you’ve come a long way, baby.

Yesterday marked six months since Drew and I broke up.

And shortly after, I remember hearing from one of my good friends that a mutual friend of ours asked if Drew and I had broken up. She said it like that: did they break up? Like we were in high school and relationships were more like musical chairs than anything else. At the time, I found that term so strange. How does something break that was never supposed to, I wondered? It’s ironic. Like the Titanic, billed as the ‘unsinkable ship.’

And it hurt like hell.

Yes, like hell. Or at least the closest I had ever been to hell on this earth.

But then one could wonder how something that was built on such a faulty foundation managed to stay together for that long, anyway. It’s like walking across a bridge and, once you’re on the other side, you notice that it’s sagging. Which wouldn’t be that terrible, except that it’s a suspension bridge. And now you’d rather not live your life in that kind of suspense anymore–the kind that leaves you waking up wondering if this is the day the bridge is just gonna fall and take you down with it.

Like what almost happened.

So you decide not to ever go over that bridge again. You hope the bridge gets fixed, you really do; but you cannot risk your life on it.

And now it’s been six months, which is incredible. Both because it’s weird to think about how life was and now it’s even weirder to think that life wasn’t always like this. And I am not sure, exactly, how one is supposed to go about celebrating a break up like this, but what I did was quietly text my brother, letting him know it was six months.

To which he said: Wow I can’t believe it’s been that long! In some ways it seems so recent. How are you feeling about it? What a crazy six months.

Which was an understatement, to say the least.

And I thought about his question before telling him the truth: Feeling grateful. Both because I’m not with him and that I never have to live through that winter again.

And then he gave me a good and a Me tooooooooo!!!!! yes, with exactly nine ‘o’s’ and five exclamation points because that’s what we do around here when we want someone to know we’re serious about what we’re saying.

Or, I should say, texting. When we’re serious about what we are texting.

So, right. Six months. So grateful. Life has so much color and I can’t help but appreciate it. I can’t help but live reverently here, because look at it.

It’s good, right?

Right.