Letting Go (with extras for paid subscribers)

Notes on friendship, ruptures and repairs, and letting go

This is me and my best friend, Jessica.

There was a time when this picture, this moment, seemed impossible. For one thing, I thought I’d never get a wedding day. Too many bad experiences had convinced me that love was nothing more than trickery and breadcrumbs and waiting to be discarded. If you were lucky, that is. Sometimes, it was something worse.

So I decided it was easier and safer to tell myself that love wasn’t real, that it was nothing more than a silly fantasy, a lie¹.

But there’s another reason this moment seemed impossible, a reason that had nothing to do with what I’d experienced in past relationships: Jessica and I, we once let each other go.

Me and Jessica on my wedding day. My husband, Toby, had just been diagnosed with cancer. Somehow, we all managed to make room for our joy and our grief. Photo by Emily Nicole Photos.

I was 10 when my family and I moved into the house that felt like my childhood home. We probably would have stayed there if not for what happened.