We Are Okay

I was okay just a moment ago. I will learn how to be okay again.

We were nostalgic for a time that wasn't yet over.

I thought that it was more likely the opposite. I must have shut grief out. Found it in books. Cried over fiction instead of the truth. The truth was unconfined, unadorned. There was no poetic language to it, no yellow butterflies, no epic floods. There wasn't a town trapped underwater or generations of men with the same name destined to make the same mistakes. The truth was vast enough to drown in.

I wish you more happiness than can fit in a person.

The trouble with denial is that when the truth comes, you aren't ready.

It’s a dark place, not knowing. It’s difficult to surrender to. But I guess it’s where we live most of the time. I guess it’s where we all live, so maybe it doesn’t have to be so lonely. Maybe I can settle into it, cozy up to it, make a home inside uncertainty.

I wonder if there's a secret current that connects people who have lost something. Not in the way that everyone loses something, but in the way that undoes your life, undoes your self, so that when you look at your face it isn't yours anymore.

She peels an orange, separates it in perfect halves, and gives one of them to me. If I could wear it like a friendship bracelet, I would. Instead I swallow it section by section and tell myself it means even more this way. To chew and to swallow in silence here with her. To taste the same thing in the same moment.

What I mean is don't be a person who seeks out grief. There is enough of that in life.

And I think of how time passes so differently for different people.

I could say the night felt magical, but that would be embellishment. That would be romanticization. What it actually felt like was life.

We were miraculous. We were beach creatures. We had treasures in our pockets and each other on our skin.

If only I had something to take the edge off the loneliness. If only lonely were a more accurate word. It should sound much less pretty.

I don't know if I still love her in the way I used to, but I still find her just as beautiful.

I learn that I am a tiny piece of a miraculous world.

I wish her more happiness than can fit in a person. I wish her the kind of happiness that spills over.

She leans over our table and turns the sign in the window so that it says CLOSED on the outside. But on our side, perfectly positioned between Mabel’s place and mine, it says OPEN. If this were a short story, it would mean something.

I know that I am always alone, even when surrounded by people, so I let the emptiness in.

You go through life thinking there's so much you need. Your favorite jeans and sweater. The jacket with the faux-fur lining to keep you warm. Your phone and your music and your favorite books. Mascara. Irish breakfast tea and cappuccinos from Trouble Coffee. You need your yearbooks, every stiffly posed school-dance photo, the notes your friends slipped into your locker. You need the camera you got for your sixteenth birthday and the flowers you dried. You need your notebooks full of the things you learned and don't want to forget. You need your bedspread, white with black diamonds. You need your pillow - it fits the way you sleep. You need magazines promising self-improvement. You need your running shoes and your sandals and your boots. Your grade report from the semester you got straight As. Your prom dress, your shiny earrings, your pendants on delicate chains. You need your underwear, your light-colored bras and your black ones. The dream catcher hanging above your bed. The dozens and dozens of shells in glass jars... You think you need all of it. Until you leave with only your phone, your wallet, and a picture of your mother.

But sometimes two people have a deep connection. It makes romance seem trivial. It isn’t about anything carnal. It’s about souls. About the deepest part of who you are as a person.

I wonder if we will become okay again. I hope for it.

I listened to the same heartbroken song the entire bus ride home, because it was still a summer when sadness was beautiful.

I used to cry over a story and then close the book, and it all would be over. Now everything resonates, sticks like a splinter, festers.

I kept wondering then — I'm still wondering now — if there was a time when she realizes that something was going wrong. Inside her, I mean. when she could feel herself slipping away, something new creeping in. If she could have stopped it, or if it just... happened.

It's a dark place, not knowing. It's difficult to surrender to. But I guess it's where we live most of the time. I guess it's where we all live, so maybe it doesn't have to be so lonely. Maybe I can settle into it, cozy up to it, make a home inside uncertainty.

There are many ways of being alone. That’s something I know to be true. I breathe in (stars and sky). I breathe out (snow and trees). There

Tragedy," she says. "Heartbreak." She stops and then she makes sure that I'm looking at her. "Betrayal." Her eyes bore into mine... "These are all things that change a person. If we endure them and we aren't changed, then something is wrong.

I can't muster a smile. Even with the knowledge that it's dark outside and light up here, it's hard to believe that he can see us. We should be invisible. We are so alone. Mabel and I are standing side by side, but we can't even see each other. In the distance are the lights of town. People must be finishing their workdays, picking up their kids, figuring out dinner. They're talking to one another in easy voices about things of great significance and things that don't mean much. The distance between us and all of that living feels insurmountable.

There are degrees of obsession, of awareness, of grief, of insanity.

We are different people now, yes, but those girls were magic.