Drive
I pulled over to a rest stop at the state line, focused on the storm clouds in the distance. I turned my key and let the windows down to air out the cabin. I stretched my legs, the wind whipping through my hair, the boom of thunder in the distance.
I would go to my grave thinking closure was bullshit.
I knew better. There was only letting go.
And I knew better than anyone that letting go was more of a feat than making peace with a goodbye, which is all closure was.
I could never make peace with goodbye. Goodbyes hurt, but letting go felt amazing.
And somewhere between the hotel I left twenty-four hours ago and the road I traveled now, I felt a large part of me had already let go.
The sting of that phone call was enough to send me on a soul-searching journey, but all it had done was bring me to the same conclusion.
Even in hindsight, with all of your mistakes disappearing in the distance, the things you got right are there alongside them.
I’d made the mistake of only looking for the hurt.
Because why do we have to be perfect?
Give me a human with ovaries that makes all the right decisions when it comes to the opposite sex and I’ll give you the most uneventful love story ever.
Perfection is boring. It makes life boring, and love even more so.
With me, it didn’t end up being only about the destination; it was about my ride.
It was always the ride that made it so much sweeter, and at times bittersweet, like on days like yesterday.
I grieved like the wound was new, but that’s me being me, Stella doing Stella. That’s how I was built.
My mistakes, my false certainties, all the things that moved me through trial and error kept things exciting, kept me on my toes, kept me growing in the right direction within reach of someone growing the same way.
I let my emotions run my life, or in the case of Reid and Nate, overrun my life, and I forgot about the one thing that eased my temperament, the one thing that made me, me.
Music.
I was still in control most of the time, but sometimes I lost it.
And still, I loved the emotional woman I’d become.
And the more I looked in the rearview, the closer I got to the truth.
It was okay to love them both, to give my heart a chance to explore, but I had already let go.
I was reminiscing about the life I lived, and maybe that was my imperfection.
Maybe that’s where I still let my emotions run away and rule at times.
It made me imperfect and emotional, but I was good with that and pretty fucking done apologizing for it.
And with the man who loved me, I didn’t have to.
So, with only a few hundred miles to go, my eyes no longer searched behind but focused forward. It was time to get home.