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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.
That’s the part of depression people don’t consider, that at times it physically hurts. My therapist helped me understand that the back pain and the headaches I developed were most likely related to stress, and stress hormones like cortisol and noradrenaline contributed to my apathy and exhaustion. Which exacerbated my depression. It was an inescapable cycle that left me looking up at my life from the bottom of a well, the walls slippery, and seeing no way out.
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.
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?
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.
And I think I’m most grateful for time, which doesn’t always heal all wounds, but teaches us how to be happy again even with our scars.”
“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.”
“I was no walk in the park, Merry.” “Who wants to walk in the park? I think that man would run wild with you.”
“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.”
“People don’t become perfect when they become parents,” I tell her. “If anything, parenthood gives us more chances to screw things up, just with higher stakes. We all mess up. Sometimes we have to live with that for the rest of our lives. I can’t promise I won’t mess up, but I promise I will love you even when you do. Unconditionally.
Our traumas, the things that injure us in this life, even over time, are not always behind us. Sometimes they linger in the smell of a newborn baby. They surprise us in the taste of a home-cooked meal. They wait in the room at the end of the hall. They are with us. They are present. And there are some days when memories feel more real than those who remain, than the joys of this world.
“I know you need to be strong for the people you love.” I angle my head so I can catch and hold his eyes with mine. “But I want to stand with you when it rains, when the wind comes. When it’s hard and the odds are stacked against us. We didn’t always do that before, but I believe if and when trials come, we will stand together.”
