Grace
I’d always heard people say you change a lot in your twenties, and to be honest, I thought it was a crock of shit.
I had been the same person ever since I could remember. I embodied everything that a Leo was. I lived for the fun of it all. If someone asked me to write my bio for The Bachelorette, I knew exactly what I would say.
Grace Tanev: sunny, adventure-seeking, big-hearted and always down for a good time.
I wasn’t going to change. I didn’t want to change. Because at the end of the day, no matter what happened to me, I had the uncanny ability to look at the bright side. I could always dig my way out of any hole. I was resilient. I was untouchable.
But as a freshly twenty-three-year-old, sipping coffee on the porch of a one-bedroom cabin in New Hampshire all by myself… I finally understood what they meant.
Two months.
It had been two months since I’d felt my heart ripped out of my chest when Jaxson left me in that airport.
I didn’t know what hurt more that day — the silent drive to an end we both knew was coming, watching him break down in that lounge, hearing him confess that he loved me, or staring at his back when he finally had no choice but to walk away.
It was death by a hand I’d dealt myself.
But just because I knew it was coming didn’t make the kill any more merciful.
Now, I felt like a hamster on a wheel, chasing the high I used to feel from traveling to a new destination but never able to reach that high. I had now officially spent more time away from Jaxson than I had with him, and yet he still consumed my every thought.
I couldn’t rent a car or hitch a ride without wishing it was him in the driver’s seat. I couldn’t sleep a single night in a tent or a cabin or a hotel room without longing to curl up with him under the covers. I couldn’t paddle board or dance or sit by a fire or hike a mountain or do anything without imagining what Jaxson would do if he were there with me.
I was thoroughly ruined.
Every experience in my life felt dull without him, like an old film photo or a VHS tape from the 90s. Life was happening. I was moving forward. But nothing was as sharp, as colorful, or as clear as it had been with him by my side.
Now, I was watching the yellow, orange, and red leaves slowly fall, one by one, as I ticked another day off the calendar and sat fully in my sadness. That was a new development for me, too — a way I had changed.
I wasn’t running from the pain.
It had been nearly two weeks since the last time Jaxson and I spoke.
I missed his voice like I missed the innocence of childhood. I longed to call him, to text him, to run to him. Two weeks without any contact had me thirsting for him like I’d been walking a week in the desert without a sip of water.
It was for the best. I knew that, deep in my gut. It was why I fought every urge I had to send him a photo of where I was, why I didn’t text or call him even though I was desperate to hear his voice.
The old me would have been fine by now. Two months? That might as well have been a lifetime. I would have left him in my rearview mirror. I would have already been dying over someone else, crushing so hard I felt butterflies every time I saw them. I would have traded in that pain so fast it would make a head spin, reaching instead for the next person who had the ability to make me feel good.
But as the wise old they had predicted — something in me had changed.
It wasn’t that I still didn’t opt for the bright side, because I did. When I longed for Jaxson, I reminded myself how amazing it was to have the time we did have together. I listed off every experience I was thankful for with him.
But something he’d shown me was that it was okay to sit in our sadness every now and then, to feel the pain that life shells out to us.
That pain is what makes us human.
That pain is what makes us appreciate the overwhelming joy when we’re blessed with it.
The old me never cried. I would have sooner sawed my arm off with a rusty pair of scissors. But the new me cried almost every day — and liked it. God, it was wild, how something I used to fight so hard was something I welcomed like an old friend coming home now. But I did. I embraced that tight zing in my chest. I smiled when the first tears rolled down my cheeks.
Because for the first time in my life, I had someone to miss.
Every night, when I closed my eyes, I replayed the way he’d sprinted back to me in that airport. I watched his brows bend in anguish, heard his voice when he broke and confessed that he loved me, felt his hands clinging to me so hard it was like he would fade into nothing without feeling my skin against his.
It was my favorite memory — even when it ripped the scab off any attempt my heart had made to heal itself.
He loved me. And I loved him.
If only it were like a movie where that was enough.
I swore to myself that I would leave him alone. I swore I would let him move on and heal, and that I would pay myself the same respect.
But on my second day in New Hampshire, I woke to a text from my mom that broke my resolve like a dam made of toothpicks.
Mom: Hey, little globetrotter. We’re heading to Tampa for the first home game. Meet you there?
