The Weight of What We Carry

The mineral tub steamed around me, the water hot enough to strip away the last three years of my life. I watched an orange leaf drift across the surface—summer ending, same as everything else.

"You look like you're carrying a bear on your shoulders," Mara said from the adjacent tub. She was seventy, with silver hair that flowed like mercury when wet, and eyes that had seen too much.

"Just the usual," I said. "Forty-two years old and starting over. The apartment's empty. The kids are with him on weekends."

She nodded, understanding. We'd both come to this wellness retreat to heal, though the spinach smoothies and sunrise yoga felt like punishment.

"My husband left me for his assistant," she said, so casually I almost missed it. "She was twenty-three. I found them together in our kitchen. She was eating my yogurt."

I laughed, surprised. "That's terrible."

"It was. But here's what I learned: you can't cross a river by waiting for the water to stop flowing. You have to step in, get wet, keep moving."

I looked at my hands—the slight tremor that had appeared since the divorce. David had promised me forever. Instead, I'd come home early to find his promises scattered across our bed sheets with someone else.

"Did you ever forgive him?" I asked.

Mara considered this. "I forgave myself for believing him. That was the harder part."

She stood up, water streaming off her body like she was being born again. "Come to dinner tonight. We'll have wine instead of those godawful kale shots. We'll talk about something other than our pain. Maybe we'll remember who we were before."

I watched her walk away, back straight, shoulders finally unburdened. The orange leaf had sunk to the bottom of the tub. In the morning, I'd have to decide whether to keep treading water or learn to swim again. But tonight, for the first time in months, I was hungry.