Hello Stranger

by Katherine Center

“In the wake of a difficult time,” Dr. Nicole said then, sounding more than ever like the calm voice of reason, “as you try to readjust to a new normal—” “I don’t want a new normal!” I interrupted. “I want the old normal.” “The trick,” Dr. Nicole continued, not letting me throw her off, “is to look for the good stuff.”

Note to self.

“Maybe you need to let go of winning. Maybe there are all kinds of ways to win. Maybe it’s a chance for you to make your own set of rules.” “You’re saying I should give up?” “Don’t give up. Just shoot for a different kind of victory.” “You can’t just not win and pretend that you did.” “Look,” Sue said. “Maybe you can’t do your usual thing right now. What if you do something crazy and different? What if instead of trying to make a thing you can’t make, you try to do something else?” “Like what?” “Like try to tell the story of this moment in your life. Try to capture your world right now, cracked open, exactly the way it is. Capture the chaos and the uncertainty and the longing. And don’t forget to capture whatever’s going on with you and that guy—because there’s some kind of fire in that.”

I’d do what I could do and let the rest go.

I need to work on this.

Seeing the world differently helps you see things not just that other people can’t—but that you yourself never could if you weren’t so lucky. It lets you make your own rules. Color outside your own lines. Allow yourself another way of seeing.

Because that really might be the truest thing I’ll ever know: The more good things you look for, the more you find.

One year, for my birthday, I got a historical romance novel as a gift. After years of studying creative writing and Serious Fiction in school, I had never really read romance before. But I pushed past the decidedly nonliterary cover and opened it up to the first chapter to “take a look” at it. Three hours later, I was in the car—driving to the bookstore to get another one. I felt like a person who’d spent her entire life eating boneless, skinless chicken breast … and I had just discovered chocolate cake. That book was delicious. It was blissful. It was life changing. It redefined reading for me. And fun. It was the biggest writing epiphany of my life. I mean, I knew I loved love stories. I’d been raised on Nora Ephron, after all. But those were movies. Movies were entertainment. Books, in my head at least, were work—not play. After that first gateway romance novel, I spent the next several years reading historical romances in a blissful haze. Did I say “reading” them? Sorry—I meant “devouring” them. I put duct tape over the chesty man-candy on the covers—but I kept reading. In the bubble bath. At stoplights. While stirring spaghetti sauce on the stove. There you have it: I fell in love with romance novels. For a long time, if you’d asked me why that was, I’d have shrugged and said, “Because they’re fun?” But now, after much overthinking it, I’ve figured out—at least in part—why they’re fun. It’s because love stories really are unlike any other kind of story. All stories ha...