Tara

“I missed her every day.

I missed her in ways I didn't yet understand—in ways I wouldn't find out for years to come. I missed her with this deep sort of regret, even though there was nothing I could have done.

She never wanted anyone to see the monster on her shoulder, so she hid it, and when she finally took the monster's hand, it broke our hearts.

It would keep breaking our hearts, everyone who knew her, over and over and over again. It was the kind of pain that didn't exist to someday be healed by pretty words and good memories. It was the kind of pain that existed because, once upon a time, so did she.

And I carried that pain, and that love, and that terrible, terrible day, with me. I got comfortable with it. I walked with it. Sometimes the people you loved left you halfway through a story.

Sometimes they left you without a goodbye.
And, sometimes, they stayed around in little ways. In the memory of a musical. In the smell of their perfume. In the sound of the rain, and the itch for adventure, and the yearning for that liminal space between one airport terminal and the next.

I hated her for leaving, and I loved her for staying as long as she could.

And I would never wish this pain on anyone.”
― Ashley Poston, The Seven Year Slip

“The heart can hold much joy and great sorrow at the same time. It's a mystery. And it's also true.”
― Patti Callahan Henry, The Secret Book of Flora Lea

“...It felt like permission.

The kind I hadn't let myself have for [six months]. The kind of permission I'd been waiting for, as I sat alone in [her] apartment in grief, welled up so high, it felt suffocating.

The permission I thought I'd given myself.

But it hadn't been permission to cry. It had been a command to be strong. To be ok.

I told myself over and over, I had to be ok.

And finally, finally! Someone gave me permission to come undone.”
― Ashley Poston, The Seven Year Slip

“Happiness is a choice as much as anything. Or you could choose to be angry, and if you stay angry long enough, it will become comfortable, like an old robe. But eventually you’ll realize that old robe is all you've got, and there isn't anything else in the wardrobe that fits. And at that point, you’re just waiting to trade the robe for a shroud.” Grace March”
― Kate Quinn, The Briar Club