Eighteenth of February

Today was a good day. Great, even.

I got a lot of artwork done, saw some friends, played some music, and ate some chocolate. Breathing was easy and nary a smile was faked. I did not suffer a moments' loneliness or self doubt as I walked the hallways of my school, or moved from one studio to the next. No one cut in front of me or shoved me. The air was fresh and cool, like Tuscan pears plucked off a tree in mid-July. A soft breeze kissed my face as I walked out of school to go home. I just caught the 419, and when I got to Fairview, the 470 came straight away. My shorter-than-usual trip home allowed me just enough time to reflect blissfully upon my day, with no room for boredom to set in.

As I got off the bus, with the remnants of a good day's grin on my face, I heard a sound. At first, I thought it was laughter. I looked over across the street and saw two girls around my age standing a few meters away from each other; one, in a sweater with her arms crossed and shoulders hunched against the breeze she had not dressed for. The other, with a big coat and tissues in her ungloved hand. The first girl turned and walked down the street away from the second girl, who bent over with her face in her hands. I still wasn't sure if her howling was laughter or not.

It wasn't. I figured this out when she tried walking up the street but stopped repeatedly, crouching half-over again and again. It became apparent to me that she was sobbing, not gigging.

"Are you okay?" I called.
She shook her head. Her whole body shook. "No" (although it came out sounding like a sad meow).
"Hang on."

I crossed to the other side of the street, hopping over a low snowbank. The girl had stopped walking. I don't know how she was able to breathe, she was crying so hard.

"What happened?!" My hand hovered abover her right shoulder as she turned to face me. A very pretty black girl with big eyes overflowing with tears, and long braids stood before me.

She was barely comprehensible the first time she moaned her response. I asked her to repeat it. I couldn't understand her the second time, either. What could cause a person to bawl like this out in the open, all alone?

"I just caught my boyfriend cheating on me."

Turns out, she was going to meet him, saw him *with* another girl, and he simply told her, "it's over".

I was able to get little else out of her aside from her name. I asked her if she called anyone, but I couldn't understand her answer. I offered to have her come in and have some tea and calm down out of the wind, but she shook her head and kept crying. I suddenly wished I had remembered my gloves.

I wished I was able to tell her, really tell her, how much I understood. How badly I could relate to the pain in your chest just takes up the whole room, and how your stomach weighs a million pounds, and how breathing air feels like breathing scalding hot water, and how Parkinson's seems to spring up overnight, and how utterly sick you feel after having your whole life ripped out from underneath you in an instant. I wished I could express to her how temporary that feeling is; even though it feels like the sadness will suffocate you, it won't; how after days and weeks and months (and even years for some) of heavy, grey air, eventually the fog begins to lift. How one day, she'll be able to drive by his street without bursting into tears. How she'll hear his name without her heart cracking open. How she'll run into him and feel nothing; not sadness, not love, regret, humiliation; he's just another person you walked by. I wanted to take her back and show her how I was, curled up on the floor; waking my sister up because I couldn't stop crying; hyperventilatng and experiencing full-blown panic attacks.

And I wanted to show her my day today. Today was a good day. Great, even. I wanted to tell her he didn't cross my mind even once, and one day he won't cross hers either. I wanted to show her how I got my life back, and that she will too. How even though he shamed and disrespected her, no one else had to.

But this girl was a total stranger.

All I could say, while her big, misty eyes were still focused on me, was "stay strong".

It's all you can do.