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How do you breathe when the person you thought you’d cherish forever looks at you the way Yasmen looks at me right now because you’ve hurt them so much?
“I’ve only ever loved Blackly, so the brothers is all the dick I know, but I would assume given the proper girth, length, and velocity—” “Dear Jesus,” I mutter, pressing a hand over my mouth to stifle a laugh. “‘Velocity’? What does that even mean?” “You know,” Hendrix says. “The force of thrust.”
When you lose someone that close, the enormity, the finality of it, sometimes hits you full force when you least expect it. When you are least prepared. And your heartbeat stutters and your knees nearly buckle, just like when you first heard they were gone.
Of how our souls seemed to lock in a bond that not even time could break.
“If I waited until I don’t have feelings for Yasmen before I moved on,” I tell Vashti as gently as I can, “I never would.”
“Depression,” she goes on, “is a liar. If it will tell you no one loves you, that you’re not good enough, that you’re a burden or, in the most extreme cases, better off dead, then it can certainly convince you that you’re better off without the man you love, and that, ultimately, he’s better off without you.”
There is a corner of my heart, a room in my soul, where I must choose joy just for me and just because I want to be free of this. I want to heal, to be the best, most complete version of myself
“I’d like for you to trust that the person standing in front of you has done the work to get better and to understand how I lost myself. I’ve developed the tools to cope when I inevitably lose more, because losing things you love is a guarantee in this life.”
Not that I lost this love, but that I believed in it so much, I ran back into the fire to save it. That when all hope was lost, I didn’t stop looking until I found it again. Didn’t stop looking until I found myself again. And this man, this moment—is my reward.
A smile widens his beautifully sculpted mouth. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Have more children with you. Fight with you. Make up with you. Wake up beside you every day.”
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.”
