one year ago today i was a pool of devastation and relief. crying my eyes out on this very bed, staining these very pillows. i knew it would pass, the pain. the very next day i wrote in my journal. within the week i was with my friends, drinking, laughing. and in the span of a year i felt myself unraveling again, a ball of yarn coming undone from wicked tangles to lay itself flat and new.
today i am so, so loved. from a boy who has treated me with nothing but the softness that i had begged for what seems like a lifetime ago. sometimes i look at him and wonder what i had done to deserve it. he tells me i don’t have to do anything. it startles me, how long the idea of it seemed so strange and unfamiliar. he holds me with such precariousness i am afraid it will break him and not the other way around, but i think this is the reality of finding love again after a war. like perching a ladybug onto a blade of grass. careful, still, quietened.
i knew the pain would pass. i have never been wrong. tomorrow i will laugh and make quiet jokes with my friends in our office. the next day i will be holding hands with the boy i love, eating noodles straight from the pan and declaring every day a perfect day.
here is to a perfect year ahead.
