The Burden We Bear

The sport of padel, Marcus had insisted, would save me. 'Nothing like smashing a ball against a wall to work through the grief,' he'd said, handing me a racquet I didn't want. Three months after Sarah left, taking everything but her childhood goldfish—now swimming alone in its bowl on my counter, its three-second memory perhaps enviable—I found myself on a court, running drills I hadn't the energy for.

Marcus was there, as he'd been there through everything, his friendship solid, uncomplicated, safe. Which was precisely the problem. I'd spent years bearing the weight of unsaid things between us, each touch lingering slightly too long, each joke carrying double meanings we both pretended not to hear. Now, in the ruins of my marriage, those unsaid things had grown louder.

'Your form's suffering,' he called from across the net, sweat glistening on his forehead. He looked good. He always looked good. 'You're thinking too much.'

'That's what I do,' I returned, slamming the ball into the chain-link fence. 'Think. Bear things. Run from them.'

He laughed, but his eyes held something raw, something that matched the hollow ache in my chest. 'You don't have to run from everything.'

The goldfish would be dead soon. They always died, eventually. Relationships died. We bore these losses, kept running, pretended the walls we smashed balls against would somehow give back what we'd lost. But standing there, racquet in hand, heart hammering like I'd just finished a marathon rather than a casual game, I understood what Marcus had been trying to tell me all along.

Some walls aren't meant to be smashed against. Some are meant to be climbed.

'Sarah's not coming back,' I said aloud, the words finally real.

'I know,' Marcus said softly. 'I wasn't talking about Sarah.'

The goldfish continued its oblivious circles, bearing its own small existence, while outside the court, something new and terrifying and necessary began to breathe between two friends who had finally stopped running.