Ashton Brandy

A relief for her to realize I am someone else’s burden now- relief for me to not bear witness to her disappointment anymore, though heartbreak accompanies this.

everything is already carved out inside of me

you and i realize that isn’t good

not really

not

when you feel it as deeply

Life, I have eventually come to realize, goes on whether I want it to or not, even when my mind cripples me, and my heart bottoms out into my stomach, far too deep to feel the beat anymore; the sharp, poignant pain whittles like an arrow piercing layer after layer I’ve spent years building at the thought that yes, things will march on even though my dog will not always be there to greet me at the front door, and “mom” will stop showing up on my caller ID, and the quiet Sunday breakfasts with my best friend, sending whispers back and forth across the steam from our coffee, will fade into breakfast for one.

I think, perhaps, at this realization, it may be time to nourish something more meaningful than my apathy, less cancerous than my anger, and I can plant softer things in my garden to grow.

I kiss you, diving in the same way I dive into a lake on a summer day- cold shock followed by blissful relief.

My mom said it was because she broke up with her boyfriend, and we weren’t supposed to talk about it.

“Mind your business,” she said.

“Don’t ask her a thousand questions.”

I didn’t really have to. Aunt B talked about it a lot while she was there.

She ranted and joked and scoffed and rolled her eyes, and the thing about Aunt B was that she was so funny. She was one of the funniest people i knew. She was so funny, in fact, that I thought that breakup was the funniest thing that ever happened.

But then she would cry - and cry and cry with big, fat scary tears and big fat scary sobs.

I had never heard crying like that before.

“Boys are mean,” was about the only explanation she would ever give.

(She said it a lot that summer)

I had two older brothers and I thought they were pretty mean, pushing me or teasing me, and they would make me cry but not like that.

Never like that.

I asked my mom about it once.

“Some boys are a lot meaner than other boys,” was all she said. She told me I would understand when I was older.

I did eventually, when I found my own boy that made me cry like that.

It was grief, i learned though i wish I hadn’t. Yes, a grieving, not for the boy, but for the part of you that got lost while loving him.

It’s almost a right of passage for girlhood, isn’t it?