I said: call me when you get there.
I said: you have everything you need.
I said: I am so proud of you, and I meant it, that one I meant with my whole body, I could feel it in the way the words came out, slightly unsteady, slightly too full, the way something feels when it is real and too large and you are trying to hand it over without dropping it.
I did not say: I have been rehearsing this moment for weeks and I still do not know how to do it.
I did not say: I am afraid I will forget the sound of you in the morning. The specific rhythm of your footsteps, which I could identify from anywhere in the house, which I used to track without meaning to, that sound as information, as presence, as the ongoing low-frequency reassurance that you were here and you were fine.
I did not say: I do not know what I am for, now, in the same way.
I did not say that because it was not your weight to carry. You did not ask to be my purpose. I decided that, quietly, over years, the way you make decisions that do not feel like decisions, that feel like just the way things are, and the undoing of them is not your responsibility. The undoing of them is mine. I held all of that back at the door and gave you the version of me that you needed, the one who was solid and proud and certain, and that version is also real, I want to be clear, that version is entirely real.
But so is the one who drove home and sat in the driveway for ten minutes before going inside.
So is the one who made dinner for one for the first time and set one place at the table and then moved to the couch because the table was too much.
Both of those women are me and neither of them said everything at the door and that is how it should be. Some things you carry yourself. Some things are only yours.
