Day 7

Joana. Bookstores and words. Shopping for luggage because we aren’t sure how to stay in the same place with each other anymore. Pizza and wine and drizzly London skies.

Emotions and laughter and girl dates and we don’t care about anything and we actually care about it all, but we’re happy and full, so let’s go home.

Day 8

It’s Brixton and wandering with an old friend that you are learning in new ways.

You see color and art. Vintage signs and wooden tables. The air smells like the sea when you walk past the stalls with their fish laid out to sell. The ground is wet and the sky is gray and you stop to take a photo and Lavin stops with you and the conversation keeps going because there is so much to say. About life. About people we love and careers that we work for and art that we wake up to create in our own ways.

Little French champagne bars tucked into corners and we talk and catch up and we’re in Paris with our drinks and London with our bodies and the future with our minds.

Buses in the rain to find our friend with the creative spirit and the gentle ways who is doing all the cool things.

And then.

And then your past walks in and you think you know all about friendship and love but my God, you realize in that moment that you don’t know a thing.

Can friendship look like all those other things and this too?

Is there room in your life for this? Do hearts just keep growing and how does it all work?

And is love just love or does it change and move just like you and just like all the days in between when you’ve loved other people and doesn’t that still exist?

The room here is wide and things fall away and you are left with the lessons you most needed to learn.

So here it is: you know how to love now. You don’t doubt it anymore. Ed tells you that you aren’t broken and you believe him.

You know how to feel it and give it and sit with it.

You know that love means it doesn’t always feel good but it always feels right.

Love means sometimes it doesn’t go your way but you know better than to ever stop.

Love means that sometimes things get really confusing but it’s okay, because what you give out is needed by someone and you get it back in return, just maybe it looks different than what you thought.

You know now that you can accept it with no conditions and every ounce of it molds your heart and shuffles your feelings around and the world still looks beautiful and his face is still handsome after all this time and your friends are all growing and changing with you and love never has an end.

It just takes new shapes and new faces.

So. That was Thursday.

Day 9

Friday.

You start to wonder if your friends are okay with you dating them. You don’t want to make things weird but you are surrounded by big hearts and wise minds.

There’s a meeting on the sidewalk in Leicester Square and a walk through the streets and October is breezy and dark and Ed is holding your old bag of clothes from your ex that will also have to double as your closure and you’re seeing that now but you can’t quite take the heavy bag off his shoulder just yet. He knows.

You find a place in the warmth and leave the bag to the side because memories are woven into those old clothes and you just want to make some new ones first.

Ed’s peaceful. He’s good to be around when you’re happy and he’s good to be around when you’re sad. He’s like a color wheel with all the colors of the rainbow but the colors are emotions and wisdom so you just let the little spinner fly and you know wherever it lands with him, you can trust it.

Fridays are warm tea and long hugs and easy talks that go deep right away cause it’s you and it’s Ed and that’s how your hearts are designed.

Fridays are also hard phone calls and frantic texts and the healing power of tough years and the growth you’ve had forced upon you.

Fridays in London as the new you look like this and perhaps you’re able to handle more than you thought.

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