Mona > Recent Status Updates

And now I was flirting.
It was like finding out a plant you killed was alive after all and just needed water.

I looked back at Daniel, and he shrugged. “I’m not an asshole. It’s my favorite thing about myself.”

He pulled away just enough to look at me. He was crying. He looked like a man who had cried every single day for months. Like he’d gotten good at it and it was easier to cry now than it was to stop.

“I’ll never stop looking. And when I find her, I’m spending the rest of her life letting her know how much I love her.”

“Don’t ever forget the things I taught you. Life’s too short, Adrian. It is too fucking short. Eat the cake, take the vacation, dance in the rain. And don’t do anything that’s going to break your heart. I’m just sorry that in this case, that thing was me.”

“Hey, everyone.” She did her wave at the camera. But she didn’t have the usual light around her eyes. She was in a hoodie and her hair was in a messy braid. She looked the way I felt. Heartbroken.

Was I doing to her what Adrian had done to me? Insisting I knew what was best for Annabel when she was the one who had to live with her choices?
Maybe listening to her was doing what was best for her and Grace. Even if it didn’t feel that way.

My happiest moments might be measured in months, not years. And I knew that I should be cherishing every second with her, but I couldn’t stop looking at the sun. I couldn’t. It was careening toward the Earth, and I was angry because she wouldn’t try to stop it.

“The holidays never meant much to me. But this one does.”
“Why?” I smiled.
“Because it’s our first one. Because everything with you is better. Because I’ve found the person I can’t live without.”

I wish I’d been able to unlock this level sooner. I wish I’d met her years ago. High school. Grade school. A previous life. It all felt like lost time.

I loved that he had a key to my apartment. Not just so he could come in and save me from the ceiling fan or do unannounced birthday cleanings, but because I loved that there were no closed doors between us. Not really. Not physically or otherwise. He knew everything there was to know about me. He knew about my shitty family—he even knew I was worried I might be sick. And here he was anyway.

I was unmovable. I didn’t like change. I didn’t like to adapt. It was easier to decide to hate something or someone and stick with it, because the other option would be to expose myself to the unknown or open myself up to be hurt.

“Adrian. Hate is exhausting. Life is too short to hate. Let it go. And while you’re at it, it might help you to try to see him as a whole person who isn’t all black or white. You know, he can be your dad who loves you and your mom, and someone who did something really crappy to hurt you guys once. He can be both.”

She scoffed. “Nobody wants to get involved with my kind of baggage. Trust me.”
“Your baggage is not as bad as you think it is,” I said, wiping my mouth with a napkin. “Any man would be lucky to have you.”
I’d have you…

He grinned, walking into the produce section. “Does anyone ever tell you no?”
I pretended to think about it. “Never.”

I think this was one of the most impressive things about her. Especially now that I saw the other side of it. She didn’t let anything get her down. She took things like a blow to a punching bag. She got knocked back, but then she was up again. So resilient.
I wasn’t like that. I couldn’t let things go.

“I never save anything,” I said, grabbing the bottle opener on the counter. “I enjoy things as soon as possible. I burn the expensive candle, I use the fancy rose-shaped soap, and I drink the wine, even if the only thing I’m celebrating is the fact that it’s Tuesday.”

“I never save anything,” I said, grabbing the bottle opener on the counter. “I enjoy things as soon as possible. I burn the expensive candle, I use the fancy rose-shaped soap, and I drink the wine, even if the only thing I’m celebrating is the fact that it’s Tuesday.”

He was lending me his credibility. He’d known me less than a week, he knew nothing about what was going on, and he was stepping in to defend me, giving me the benefit of the doubt and protecting me from whatever repercussions there could be from this. I didn’t know why he was doing it, but I couldn’t be more grateful. I was freaking out.

There was something comforting about it, about just being you in whatever state you happened to be in.

This is my choice. I have to live with it, sort of like everyone else’s shitty choices that I also have to live with.

“Why don’t you, like, adopt a dog or something?”
My mom had said the same thing a few weeks ago. Apparently dogs are the answer to all life’s problems.

“You weren’t pregnant,” I said, over my shoulder, raising my voice so she could hear me above the screaming. “Where’d you get her?”
“Target,” she deadpanned. “She was on sale and you know how you can never leave with just one thing,” she mumbled.

I laughed, taking turns hugging them all through tears. I ended with my husband and put my face into his chest. He put his lips to my ear, his arms wrapped around my back. “Trying to keep all my promises.”
All I could do was nod.

He sang. It was poetry about a woman who was every season. She was the muffled moment when snow started to fall. A soft, beguiling spring fog over a glass lake. The full moon, white and unmarred in an inky-black summer sky. An autumn so vibrant you can die feeling peace because your eyes have seen it. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever written. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard. And it was mine.

How could I go home after this? How could I get this hour and a half of him and then leave with everyone else who’d come to see him? And then the world would just swallow him up once more and he’d disappear.

You can’t control the bad things that happen to you. All you can do is decide how much of you you’re going to let them take. I would be fooling myself if I said I didn’t still love him. I think I’d always be in love with him. But I refused to mourn him or give him a shrine.