This Lullaby

I am coming to terms with the fact that loving someone requires a leap of faith, and that a soft landing is never guaranteed.

Some things don't last forever, but some things do.  Like a good song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down on the corners and peering in close, hoping you still recognize the person you see there.

Because you can never go from going out to being friends, just like that. It's a lie. It's just something that people say they'll do to take the permanence out of a breakup. And someone always takes it to mean more than it does, and then is hurt even more when, inevitably, said "friendly" relationship is still a major step down from the previous relationship, and it's like breaking up all over again. But messier.

Right now, though, I wanted not to think forward or backward, but only to lose myself in the words.

Are those the only options? Nothing or forever?

No relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater...

The love we have for each other is bigger than these small differences. And that's the key. It's like a big pie chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot.

You know, when it works, love is pretty amazing. It's not overrated. There's a reason for all those songs.

Holding people away from you, and denying yourself love, that doesn't make you strong. if anything, it makes you weaker. Because you're doing it out of fear.

What did it feel like, I wondered, to love someone that much? So much that you couldn't even control yourself when they came close, as if you might just break free of whatever was holding you and throw yourself at them with enough force to easily overwhelm you both.

The fate of your heart is your choice and no one else gets a vote.

Everything, in the end, comes down to timing. One second, one minute, one hour could make all the difference.

...He always did the leaving. But not this time. She kept walking, and did not look back.

She fell, she hurt, she felt. She lived. And for all the tumble of her experiences, she still had hope. Maybe this next time would do the trick. Or maybe not. But unless you stepped into the game, you would never know.

This Lullaby is only a few words,
A simple run of chords,
Quiet here in this spare room,
But you can hear it, hear it,
Wherever you may go,
Even if I let you down,
This lullaby plays on...

And for one second, it was like I could feel the timing clicking together, finally pieces falling into place.

I've seen what commitment leads to.

Going in is the easy part. It's the ending that sucks!

I can say I made a lot of mistakes, but I don't regret things. Because at least I didn't spend a life standing outside, wondering what living would be like.

Whenever you made a choice, especially one you'd been resisting, it always affected everything else, some in big ways, like a tremor beneath your feet, others in so tiny a shift you hardly noticed a change at all.

But it was happening. So many times it seemed like there were chances to stop things before they started. Or even stop them in midstream.

But it was even worse when you knew in that very moment that there was still time to save yourself, and yet you couldn't even budge.

But I think, personally, that it would be worse to have been alone all that time. Sure, maybe I would have protected my heart from some things, but would that really have been better? To hold myself apart because I was too scared that something might no be forever?

And I felt a sudden whirl in my head, knowing this leap was inevitable, that I wasn't just standing on the cliff, toes poking over, but already in mid-air.

Maybe marriage, like life, isn't only about the big moments, whether they be good or bad. Maybe it's all the small things - like being guided slowly forward, surely, day after day - that stretches out to strengthen even the most tenuous bond.

"See," he began, leaning back into the booth, "I was at this car dealership today, and I saw this girl. It was an across-a-crowded-room kind of thing. A real moment, you know?"
I rolled my eyes. Chloe said, "And this would be Remy?"
"Right. Remy," he said, repeating my name with a smile. Then, as if we were happy honeymooners recounting our story for strangers he added, "Do you want to tell the next part?"
"No," I said flatly.

In those first few hours officially single again the world seems like it expands, suddenly bigger and more vast now that you have to get through it alone.

He'd always had that fearless optimism that made cynics like me squirm.

I wondered if it was enough for both of us. I would never know from here, though.

And time was passing.  Crucial minutes and seconds, each one capable of changing everything.

This is what daughters did. They left, and came home later with lives of their own.

But for now, I just sat there on the bed and listened to my song. The one that had been written for me by a man who knew me not at all, now sung by the one who knew me best.

I am not breaking my rules,' I snapped, hating that I'd ended up on the advice-recieving end of things, jumping from Dear Remy to Confused in Cincinnati all in one summer.

The chances we take, knowing no better than to fall or to stand back and hold ourselves in... protecting our hearts with the tightest of grips.

There was only so much space between us,  not even a real distance if measured in miles or feet or even inches, all the things that told you how far you'd come or had left to go.  But it was a big space, if only for me.  And as I moved forward to him covering it, he waited there on the other side.  It was only the last little bit I has to go, but in the end, I knew it would be all I would truly remember.  So as I kissed him, bringing this summer and everything else full circle, I let myself fall, and was not scared of the ground I knew would rise up to meet me.

The only thing I can't stand more than seeing something done wrong is seeing it done slowly.

I closed my eyes and listened. It was like music I'd heard all my life, even more than "This Lullaby." All those keystrokes, all those letters, so many words.

I brushed my fingers over the beads and watched as her image rippled, like it was on water, breaking apart gently and shimmering before becoming whole again.

Just me and the future, finally together. Now there was a happy ending I could believe in.

"So what do you wear to dump somebody?" she asked me, twirling a lock of hair around one finger. "Black, for mourning? Or something cheerful and colorful, to distract them from their pain? Or maybe you wear some sort of camouflage, something that will help you disappear quickly in case they don't take it well."

"He's getting dumped. And he doesn't even know it yet. He's probably eating a cheeseburger or flossing or picking up his dry cleaning, and he has no idea. No inkling."

Yes, it sucked getting dumped. But wasn't it better to just be brutally honest? To admit that your feeling for someone is never going to be powerful enough to justify taking up any more of their time? I was doing him a favor, really. Freeing him up for a better opportunity. In fact, I was a practically a saint, if you really thought about it. Exactly.

"It's so weird," Chloe said finally, "that it doesn't feel different now."
"What?" I asked her.
"Everything," she said. "I mean, this is what we've been waiting for, right? High school's over. It's a whole new thing but it feels exactly the same."
"That's because nothing new has started yet," Jess told her. She had her face tipped up, eyes on the sky above us. "By the end of the summer, then things will feel new. Because they will be."
Chloe pulled another tiny bottle, this time gin, out of her jacket pocket and popped the top. "It sucks to wait, though," she said, taking a sip of it. "I mean, for everything to begin."

That was the nice thing about the Spot: you could hear everything, but no one could see you.

I eased back on my elbows, tilting my head back to look up at the sky, which was pinkish, streaked with red. This was the time we knew best, that stretch of day going from dusk to dark. It seemed like we were always waiting for nighttime here. I could feel the trampoline easing up and down, moved by our own breathing, bringing us in small increments up and back from the sky as the colors faded, slowly, and the stars began to show themselves.

The lizard stared up at us, and we stared back, taking each other in. He was little and defenseless, I felt sorry for him already. This was a screwed-up place he'd just come into. But he didn't have to know that. Not yet, anyway. There in that room, where it was hot and cramped, the world probably still seemed small enough to manage.

But I always worked harder when I was up against something, or when someone assumed I couldn't succeed. That's what drove me, all those nights studying. The fact that so many figured I couldn't do it.

It passed, though. That was the bad thing. It always passed.

In a way, I was almost happy to see her. The worst part of me, out in the flesh. Blinking back at me in the dim light, daring me to call her a name other than my own.

In the dark everyone felt the same: the edges blurred. When I think of myself then, what I was like two years ago, I feel like a wound in a bad place, prone to be bumped on corners or edges. Never able to heal.

I didn't trot my pain out to show around. I kept it better hidden than anyone. I did.

It seemed like this day could go in so many directions, like a spiderweb shooting out toward endless possibilities.

Her life was perfect. But as was often the case, the rest of us were still adjusting.

Once, I was easy. Now, I was choosy. See? Big difference.

"One word," Ted replied, dead serious, "can change the whole world." There was a moment while we all considered this. Finally Lissa said to Chloe, loud enough for all of us to hear (she'd had a minibottle or two herself), "I bet he did really well on his SATs."

It was a basic plot in any number of her books: girl strikes out, makes good, finds love, gets revenge. In that order. The making good and striking out part I liked. The rest would just be bonus.

As if he was beating me to the punch, his words living forever, while I was left speechless, no rebuttal, no words left to say.

I'd seen another shade of him, and if it had been light where we were now, he'd have seen the same of me. So I was grateful, as I had been so often in my life, for the dark.

...as if at the age of eighteen life already sucked beyond any hope of improvement.

"I planned my whole future around Adam," she said now, quietly. "And now I have nothing."
"No," I told her, "now you just don't have Adam. There's a big difference, Lissa. You just can't see it yet."

"So," she went on, "it got me thinking about what cost beauty. Or for that matter, what cost anything? Would you trade love for beauty? Or happiness for beauty? Could a gorgeous person with a mean streak be a worthy trade? And if you did make the trade, decide you'd take that beautiful swan and hope it wouldn't turn on you, what would you do if it did?"

"I should have told you from the start. I will let you down.

I knew this feeling, the 2 a .m. loneliness that I'd practically invented.

"Welcome to adulthood," she said. "It sucks as much as high school."

Despite our differences, we did have a history. No one understood where I was coming from the way he did.

But it was too early to know: there were always more pages to go, more words to be written, before the story was over.

But even more so, it reminded me that this was all really happening. Stanford. The end of the summer. The beginning of my real life. It was no longer just creeping up, peeking over the horizon, but instead lingering in plain sight. Times like this it did seem real I was leaving, and even more that my family, and this life, would go on without me. And again I felt that emptiness rise up, but pushed it away. Still, I lingered there, in the doorway, memorizing the noise. The moment. Tucking it away out of sight, to be remembered when I needed it most.

Maybe, you just misplaced it, you know? It's been there. But you just haven't been looking in the right spot. Because lost means forever, it's gone. But misplaced... that means it's still around, somewhere. Just not where you thought.

So much hanging on just these things, tiny increments that together build a life. Like words build a story, and what had Ted said? One word can change the entire world.

I drove off, with my friends watching me go, all of them grouped on Lissa's hood. As I pulled onto the road, I glanced into the rear view and saw them: they were waving, hands moving through the air, their voices loud, calling out after me. The square of that mirror was like a frame, holding this picture of them saying good-bye, pushing me forward, before shifting gently out of sight, inch by fluid inch, as I turned away.

I was heading off to my new world. But I was taking a part of my past, and the future, along with me for the ride.