|
8091792
|
Why is it that when we lose something big, we begin to lose everything else along with it?
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
9495c35
|
It's difficult to stop trying with the one you love. You always hope that this next time might work, might change everything for the better.
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
c905926
|
Life was fragile and love was, too. At any moment, even our happiest ones, our world could shatter and we wouldn't see it coming. There was only more loss ahead, showing its ugly face when we least expected it.
|
|
life
realizations
|
Donna Freitas |
|
e17ba2d
|
I've barely been able to think about anything else.' 'Other than...' He waited for me to finish. 'Kissing you, dummy,' I said. 'Really?' 'You shouldn't be that surprised,' I said. He grinned. 'I'm just glad to know we're on the same page.
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
2b0352a
|
Yet little by little, I was also becoming the girl who was learning to live with this, all of it, letting it weave together with everything else, the good and the bad, as life moved forward, because that's what life did, regardless of whether we were ready for it or not.
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
8dd1aab
|
The girl I am now, girl--she survived. I just needed a little help getting here.
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
f5286f3
|
Now you," Grandma barks at him. "Yes, you, the invisible truck driver," she added, giving me a wicked grin. "Go stand next to Rose over there by the stone bench and smile like you mean it." "Yes, ma'am," Will said. "I am not to be called ma'am. My name is Maggie," she crabbed. "Well, I also have a name. It's Will," he shot back. Everyone stopped. We held our breath, waiting to see what Grandma would say next, but she just smiled at him. "I ..
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
b9578ae
|
The only thing that mattered was where I was and who I was with now, and when Will's arms tightened around me I knew I was right where I needed to be all along.
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
f33a9d6
|
So what are you saying?" he asked. "That we'd be crazy if we don't try again. That you good for me, Will Doniger. You've proven it again and again." He hesitated before he turned to me, words hovering on his lips. "Tell me," I said. "What are you thinking?" "That I love you, Rose. I have for a while." I stopped breathing. "Me too. I love you, too."
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
f1f3cc3
|
I wish I could bottle this,' I whispered. 'And drink it every morning.' 'And every day at lunch, and then again at dinner, and before bed.' 'You'd get sick of it,' he said. I shook my head. 'Never.' 'Seriously,' he said. 'I want to freeze this moment.' 'Good thing you don't need to.' 'No?' 'Will Doniger, there is nothing in the entire universe that could make me stop wanting to be with you. And so on and so forth ad infinitum.
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
5f0f13c
|
The happier people become the more I noticed my sadness.
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
f06dc53
|
I guess you could say my mind was injured and that's why I didn't play.
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
a1b8f71
|
To create a community where faith matters not just in theory but in reality, faith has to be a public value, not just a private one.
|
|
spirituality
|
Donna Freitas |
|
37c4f45
|
Was he going to ask me to go with him? Maybe I was getting ahead of myself and he was just making conversation. Oh, why was talking to a boy so fraught with complication?
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
ab2b8e4
|
I was out of practice with my emotions (...)
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
f8c542c
|
I thought about love as we stood there, the day turning to dusk and the temperature dropping, and my heart, the one inside of me, become fuller.
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
e56ed8a
|
I would work my way toward the Rose from before, who laughed often, who felt things so deeply, who could move through the world brimming with feeling and emotion.
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
d48c189
|
I`d learned from experience that hugging someone only encouraged the person to cry even harder and I always wanted the tears to stop. But I was beginning to understand that there would always be sadness when it comes to our mother. A layer of sorrow was now knit through us so certain moments, memories, even new experiences, would tap it, and this was one of those moments. So instead of leaving Jim alone until the tears dried up and disappea..
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
cdaedac
|
it never occurred to me that the girl I`d always been in high school could bend and shift and change without breaking altogether!
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
00e2ccf
|
This is what I imagined as I watched my kite, my beautiful kite, with its heart, its star and crayon, its note and flowers glowing from the light of the sun behind it. I felt love and grief and joy and all the emotions in between, letting my weathered broken heart knit itself back together again as I said goodbye to my mother. Our imaginations are such gifts, she used to say. So I thanked her for mine.
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
7a250e6
|
For me to give someone a firm and enthusiastic yes or no is to presume the person I am saying yes or no to is my equal, or at least someone I feel equal to saying yes or no to, as though they are a partner, a friend, someone with whom I am on the same footing. It presumes I am in possession of some power in the situation. It presumes the other person sees me as an equal, or something like a peer, and is waiting to see if they are going to g..
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
775d06f
|
There is a liminal space created between the powerful person and the person who is the target of unwanted attention, a liminal space between outright yes and outright no -- not a maybe-yes or maybe-no -- but more of a hovering, a being caught and not knowing where else to go or how to move without making things much worse. So you stay put. You hold the person off as best you can without causing them to retaliate too terribly, and because yo..
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
5808135
|
Gymnasts develop fears about certain moves and get hang-ups about doing routines at meets or anxiety about certain rivals who can psych them out.
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
708bb44
|
There were just little things and they still made me sad, but I become better at staying in my sadness and at resisting the urge to chase it away.
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
516a8bc
|
I remembered the words in the note Mom left in my Survival Kit about using my imagination. Finally, after all this time, I felt its wheels begin to turn again, slowly at first, as if they were rusty, then with more confidence, as if someone had flipped on a switch. In the light of this awareness, I began to have faith that my mother was still with me, embedded and woven into this part of me I`d tried so hard to bury, the part that was most ..
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
a02201b
|
I devised a list of things I needed to accomplish, all of them related to the Survival Kit and my mother. I was no longer going in any particular order or interpreting my tasks so literally and narrowly. They took on a life of their own, a life that I was giving them now.
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
ff1f162
|
Music hadn`t always deepened my grief. For most of my sixteen years, it had healed my hurts, soothed them, given me a way to remember and the strength to move on.
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
ae67f13
|
All around the country, at universities far and wide, at workplaces of all sizes and types, at companies that boast of doing good and making the world a better place, there are file cabinets full of the bloody tongues of women. Some are young and tender, others more weathered and battered, but all of them taken from us by people in business-casual attire, in suits and sensible skirts, walking up to us as though what they are about to do is ..
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
88aa2ab
|
There is a liminal space created between the powerful person and the person who is the target of unwanted attention, a liminal space between outright yes and outright no. That space is not a compromise--not a maybe-yes or maybe-no--but more of a hovering, a being caught and not knowing where else to go or how to move without making things much worse. So you stay put. You hold the person off as best you can without causing them to retaliate ..
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
4dc5843
|
I am a survivor, but I also am, and always will be, a victim. I can't speak for others who share this dual identity, but I can say for myself that, while I wish to be the proud person who exclusively occupies the title of survivor, I still claim the territory of the shivering, cowering victim.
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
6f427c5
|
Before the first plugs, an early version of the virtual world existed. People carried around handheld devices that allowed them to access it.
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |
|
e0e43c1
|
But the maintenance of two entirely different shelves - one real, one virtual - was confusing and exhausting. People became so addicted to looking at their tablets that they stopped going outside and even stopped talking to their real friends and loved ones. The app world save every one of this division by liberating people from their bodies and allowing them a permanent virtual existence.
|
|
|
Donna Freitas |