Before the Lilacs Bloom Again

That night, you fell apart with no one around to help you pick up the pieces.

And you knew that tomorrow there would be an entire life waiting for you to be whole—to be put together, present, capable. But that night, you weren’t even sure you would survive until morning, let alone make yourself whole again within a few hours.

So you took it one thing at a time.

You dimmed the lights so you could cry without feeling watched by the memories lingering on the walls. You opened the window and let the cold air into your lungs. You rested your head against the pillow and let the silence cover you like a weighted blanket, because it was big and it was heavy, and somehow you needed both.

You had to take care of yourself because no one else was there to comfort you.

And you held all those pieces that had once belonged to someone who had stopped holding them a long time ago. Maybe that was why they had stayed sharp for so long. Why carrying them had hurt.

So you stopped trying to make them harmless.

You let those pieces be what they had always been, and you buried them in the ground from which something else might one day grow.

It is winter now.

Everything feels dead and cold.

But spring will come again.

The lilacs will bloom again. The air will not always feel this dense. The pain will soften beneath the sun. The darkness will stop arriving so early and staying so long. You will laugh again. You will love again. You will be all right.

But right now, you do not have to be.

You can show up in other people’s lives just enough to help them stay afloat, then come home and fall apart in your own bed as many times as you need to. One of those times will be the last time you fall apart for that particular reason.

We fall apart even after things die. It is what humans do.

But we only get to live before our final breath.

So try to do that, too.

Even if it is only in the smallest capacity—live.