I walked three blocks to the bus stop in the chill Washington air, wavering all over the sidewalk because I was finishing up a book from my high school’s library. When my bus arrived -number 105- I climbed into the humid interior and plopped down on a green seat, pulling Animorph books out of my backpack.
Diana, a Croatian exchange student, eagerly took the books from my hands and returned the ones she’d read last night.
I turned around to my friend Christine, who had printed off an epic fan fiction she’d been telling me about.
“I left it on the printer last night and my dad almost found it,” she said, handing over the unbound pages.
My best friend and her guy friend wriggled on the bed in front of me.
He started to lose his grip, and they crashed to the floor.
“I guess not,” I said dryly, and we all burst out laughing.
I put the cap on the black Sharpie and picked up the blue one. He sighed, and snuggled further into the pillow. I thought for a moment, then wrote a line from one of my poems on the skin of his back.
“Hold still,” I said, and held up my laptop to take a picture of my artwork.
“How does it look?” he asked, voice muffled.
I sat in the boardroom by myself, nervous that the phone from my desk would ring, or someone would knock on the door, or my cell phone would buzz. I didn’t want to be disturbed, but felt guilty for being unavailable, even for an hour.
I sat in the chair at the head of the conference table, then moved to the side, trying to pick the one spot in the room where I was most comfortable. I checked the time on my laptop. Two minutes. My work email had been closed down, and my manuscript was pulled up. The document included the agent’s name in it.
I stared at my journal on the front porch. I hadn’t used it in two years, and didn’t really feel like using it now, but my counselor thought it would be therapeutic.
It was 5:30 but he wouldn’t be coming home to me anymore. I’d promised a rewrite to my agent, but I hadn’t worked on it in months. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep without crying. I stared at the paper with nothing to say. I set the journal down and put my head in my hands.
I drove home, singing along with the CD, happy because he would be there when I arrived, and my world had been put back together. My mind began wandering, and suddenly new characters popped into my head for the first time in three years.
Oh, livejournal friends. It’s really over.
Lately a friend gave me her manuscript to read, and I swear it could be published as-is and be a best-seller. Her main character is so strong; she battles and goes into the unknown and faces Hell itself.
I ride roller coasters. When I was a kid I always volunteered to hold the snakes of the visiting animal experts. There’s a hole in a wall in the amphibian house in the zoo I grew up by, and I always stuck my hand deep inside it. I dove of the high diving board (it hurt). I rode the front of the raft over rapids in Tennessee (riding the bull).
Being a dare-devil isn’t hard for me (though none of that stuff above is super extreme), because that involves being brave. Bravery is doing something dangerous or hard and not caring.
Courage is doing something where you know full well how hard it will be, and it terrifies you, but you do it anyway, because it’s the right thing.
I am brave. I do not yet know if I am courageous. Courage is much harder. Courage means picking yourself up and talking yourself through it and making it one day at a time. In this situation, courage means moving on and forcing myself to find happiness again. Courage means facing the future and accepting the different gifts to be found there, even though it’s hard to leave behind the gifts you had.
I wish you courage in life, and I hope you’ll do the same for me.