What I thought was, “I’m an idiot for staying, and I deserve whatever is coming.”
But what I told her was, “I think I made a mistake.”
Her smile splintered, but that passed: it was like a cloud moving. “Oh,” she said. “Give it time! I moved here with my boyfriend, too, a year ago.” She shrugged — flounced, rather — which required the effort of her whole body. “Give it a chance,” she concluded.
For almost one full day in April, I was so full of fear and anger and hurt, I was convinced I would never let go of it. And the truth is, it isn’t as if I did.
I wasn’t exactly dreaming, I explained. I was asleep and sort of thinking. I dreamed how nice it would have been, when I was ten, for you to be twenty-eight and also you, and in my dream you were there for me when my dad died. I dreamed about you hugging me and talking to me about it. And then in my sleep I was so sad when I realized that it would have been impossible for you to have talked to me or to have comforted me, because you were just eleven when I was ten.
Weird, Nik said.
Well, I told him. I think I was vaguely aware of this idea Jeannie gave me, about how when you lose someone too soon, you grieve for the rest of your life, not because you’re mourning them as a person anymore, but because you’re mourning who they might have become and what they might have meant to you.
Yeah, Nik said.
But also because I feel ten, I concluded. And — no, I guess that’s all.
Monday, February 23, 2009
…about impersonal things.
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