Only those who attempt the absurd achieve the impossible.
This life, it isn’t always easy.
It’s legs that don’t work correctly, a clouded mind and hands that feel like they’re on fire.
It’s a husband with a rare and nameless blood disorder that’s waiting for the next opportunity to steal ability, thought and possibly his life.
It’s war, an endless war that takes my friends and doesn’t give them back or gives them back, changed.
It’s coming home from a war and never being quite right again.
It’s a family that isn’t quite mine and doesn’t want to be.
It’s a family that is mine, through marriage, and is hurting, and there isn’t a thing I can do about it, because bodies are bodies and cancer is a bitch, and all we can do is wait and hope and it is hell and I hate it.
Some times, this world is just one giant goddamned wall, and it’s all you can do just to lean your body against it and breathe.
And my loves, I’m here to say it’s okay.
It’s okay.
Some days, this life is also me, showing up in Hartford, a broken and frightened thing, and being welcomed with open arms.
It’s a painter in a handmade Red Sox dress, editing wedding photos in the best bedroom in the whole world, dropping everything because I’ve called and asked if she’s home tonight.
It’s my nephew, a miraculously towheaded boy with a shy smile that could light an entire state, tiny as it is.
It’s an unbelievably sweet note from an brilliant and accomplished woman who hardly knows me, but is very kind to me.
It’s walking eight miles in Boston, because infusions are medical magic, and my leg came back. Oh, bless.
It’s one- man bands in parks on perfect days.
It’s the weatherman being wrong.
It’s ridiculous conversations with strangers, borrowing lighters and breaking tension.
It’s moving from the word okay to the word good, and from frightened uncertainty to tentative happiness.
It’s wondering whatever happened to Schnarl.
It’s not getting mugged when I came home that night, and instead letting someone use my phone and having a really short, sweet conversation with a guy who needed to call a cab in the middle of the night, in the middle of the city.
It’s having faith.
It’s a woman with a famous voice and painted arms welcoming me into her home and being my backup: there are no words, no matter how hard I try. She is a miracle, and always has been. I’ll never get over the luck in my life.
It’s feeling like you’re falling, you are helpless and lost and falling and realizing that the world has reached out its arms and caught you. It’s realizing that this happens, that it can happen, that you can feel as though you are falling or falling apart or just plain coming loose at the seams and it isn’t like the old days any more: the world will catch you this time.
The world caught me this time.
Forget everyone who ever let me down: I don’t care about that, or them, or any of it. I don’t mean that in a “screw them” sort of way- what I mean is that I literally don’t care about any of that, and instead I deeply, passionately care about everyone and everything that held me up over the last week. I’m not even beginning to cover it all. I can’t even come close- last week was a Week of Weeks- but the love and luck in my life by far outweighs any negativity. I am, and have always been, a very fortunate girl.
When people who know my story ask me how it is that I am so happy, this is what I will tell them: I am happy because of all of the small, beautiful things, and because some times, when you are falling, the world reaches out its arms and catches you.
