the difference between giving up and letting go.

The water from our faucet is hot enough without the stove. If you drink it quickly. I pour the packet into the delicately faint steaming water and am ripped from this place. "I want to learn to make hot chocolate from scratch," I aggressively push the thought into the dark space of my mind with this one. The thought of my granddaughter sipping my homemade recipe. It washes the sadness away for a moment.
I used to drink this all the time. I use soy milk, now, though. Now, I have more protein and less company.

I thought about it in the shower two weeks ago. "The hardest thing. What's the hardest thing I've ever done?" The memories flood my head faster than the water into the bath and the undeniable truth causes me physical pain. Girls in middle school bathrooms. High school study hall floors. The apartment with white walls on the 4th of July. Saying goodbye in a hallway. The afternoons in Africa. Holding my tongue when all I wanted to do was explode with happiness. The air mattress conversations in New York. Melrose.

"No," my instinct slammed into my ears. No. On the scale of your pain, those were mile markers. The answer is a different pain, a different sort of sick. Dissecting myself, I realized I had given up but held on. It was reflexive; the heart is an involuntary muscle. It was my subconscious's attempt at self-preservation.

I had help in the letting go, because that was a different, more stubborn piece. The morning I realized I had, in fact, done the impossible, I careened out of bed and out the door. I let the cold air chill my bones and rattle my brain with words, "You're alive, you're free, you belong to yourself." It felt similar to the time after the first shower I took in Namibia. "I need words. I need a word to describe this." I'm still not sure one exists.

I've gone back and forth and back again on writing down these thoughts. Only a few days ago was I complaining of how utterly maddening cryptic writing is. How pointless to be secretive if no one but you and your secret see it.  My bitterness is the flower that was never fed, but grew out of spite. Now I just can't bring myself to pull it out of the ground. Maybe I never will, and instead watch to see how it blooms.