Page 97 of The Warmth of Our Closest Star

For most of my life, I’d always felt like I was a step behind. Waiting to catch up to the rest of the world. I’d spent so many years without enough friends, without enough money, without romance, without enough food, without family. Now I was ahead of it all. My future was opening up wide, waiting for me to decide how to give myself a purpose. To find the meaning of my life. To live with a belief in possibility.

Though I’d expected that my life after the surgery—however it turned out—would be different, I hadn’t expected to be confused by my emotions. If the surgery went well, I expected to be elated. Joyful even. If it went poorly, I’d be disappointed. Or angry. Or maybe even unbothered. I’d gotten so used to being disappointed by doctors and health care in general that a poor outcome would not have seemed that upsetting. The fact that I wasn’t simply happy that things had gone so well was the most confusing part.

Things hadn’t simply “gone well” with my surgery, however. What had happened was a miracle. Not because the surgery was a miracle. According to my American doctors, one surgery when I was a child should have fixed my problem. I never should have led the life I had. My history should have been different. My life, essentially, had been a lie. The miracle was that after so many years, so many disappointments, I had found someone who had given me hope. A hope strong enough that I had put trust in them.

And that it had paid off.

So, why wasn’t I simply happy?

Sitting there, confused by my previous life, I found that I hated myself. I had spent so many years angry, confused, and pitying myself. I was tired of pitying myself. If I was tired of my pity, I knew that everyone around me had to be tired of it, too. Even if they were too nice to say so. I’d been morose; a fatalist. I had been existing—even when I thought I was living.

Even as I’d moved to America and married Peter, giving myself over to possibility, I hadn’t allowed myself to believe it. I couldn’t even force myself to believe that my life was getting better. Or, even if I had, I refused to allow myself to enjoy it. Because I felt guilty for it.

Guilt is a funny thing. A person doesn’t have to do anything wrong to feel guilty. Guilt only requires that a person exists. And I had been doing a lot of existing.

I didn’t want to pity myself anymore, but I didn’t know how to do that quite yet.

So, I decided to stop hating myself.

That was a step I could take.

Learning to stop pitying myself would come eventually.

Watching through the living room windows, the clouds parted—only briefly—and a beam of sunlight managed to sneak through. It shone through the wall of glass and landed on my hand as it lay on the arm of the sofa. Warm and golden, the light reminded me that summer wasn’t quite over. Winter had yet to arrive. And even when it did, it never lasted forever.

Minutes later, I found myself kneeling at the back of my closet, a simple cardboard box in front of me. It took some effort, but I finally forced my hands and fingers into action, pulling back the flimsy flaps to reveal its contents.

Gently, I removed Noe’s coat made of sugar and blue clouds. I held it by the shoulders in front of me, staring at the polyester fabric, stuffed to a puffy comfortableness. Bringing it to my face, I inhaled deeply. Pressed it against my flesh. It no longer smelled like warm sugar. It smelled like dust and the inside of a cardboard box. But it still felt like it was made of clouds.

I smiled. Folded my brother’s coat and set it to the side.

Next, I removed Peter’s fancy black peacoat and folded it before laying it on top of Noe’s coat. I removed Ila’s windchimes and set them on top of the bundle, smiling as they made their distinct “bonk” sounds. Then I reached inside and removed my notebooks, setting them on the other side of the box. Once I had carefully returned the stack of coats and windchimes to the box, closed the flaps, and pushed it back into the corner of the closet, I gathered up the notebooks.

Back at my desk in the corner of my bedroom, I stared at the stack of notebooks I had written my thoughts and stories in for as long as I could remember. Since I was a young teen.

In the past, when I didn’t have the tools to deal with my feelings, I wrote them down. Sometimes they were like journal entries—an indecipherable cluster of words and run-on sentences. Sometimes, when I had a better grasp of how I felt, those thoughts were laid out like stories. And, even other times, with clarity, I wrote fully formed stories based on my life and my feelings.

Now, as an adult man, with a new life, maybe my notebooks would help me understand my feelings. So, I flipped the top notebook open to a blank page, flexed my fingers, picked up a pen, and put it to paper.

I couldn’t change my past—that lie of a life that I never should have had to live. But I could decide my future.

I didn’t know what was possible. Or where I was going. But I’d been told that if one doesn’t know where they’re going, it’s best to stay where they are. So, I sat at my desk, writing in my notebook until the sun had set and I had to work in a pool of light from my desk lamp. I worked until my hand was aching. Until my eyes felt so heavy that I could barely stay upright. Somewhere, in the brain that had been poked and prodded—and refurbished—was possibility.

I was determined to find it.

Because what is a life without possibility?

A Neighborhood

Present Day

There’s something comforting about walking in a peaceful neighborhood in the early afternoon hours when everyone is at school or work. Especially in spring or autumn when it’s cool outside and you can enjoy the weather. With no rush to hurry inside to escape the cold or heat, a person can take time to get lost in their thoughts, think about life. A neighborhood is full of life. Many different lives. So many different lives.

So many different possibilities.

Walking through a neighborhood in spring, the trees that lined the street with their branches beginning to bud, the mist from the gloomy day dripping from the skeletal limbs waiting to be dressed by the season, I thought a lot about life.

Not necessarily mine, but life in an abstract way.