The Year of Living Ferociously

When we last left off in our story, my long-term non-boyfriend had unveiled information so painful to me that I wanted to hammer my heart shut.

And then it got worse.

The day after Christmas, he called to say that he was going to England for a week or two months, or however long.

"Fine," I said. "I could use a break."

"What an awful thing to say," he replied.

Then, he called me from London, asked if I still felt wrecked.

I did.

He wanted to know my New Year's plans, and I said I'd be alone, wallowing and drinking, as usual. He said he was skipping some wild party to catch a train out to Wales, to be alone by the ocean. It wasn't good news, but did I want to know why?

Punch me, I said. Go ahead.

So he told me. His last medical tests showed there was a good chance his stomach cancer had come back. He'd tried to tell me a dozen times before. He didn't tell anyone else, not even his family.

There's a very good chance he's going to die. He told me that, too. I checked the statistics, and I'm afraid he's not exaggerating.

He also says it would be foolish for me to go to London, in case you were wondering.

While I was driving through the night to my parents' house, I had decided that this would be the Year of Living Ferociously. To flee my rural Virginian outpost. To explore strange and new locations, to aim for goals I didn't think I could achieve. To write and live and love as if on the edge of a precipice.

And now I'm so full of rage and sorrow that I don't know what to do but attack, build up my muscles, to hone the razor's edge inside myself. To become as beautiful and dangerous and sharp as I always dreamed I would be.

And staring down this cliff, dizzy, face in the wind, I'm surprised. There's nothing holding me, but I know I'm not going to fall.