“It was love and I lived in it. And it is grief, and I will carry it.” – Chloe Frayne

No secret to anyone I’ve been in a funk lately. A funky funk. Ugly cry at the least mention of a name or the sight of a dog or cat. Not good company. But I am blessed with friends who simply don’t care how surly or snarky or blubbery I am on any given day. Imagine that. I call them spiritually generous, and I have to confess that I am not so magnanimous. I come up against my own myopic self importance daily. It never ceases to shock and appall.

All this amounts to the only logical explanation: I am melting. I’m like the wicked witch of the west and life doused me with a bucket of water. Unlike the witch, I am melting slowly…taking my sweet time. The “I” I thought I knew so well is disintegrating. And as Anne LaMott so wisely quipped: everything I let go of has claw marks.

One of my generous friends had invited me to a lovely event last week and I cancelled at the last minute, after she’d bought tickets. I had a migraine. Those are coming to the surface again lately as I melt. How did she respond? Well, she asked if she could take me out to brunch later in the week. Those kind of friends. Her voice has never once hinted “what an ass.” Not that her year has been a walk in the park either.

So yesterday we met at a restaurant halfway between us. In she walks with a gift bag, bright tissue paper peeping out the top. A box of new watercolors. Encouragement. Hope. She believes in me. She is the embodiment of grace and I can’t help but wonder what I did to deserve her…must have been good to her in a past life…aka parallel timeline.

We hadn’t seen each other since our road trip to Detroit earlier in the summer. The one where I had her as a captive audience in my speeding car for hours and saw fit to lambast her with my latest attack of trauma-induced rage. Talk about stuck in self pity; I’m the gold standard. And yet, in she walks for whatever comes up, glutton for punishment. Mind you, it was a small public place. Much safer bet on her part. And it wasn’t that I was in a much better headspace these months later. Nope. Still stuck. Still depressed. Still waiting on divine intervention to pull me out of the muckety-muck.

She showed up anyway. I had mentioned this meeting to another friend on the phone early that morning, moaning about how broke I am that I shouldn’t be going out anywhere; I shouldn’t even be spending the gas to get there. Only to discover later that she had sent me brunch money via Paypal. She did say, “you need to get out of the house. Go!” A third friend who I had also cancelled on last week asked me: “What does support look like for you right now?” She wouldn’t have liked my first thought. It was very whiney. Why does anyone even like me?!

My God I am blessed to have these extraordinary women in my life.

And something did shift yesterday morning at breakfast. First of all, the 20 minute drive itself was transformative. It had rained all week, humidity contributing to the headaches. But Saturday was a glorious, sunny morning. I was almost pain free. The M22 drive was through dense green hills, along the Lake Michigan shoreline with shy glimpses of towering dunes off in the distance. Alone, quiet…as if it were all being presented for me. Who could be sad?

My friend has been going through a difficult time, too…don’t think I know anyone who isn’t, actually. She just went through applying for government assistance to clean up her flood damage. Last year a violent hail storm destroyed her homes’ siding and roof. We all seem to be melting, physically and metaphorically. And I asked her point blank, “how do you stay so hopeful? Gracious? How do you do it?” We laughed and we cried over our avocado toast. We got some sideway glances from the waitress. Can’t tell me she’s having an easy time of it. Maybe she was hoping she’d overhear a snippet of wisdom from the two grey hairs at table 6. Good luck, darlin’.

But I am here to tell you something I realized just then – right there in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, nobody that I am. I wouldn’t trade any of this for the world…

Tearing up again, I said to my friend: “For some reason I may never come to understand, I feel as if a thousand million possible timelines all converged at the moment of my birth and somehow I chose exactly the right one.”

She and I will often talk about houses. We love houses, architecture, design. Occasionally we accompany each other to view some new fantasy cottage dream we saw on a real estate site. We are constantly perusing all the listings and “fiz-bo’s” – for sale by owners, hoping to discover some great deal everyone else missed. Hey – it happens. I’ve bought them. Maybe you have. But we finally admitted something to ourselves yesterday: we have spent our lives looking for a place to belong.

Because nothing has ever compared to the home and family we each grew up in. As privileged and magical and fantastic and horrible and hearbreaking and inspiring as it was all at the same time. I admit that I don’t know how to reconcile that. Something waits back there, before I was aware enough to decipher it’s code…something necessary to move forward. Something precious. Something that made me me, and made you you. And I got it, right there that very second. Given the opportunity to do it all differently – I wouldn’t.