That Summer Feeling

by Bridget Morrissey

My divorce was something I found myself mentioning as often as possible, as if the more I talked about it, the less painful it would

If I wasn’t ever going to love someone other than Ethan, I wanted to love myself. Any chance to do something new here, I had to take it. Just because I’d given up on love didn’t mean I had to give up on experiencing joy.

It was lovely. Exactly the kind of relationship I’d always thought I should have. Aspirational. Picturesque. Safe.

Not all future paths set out for me were ones I had to walk.

It came down to something deceptively simple and painful—Ethan just didn’t want to be me with anymore.

My relief could have fueled power plants. Revived extinct animals. I had probably had happier occurrences in my life, but at that exact moment, I couldn’t recall when.

She’d probably think I was crying to weaponize my emotions against her. That’s how Ethan felt. Like I cried to make him feel worse, when in reality, my tear ducts operated separately from the rest of me. They just turned on, faulty faucets in my eyeballs incapable of being repaired.

liked men. And women. Anyone, really. And I hadn’t let myself hold space for it, because I’d been so obsessed with ticking off boxes for the life I thought I needed to have that I didn’t pay much attention to the life I wanted to have.

“Probably because the older we get, the more we realize just how much opportunity there is to fail,”

I’d always thought I needed to earn my place in order to be accepted. Turned out, existing was the only thing required in earning my authentic life.

“The older you get, the more you realize there’s a damn good reason to be afraid of just about every single thing in life. So you might as well do it all, because the fear sure doesn’t care either way.”

“I’m not avoiding love, or whatever else it is you seem to think I’ve been doing for the last thirty-four years of my life. Being by myself is not a flaw. It’s a feature. So no, I’m not the one who will be falling in love with Mason. End of discussion.”

“I think that the floorboard outside our cabin got loose because the earth shifted when I saw you.”

Signs didn’t just exist to tell me where to go. Sometimes signs reminded me of what I needed to avoid.

The best gift you can give yourself is permission to keep figuring shit out, no matter how messy it is. You can be a different you tomorrow. You can also own the person you are today. You don’t have to hide away because you might one day change.”

What was love if not holding someone else’s hand through their chosen journeys? Our ups and downs didn’t have to match to matter. I never wanted to be Ethan asking Why do you care so much? It was enough to know she did. It would always be enough. “Yes I do,” I told her.

We celebrated the journey to get there. Not the destination.