Maybe You Should Talk to Someon - Lori Gottlieb Page 0,137

book club with. At the top of the list was her husband (“The best person in the world to go through life with,” she said, “but also the best to go through death with”), her sister, and her nephew and newborn niece (Julie was their godmother). There were her parents and four grandparents—all of whom couldn’t understand how in a family with such longevity, Julie was dying so young.

“It’s like we’ve done therapy on steroids,” Julie said of everything that had happened since we met. “Like the way Matt and I say that we’re doing our marriage on steroids. We have to cram it all in as quickly as possible.” Julie realized, when she talked about cramming it all in, that if she was pissed off about having such a short life, it was only because it had been such a good one.

Which is why, in the end, after several drafts and revisions, Julie decided to keep her obituary simple: “For every single day of her thirty-five years,” she wanted it to read, “Julie Callahan Blue was loved.”

Love wins.

44

Boyfriend’s Email

I’m at my desk, working on my happiness book, slogging through another chapter. I motivate myself with this thought: If I turn in this book, next time I’ll get to write something that matters (whatever that is). The sooner I finish this, the sooner I can get myself back on fresh ground (wherever that is). I’m embracing uncertainty. And I’m actually writing the book.

My friend Jen calls, but I don’t pick up. Recently I’ve filled her in on the missing parts of my health situation, and she’s been helpful in the way Wendell has—not by finding a diagnosis but by helping me cope with a lack of one. I’ve been learning how to be okay with not being totally okay while also arranging consults with specialists who might take my condition more seriously. No more wandering-uterus doctors for me.

Right now, though, I have to finish this chapter—I’ve blocked out two hours to write. I type words and they appear on my screen, filling up page after page. I knock out the chapter the way my son does the occasional busywork at school—workmanlike, as the means to an end. I keep going until I get to the chapter’s last line, then give myself a reward: I can check email and call Jen! I’ll take a fifteen-minute break before moving ahead to the next chapter. The end is in sight—just one final section to go.

I’m chatting with Jen and scanning my emails when suddenly I gasp. In bold letters, Boyfriend’s name appears in my box. I’m amazed; I haven’t heard from Boyfriend in eight months, ever since I tried to get answers and brought pages of notes from those calls to Wendell’s office.

“Open it!” Jen says when I tell her, but I just stare at Boyfriend’s name. My stomach tightens, though in a different way than it did when I kept hoping he’d change his mind. It tightens because even if he were to say he’s had some sort of epiphany and wants to be together after all, I would, without question, say no. My gut is telling me two things—that I don’t want to be with him anymore and that, even so, the memory of what happened still stings. Whatever he has to say, it might upset me, and I don’t want to get sidetracked by this right now. I have to finish this book I care nothing about so I can write something I do care about. Maybe, I tell Jen, I’ll read Boyfriend’s email after I crank out another chapter.

“Then send it to me and I’ll read it,” she says. “You can’t make me wait like this!”

I laugh. “Fine. For you, I’ll open it.”

The email is shocking and predictable at the same time.

You won’t believe who I ran into today. Leigh! She just joined the firm.

I read it to Jen. Leigh is someone that Boyfriend and I both know independently and secretly find irritating; if we were still dating, of course he’d share this juicy piece of news. But now? It’s so out of context, so devoid of acknowledgment of what happened between us and where our conversations left off. It feels as though Boyfriend still has his head in the sand—and I’m poking mine out.

“That’s it?” Jen asks. “That’s all the Kid Hater has to say?”

She goes silent, waiting for my reaction. I can’t help it; I’m thrilled. To me, his email is reassuringly poetic, a beautiful summary of