rest of my life. “Marry me.” The words slip out soft and certain. And I am certain.
I sweep my arm around the sparsely furnished, shabby apartment. “Don’t you want to join me in this lap of luxury?”
We love a sense of humour
The first time I saw her, my friends laughed because I stopped in the middle of whatever bullshit I was saying and stared. That’s not me. No matter how fine, no girl ever dropkicked me at first sight the way Yasmen did. I want to see her smooth brown skin, these sweet, full lips, the thick fan of lashes, on my children.
“You’re crazy,” she whispers. “I’m sure of you.” I trace the silky dark arch of her eyebrow. “Are you sure of me?” And I see it. I see the calm, the certainty, the love suffocate her doubts, smother the hesitations. She leaves the rickety chair, goes down on her ...
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My pain was plastered in these walls. My ghosts and grief gathered around these tables. A knot of anxiety burgeons in my belly, and panic strangles me so tightly I can barely breathe, but I do what my therapist taught me.
I’ll never be the size I was before I had kids, and I’m fine with that. My health isn’t a number on the scale or on a tag in my jeans. I feel good about my body because it gets me through this life. I want to be around as long as possible to see my kids grow up, so I take care of it.
Not home. Not the dream home we worked for and fantasized about for years. Now it’s just the house where the kids and I live.
Dang :(
That’s the part of depression people don’t consider, that at times it physically hurts.
But after the divorce, I couldn’t bear to be here without him. It felt wrong and empty. To be fair, at that point, no place felt right. Not even in my own skin.
The only thing we never anticipated was losing each other in the process of gaining everything else.
“Yup.” My smile dries on my face like plaster. “She’s great.”
She’s as beautiful as the day we first met. She’s changing, aging, but to me, only getting better. Like God looked at the feline flare of her cheekbones and the tempting pout of her mouth, the sultry dark eyes flecked with gold and said, You think she looks good now? I’m just getting started.
When the rug is pulled out from under the life they thought they would have forever, how do they pretend it’s not seismic?
She scowls, rolling her eyes and marching down the steps. “Hopefully I’ll grow out of it.” Was Yasmen being sensitive? Because that was…harsh.
Stacks,
All the stores are one-word names 😂
Grief is a grind. It is the work of breathing and waking and rising and moving through a world that feels emptier. A gaping hole has been torn into your existence, and everyone around you just walks right past it like it’s not even there.
You know what they say about a man with big feet. Whew, chile, did Josiah live up to it.
I know what she was going through, but understanding how you got hurt never makes it hurt less.
That is very true
“I was no walk in the park, Merry.” “Who wants to walk in the park? I think that man would run wild with you.”
“She has this thing where she encourages me to be my own gentle observer.” “What does that mean?” “It means seeing myself clearly—good, bad, beautiful, ugly, faults, mistakes—acknowledging what I really think and feel, and not judging those emotions. Understanding myself. Not censoring it. Having compassion for myself.”
Do you recognize what an amazing gift that is? To still be here to try?”
“Did you tell her that’s ridiculous?” Yasmen asks, eyes fixed on my face, and her breaths coming out shaky. “That you don’t want me anymore? That you wouldn’t touch me with a six-foot pole?”
“I’m touching you now.”
I want to stop what-iffing my life. Little by little I’m learning to do the best I can and live with the consequences.
“This body gave me my children,” I tell her, sliding down to lift her knees over my shoulders. “And it will always be beautiful to me.”
🥹🥹 omg
Breakthrough 🥹
“Wheel.” “There’s no beginning and no end.” He takes the ring and holds it up between us. “It’s our own eternity.”
“Did we deserve all the shit that happened to us? The things and the people we lost? I’ve learned that life isn’t about taking what you deserve, it’s about getting all you can while you can because it’s short. Because it’s fickle. Because it takes when we least expect it. Now everything I’ve lost makes me cherish the things I have, instead of always being afraid I’ll lose them.”
Wise words
