“…And two years later, I’ve stopped crying. Not because I don’t want to cry anymore, well, not just because I don’t want to cry anymore, but because my tear ducts physically can’t take it anymore. See these dark circles?” she pointed to the shadowy patches under her eyes, “these are the result of rubbing tears from my eyes too hard. My doctor said if I kept going the way I was I might actually go blind from popping too many vessels around my eyes.”
She said it all so casually over her pad thai, as she balanced her chopsticks between her index and ring fingers. She watched her hands carefully as they fidgeted, eventually giving up and resorting to the fork rested on her plate (just in case).
For some reason I wasn’t uncomfortable the way I usually am when someone is so honest about her pain, especially someone I’m supposed to look at as a sort of caretaker. Her candor was somehow humbling, somehow made her more human to me, somehow made me more human to myself

Her raw sores were beginning to callous, slowly. The things she was telling me about so coolly, I’m sure were the things that brought such poisonous tears to her eyes just a few months ago.

How brave she must be, I thought, to still be sitting in front of me, after losing a life she had loved so much. Not just a man, or a house, or a weekend routine, but an entire life…
To lose the life you had, and halfway through, have to start over, and rebuild from empty scraps—an old couch, dusty carpets, unused china. The thought was almost unbearable. It still is.

It only bends


She said, The mourning never ends,
it never stops hurting
but over time,
you change.
And because of that, the way you mourn changes.
The sadness doesn’t end,
it only bends.

But I just couldn’t get over the thought
of knowing a face so intimately,
so unbearably close,
Remembering what it was like to hold it in your lap,
rested between your palms,
and to know every hair on it.

And even more,
To know that you’d never see that face again,
Never feel that head in your lap,
It was almost unthinkable.

Old memories would be changed
Somehow,
because every sensation would be veiled
by a pang of loss,
like it was now.

I saw her eyes glaze over a little bit,
And I knew in that moment,
She could see her
Feel her near
and I knew that her lap was weighed down a little,
her palms rested at two cheeks.

In that moment, I felt her
Bruised spirit molding
around an instant of utter happiness,
Bending.
Behind those sad
doe eyes
was this enormous
Looming Love
of what had been.

Her love was so vocal, so real,
so alive.
And maybe by feeling it so vividly,
so desperately,
she was proving that she hadn’t lost
anything at all.

“Just go,” she said, so resolutely. “Don’t think about it, because when you think too hard you stop doing. Do while you can, and then think about it later.” Two hours into our coffee, we were jumping from place to place in her life, from her time in Tibet to South Africa to India to New Zealand to Portland back to New York City. She spoke effortlessly about each adventure, not hesitating between locations, hardly taking a breath. I was overwhelmed. I couldn’t wrap my head around each place, I couldn’t fathom breathing in such different air, hearing such different languages, being so far away from everything, alone. Only not.
Having the courage to leave is something I’ve been holding onto so tightly, something I held so close to me, to think that now I’m struggling with it all over again is both frustrating and exciting. It’s a familiar anxiety, but one that reminds me that I’m growing. This is when the stretching happens.
I am astonished with how easy it seems. Maybe it is that easy, when you stop thinking so much.
She sounded so sure that I could do it, that it was right. After so much skepticism and disbelief I thought I was asking too much of myself, too much of the world. But she made it so real. I feel like she’s someone I’m supposed to know. Dad says that’s because she is.
There was a moment when we were talking, maybe it lasted longer than a moment, I don’t know, where I realized that this was a turning point. This moment, this meeting, this person collected, was a catalyst. She was placed in front of me, with her “to go” cup rested next to my “for here” mug, to remind me of the beauty in uprooting myself, of letting go of what you know and holding on for dear life to what you don’t. Some moment of clarity reminded me that there never was a choice…what a familiar, overwhelming feeling.
It was like someone just woke me up, like someone just told me the truth. It reminded me of what it was like for my life to change—for it to mold and bend in and around an instant, without excuse or warning. I am so excited about my life.