We had everything.
Oxygen in our lungs. Wind in our hair. All that cliché stuff.
We had plans for the next morning. Brunch in our bellies. Boys who’d gotten into the habit of missing us back home. We had things we wanted– reasons to be hungry.
We didn’t know it then but we had everything. If we could have been given a moment to step back and survey the spots we were standing in then maybe one of us would have breathed in deep and whispered, “It’s all right here. We have everything.”
That’s the thing though, we never learn that we have it all.
We don’t learn how much we really have– the things to be grateful and sappy over– until something feels like it’s been wrenched away. Maybe that thing is freedom. Maybe that thing is love. Whatever the thing, the thing that goes absent from the room, it makes us feel like we once used to know invincibility until life put on boxing gloves and hit us hard.
Isn’t that just how it happens though? It’s not even a massive crash sometimes. It’s a slow winding down of our bodies and our hearts until it’s harder to get out of bed. The tears come. They come hot. And you stop wanting what you wanted yesterday. Life feels harder. Breathing feels harder. You spend hours scrolling through Instagram photos from 26 weeks ago when you swore you were happier, smarter, braver.
“If I knew I had it that good, I would have never complained,” I whisper to her. I am 13 weeks back. She is 45 weeks back. Maybe our weeks will somehow meet in the middle and we’ll both land on a space in our own internet worlds where Happiness was like a third sister. When we were a trio.
I am wearing no makeup. She is wearing gym clothes and doesn’t care that her socks don’t match. We don’t care about the things we used to care about. We’re wondering who is going to show up in the next few hours, or the next few days, and offer us a map. I don’t know if it will happen but I think we are both so hopeful that someone is coming with a map, a map that will tell us where to go.
Honesty for this moment: I just want a map.
I want a freaking map. I want Siri to show up and tell me that I should not veer in this direction. I want anything, anything to say straight to me, “Go right. Skip that. Move past that. Up ahead, just watch for what is up ahead.”
But you want to know the scary thing? The cool thing? The thing I have not accepted up until this very moment? No map is coming. No coordinates are being planted. I am mapless.
I am mapless and thank God for that.
I am the one who knows that if you gave me a map, I’d somehow use the flimsy piece of paper to keep myself hiding. I’d take that map and spread it wide across my face and use it as another wall to keep people from getting to me. That’s what my actions really say half the time, “I am trying to build walls and place things around me that will keep you from coming in. If I know where I am going then I will not need you. I won’t need anyone at all as long as I know the way.”
I am mapless and still I am digging my heels into the ground and looking for direction. I am asking for it. I am letting my knees hit the hardwood floor at night. I am cloaked in a bright golden blanket. I am wondering about going north or staying south. I am just trying, with all my decent strength, to build a life I actually want to live inside.
We are never going back there again.
It’s sad but it’s true– never again will we be able to hide in the skins of yesterday. Yesterday is like that old dress, the one you loved so much. That dress was so good to you. It made you feel unstoppable. And then it stopped fitting you. And you had to take it off and fold it up and figure out what to do with it. I know, it’s so hard to figure out what to with yesterday. Do you just forget it? Do you pass it along like a testimony? Like a song? Or do you try to do the easiest thing: wear yesterday one more time.
I know that’s me. I am the girl who has tried to fit into the sleeves of yesterday. I want yesterday to still be good and sweet to me. I want to pretend like I could be the kind of human who does not need to grow or move or change or become someone different. That would be the sweetest thing right now, to be the kind of person who was fine enough to just stay this way forever.
We had everything.
That is what I thought at least.
There was no trembling. She didn’t cry at night. I didn’t wonder why the mornings were the hardest. And yet there was so much in those moments– in the moments where our biggest worry was what kind of inky symbols we’d want to place on our skin forever– that we didn’t know. There was so much we didn’t know about life. There’s still so much I don’t know.
We didn’t know what kinds of fighters we could be. We didn’t know that there was so much strength sitting on the inside of us. We didn’t know that I would be a light and she would be a lantern. We didn’t know that sometimes you have to battle, and wage war, and face demons. You have to do all these things if you want the kind of story that makes other people face themselves. We never even figured we’d be hungry for that kind of story– the kind that makes people want to clear out the darkness with a shovel and a snowplow.
We didn’t know that people actually need you to get down to the bottom of yourself sometimes. God needs that of you, too. It’s only there– at the bottom– where you ever have to tap into the courage it takes to sit up. And with sitting up comes standing. And with standing comes figuring out how to walk again.
We didn’t know that walking would be just fine. After a time of no standing at all, walking at a slower place would be more than fine. It would teach us to be quieter. It would teach us to look around. It would grow into our bones this idea that there is no need to be fast and quick. We could slow down. We could take our time. The world would allow us to take our time and just suck in the moments deep.
And with each small step, the truth comes back with a vengeance that is clear as 20/20 vision: it’s all right here. We think we are pieces but the pieces are all right here. Nothing is missing. Nothing got lost. We don’t need a map to hide behind, we just need to breathe.
It’ll be okay, it’ll be okay.
We still have everything.
Everything is still somehow here.
Everything just looks different than it used to but it’s all still here.
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