your phone rings while you're driving home. it's her. your friend. the one who knows you so well she can shift your whole mood with a sentence.
mini, she says. go outside. look at the moon. it's so pretty and you will love it.
you pull into the driveway. you sit for a second, engine off. then you get out. you look up. and she's right. the moon is full and bright and hanging so low it feels like it was put there just for you.
and it does make you happy. the moon, by itself, does that.
but the thing that stays-the thing that keeps pulling at the corner of your mouth long after you've gone back inside-is not the moon. it's that she was looking at it, and in the middle of her own night, her own tired, ordinary night, she thought: she would love this. and she picked up the phone.
it wasn't the moon that held you. it was being the person someone thought of.
and i need to say this gently, because it might land somewhere it hurts: some of you have gone years without being that person.
you have been the one everyone thinks of calling when they need something. you have been the steady one, the reliable one, the one who makes sure the kid has his permission slip and the ex gets the documents and the house doesn't fall apart. you have been the supporting role in everyone else's story for so long that you forgot you were supposed to be the point of your own.
you bent yourself into the shape of his comfort. you made him the main character. you learned his moods like weather, walked in and scanned the room before you took your coat off, softened your voice so the night wouldn't tip sideways. and he never once looked up from his own sky to say look at this, i thought of you.
you deserved to feel as safe in a man's love as a sister feels in her brother's protection. that's not too much to ask. that's the whole point. and somewhere you started believing the safety had to be earned, or negotiated, or traded for your silence. it doesn't. it never did.
there is a difference between wanting love and being willing to wait for the kind that doesn't ask you to disappear for it. you have wanted love your whole life. that's allowed. that's human. but the love worth waiting for is the kind that lets you keep yourself. the kind that doesn't need you to abandon your own being just to stay in the room.
and i know some of you are in the middle of it right now. mid-divorce, mid-unraveling, mid-guessing. or you're the single mom doing the whole load alone, feeding the kid and signing the form and holding the night together with nothing left over for yourself. or you're the one who was betrayed and still can't stop scanning for the trap. or you're just tired in a way sleep can't reach.
and i know what you've done, because i've seen it. you've taken one half of a sentence-one bad year, one ending, one thing that fell apart-and you've written the rest of the story yourself. this is how it goes now. this is all i get. i'm too late. i'm too much. i missed it. everyone around you rushed to interpret it too. they looked at the half you posted and assumed the whole.
but you may have only lived a third of your story. a third. and you're already writing the ending. you're already deciding the moon doesn't come back.
it comes back.
you don't need someone to call you and tell you to look at it. though god, you deserve to have someone who does. you deserve the friend who thinks of you in the middle of her night. you deserve the love that makes you feel safe enough to look up.
but until then, you can walk outside yourself. you can stand in your own driveway, in your own quiet, in the life you're rebuilding with your own two hands, and look up. and you can be the one who thought of you.
the moon doesn't care that you're divorced. it doesn't care that you're alone tonight, or that you cried in the shower, or that you're not sure who you are anymore without him. it just shows up, full and bright, like it was put there just for you.
and you look at it. and you let it make you happy.
and this time, when you smile, it's because you thought of yourself.
you go back inside. you leave the light off. you let the moon stay.
kid