weekend convo.

"Everyone experiences heartbreak," she reassured me. "Everyone gets their heart broken. Do you think I wasn't a mess after my divorce?" She barely avoided hitting her ankle against the curb as she swayed past me.

"I never thought you ever felt that way," I said slowly. "You always seem too tough for that." I watched the bottle in her hand and started to worry about her dropping it and wasting its contents.

"I am too tough for that. So are you. We are tough bitches," she stated. I was envious of her unslurred speech. Her steps were unsteady but somehow I knew she really had it under control. She always does. She never gets one bit drunker or higher or made up or angry or tired or anything more than she means to.

"I'm tired of being tough. I want to be rescued." I sat down on the curb a little heavier than I intended and pouted into my knees. "I want to be taken care of."

"The hell you do. You'd hate being beholden to anyone, and you would feel very beholden and obligated to someone who 'rescued' you. And then you would resent him." She noticed my eyes following the bottle and handed it to me. I impressed myself with the size of the drink I took out of it. She sat down next to me on the curb and in a softer tone unexpectedly said, "I know you miss him."

I daresay neither one of us were prepared for the force of the tears that burst from my face at that. The combo of late night emotional conversation and vodka straight up broke the damn and I was instantly a blubbering wet mess. I pulled a tissue out of my purse and attempted to teach it how to swim by wiping it across my face.

"Oh my god," I wailed. "I miss him so much I can't breathe," Hysterics! Why can't we achieve full hysterics at 3am on a city sidewalk? It would be liberating. 

She put her arm around me and whispered, "I know," into my hair and kissed me on the top of my head. It was an action he would have done and it was a couple minutes until I could breathe normally again.

"I'm so sorry," I whimpered. "I hate getting like this. I try really hard to keep it together. Nobody wants to hang around people like this. And everyone thinks I'm so strong. I feel like nobody understands what I'm going through."

"Yes, I know." She stood up and looked down at me. I took a drink from the bottle and handed it back to her.

"I've never seen you cry." I said.

"No, I don't expect you 'ave, luv," she replied in her fake Cockney accent. "Because I don't."

I blinked. "Ever? Are you one of those people without tear ducts or something?" I sniffled but straightened up. I wanted to hear something mundane and trivial to stop thinking about things that make me cry when I think about them.

"No, its not like that," she took a drink and handed it back. I drank twice. "I mean, I cry, its possible, and I have cried a lot, before, in my life. I mean I don't do it anymore. Not because of some self righteous declaration on my part or anything like that. I just rarely come across things that affect me to tears."

I processed this for a couple minutes while I nursed the bottle a little more. That would be pretty handy, I thought. Then I thought, no, its kind of sad. It would be nice to not hurt this much, though.

 She sat down next to me on the curb again and took the bottle from me. "Ahhhh!!!!" She exaggerated the noise after taking a swig. "Refreshing!" She touched the tattoo on my ankle and said, "Do you remember that anklet I had in college that said 'No mud, no lotus'?"

 I looked at her. "Oh my goodness, yes. I had forgotten about it but I remember now. I loved that."

 "Yeah... its a life lesson." She seemed distracted for a minute while she took another drink and handed it back. She fell silent and stared at the sky.

 "Because... lily pads, and lotuses, only grow in shallow muddy water..." I prompted her.

 "Right," She came back to Earth and looked at me. "Buddha teaches us that basically its all temporary, you have to take the good with the bad, the wheel will always turn all the way around again, everything balances out, right?"

 "Um, yeah," I sniffed at her interpretation. "He's a snib more eloquent than that but yes, that's a basic understanding." I sniffed again and decided this bottle is mine now.

 "Well," she looked at the bottle but didn't motion for it. I was relieved. "Its like this. Do you remember the time you said there were times you 'literally cried with glee' in his company? I'm quoting you."

 "Of course I fucking remember that." Wow that was a big drink, my tongue feels numb. Why can't this stuff numb the lump growing in my throat? "Its very true. We had a lot of... a lot of laughs and really funny and fun times." I hiccuped and more tears arrived. How can I stand to lose so much moisture? I better have another drink.

 "I know. And the reason it burns and hurts so much now is because those times were so wonderful and magical and full of love and that's what makes the absence of those things so dry and dreary and cold and sad." She squatted in front of me and looked me in the eyes. "Lisa. Don't you see? You have to be miserable and heartbroken now because The Universe let you have that magic then. Everything has to balance. Yeah it sucks balls now but try to remember how awesome the Awesome was."

 "Okay," I burbled out of the wet mess of my face.

 "You are tough. Its okay to be human and tough at the same time. Please stop acting like you can't ask for help just because you're too damn tough." I scowled at her. Sometimes I love that she knows me, sometimes I hate it. I wish I could find a man that understood me half as well. She gave me a dry tissue from her purse. "Its too tough being tough, honey. It's like full time theater. We don't leave the house without our full body armor and that's what keeps us safe but it also keeps us soft and tender underneath. When that armor is breached its so painful because we're too vulnerable under the protection. That's why you hurt so much now." 

"I'll never have your gift for words," I blubbered.

 "C'mon, let's get our drunk asses home," she grabbed my hands and stood me up. She started walking ahead. I stopped to pick up the vodka bottle.

 "I drank all the vodka," I confessed. I watched her walking away, much steadier than she was not two minutes ago.

 "If I had a nickel for every time you've told me that," she called back.