He was okay.
He wasn't great, or good, or fine. He was just okay. And okay was perfectly acceptable to him.
So, he got out of bed and went to the gym, took a shower, and went to lunch by himself. On his way home, he picked up some coffee and a new book, and arrived back at his empty apartment, where he attempted to enjoy his time off from work.
As the days and weeks and months passed, he stayed busy.
And he thought about her. And he missed her. And he wondered what she was up to.
He'd see snippets about her increasingly successful career on TV or in magazines. The photographs of her that accompanied her work made him feel happy for the first time in a while, because he caught a glimpse of the other half of his heart. That was the thought that sprang to his mind, even though he knew she was no longer his.
His parents and his friends tried to set him up with more than a few women, but he never dated. Because, after all, how can you be in love with someone and then go hook up with someone else?
How can you find the perfect other half of your heart, only to lose it, and then attempt to replace it with something oddly shaped and the wrong size and that just didn't belong there at all?
You just can't, and you just don't.
And the hands on his watch continued to tick along, and the earth continued to spin as it made its way around the sun, and the months turned into years, and, slowly but surely, he had learned to live without her again.
And before he realized it, three years had come and gone since she'd left for the last time, and ten years separated him from when he first lost her.
He was now thirty-six years old, and when her birthday arrived in late April, he gave himself a gift that was admittedly a bit of a guilty pleasure, since he couldn't give her one.
When he had bumped into her eleven years before on a sidewalk in Brooklyn, he had no way of knowing that day was her birthday. He actually didn't know it until the following year when she sleepily mentioned it as they lay in bed together for the first time.
Her birthday had inadvertently become a marker for two very important firsts in his life, and on this, her thirtieth, he noticed he felt less than okay, and he missed her quite a bit more than usual. So, he jumped into a cab and made his way over the bridge to Brooklyn.
He found a bench right across the way from the apartment building that now housed a bunch of strangers, in addition to the sweetest memories he'd ever made, and let himself sit as he relived each and every one in vivid detail.
He gave himself one hour. One hour to let his thoughts and emotions run away with him. One hour to miss her like crazy. One hour to wish and lament for what could have been.
When the hour was up, back to reality, and back over the bridge he went.
And he was okay.
He wasn't okay because this was what he wanted. It wasn't.
He wasn't okay because he'd grown indifferent. He hadn't.
He wasn't okay because he'd gotten over her somehow. He never would.
He was okay because he decided to be.
He still loved her, andmy God, how he loved her. He'd simply allowed himself to surrender to what he knew would make her okay. What he hoped and believed made her happy.
And as long as she was somewhere being happy and okay, that's all he needed.
I close the pages, rest them on my aching chest, cover my face with my hands, and mentally repeat the last line like an obsessive mantra.
As long as she was somewhere being happy and okay, that's all he needed.
As long as she was somewhere being happy and okay, that's all he needed.
As long as she was somewhere being happy and okay, that's all he needed.
Everything I gave Isla before she left will equip her to eventually be happy and okay, and that’s all I need.
It really is.
