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“You’renota mess, Daisy. You just need to figure some things out first. You never properly dealt with the loss of your mom. You were thrust into adulthood alone, and I’m afraid you clung to me and I let you. Yesterday was a wake-up call for me. I want to take care of you more than anything, baby girl. But if I do, you’ll never have a chance to truly heal on your own.”
She practically falls to the floor, crouching down to her knees as she sobs, and I’m racked with guilt. It’s obvious to me now that Daisy never let herself feel the grief from losing her mother, and keeping that secret was just another way to keep her memory alive. Which means she has a long road ahead, and it’s one I can’t help her with.
If I thought for a moment that Daisy would sink, I wouldn't do this to her, but I know how strong she is. I know what she’s capable of, and I know she needs me out of the way until she can do it on her own.
Before long, she rises up from the floor. And when she turns back toward me to give me one last look, I blink away my own tears.
“Goodbye, Ronan,” she whispers, and I swear I don’t breathe again until she’s gone.
As long as she’s not in my arms, I don’t want to breathe at all.
RULE #40: BIG RISK, BIG REWARD
Daisy
Two months later
There’s this part of grief counseling where we’re supposed to sit in silence for a few moments. It’s meant to be meditative and calming. For five minutes, we listen to nothing, and it allows us to just focus inward.
It’s my least favorite part.
It feels like being shut alone in a room with someone I’ve been avoiding. Painful and awkward and torturous. But I do it. Because that was the promise I made myself. I’m not going to cut corners and fake recovery. I am going to do the hard things.
Big risk, big reward.
The five-minute timer beeps and everyone slowly opens their eyes. Another least favorite of mine. Staring into the grief-stricken faces of survivors, like me. But it turns out convincing yourself that someone else has it worse doesn’t actually make you feel better. Because sadness is just…all around. And I don’t mean in just these meetings, but everywhere. No one is really immune or safe from sadness.
No one has perfect, poetic lives.
It took me having one for a split second to realize that. Even on private jets and balconies overlooking the Eiffel Tower, the grief and pain I’d been bottling up and shoving into a ratty old backpack stuck to me like static cling.
But I also learned, through these harrowing and sometimes overwhelmingly sad meetings, that while sadness does permeate the air nearly everywhere, so does joy.
Ironically, it turns out that that’s sort of what makes life poetic in the first place. It’s not an Instagram filter or a Pinterest board. It’s gross and gritty and beautiful and stunning all at the same time.
I also had to accept that love could be just a memory, and it wouldn’t make it any less perfect or significant.
My mother loved me so much, she walked away from the man of her dreams. She walked away from real love. But she came back a happy woman. It might sound sort of weird, and I don’t share this part with my grief group, but knowing that I fell for the same man my mother did made me feel strangely close to her. Without thinking about the gross parts, of course. I love that her heart beat for the same person mine did, and that means something. Like she’s still here.
I’ve let go of Ronan Kade.
I don’t cry about it anymore. At least not every day, like in the beginning. I just remember the truly perfect moments and the surprising ones. Honestly, I’ve gotten to a point in my healing where I’m sort of astounded and shocked that it happened at all.
I fell in love with a man thirty-five years older than me. Who happens to be a billionaire.
Who also happens to be the most romantic, passionate, caring, down-to-earth, perfect man—no, perfectperson—I’ve ever known.
I mean, how many girls can say they’ve experienced something like that by the age of twenty-two?
I’m lucky. Or at least I keep telling myself that.
When I think back on the whole experience, I try to remember the reason I came out to Briar Point at all. Why did I go to such lengths to find him? Was it really about understanding why he left me the money? Or was I somehow picking up where my mother left off?
I don’t see him at the club anymore. Everyone’s talking about it, and I’m starting to feel the pressure. Like all of their harsh glares are really saying,Why don’t you quit so the billionaire we love will come back?
But I can’t quit. Because I need this job. Even though I know Geo won’t hound me for my half of the rent, I have to pay him or else this has all been for nothing.
“Daisy, did you want to answer today’s prompt?”
