She couldn’t be doing that.
Sheshouldn’tbe doing that.
“She’s just a kid!” I argued as I slammed my hand against her desk.
“Karla...” Her eyes softened and she reached across her desk and put her hand on top of mine. “So are you.”
Her words pushed me to a halt.
My eyes flooded with tears.
My mind quieted.
I couldn’t recall the last time my mind felt quiet.
“Karla,” Raye whispered. “The accident wasn’t Lorelai’s fault. The accident wasn’t your fault. The accident wasn’t your father’s fault. It wasn’t even the deer’s fault. It was just an accident. A terrible, awful, heart-shattering accident that took the life of someone you loved dearly, but there’s no fault to be had. Pointing fingers at yourself or others won’t make it better. It won’t take away the pain of the outcome. There’s no one to blame for this tragedy. There’s only grief.”
I looked down at my hands, which were now holding Raye’s. I didn’t know what to say, what to do, how to feel.
I asked a simple question. “What do I do with it?”
“Do with what?”
“All of this grief?”
“You stop trying to run away from it. You stop trying to push it down and ignore its existence. Instead, you sit with it. You get mad at it because it exists. You get angry. You can even rage. Or you can be quiet with the grief. You can take it out for coffee. You can play it some music. But no matter what, you sit with it. Sitinit. Stay in it. Otherwise, you’ll never truly hear what it’s trying to say to you or what it’s trying to teach you.”
I shook my head. “But it feels like too much.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “It does.”
“What if I’m not strong enough to handle it all?”
“Oh, Karla. You’re so much stronger than you think. Trust me. You can handle it. And on days when you feel like youcan’t, lean against those who will hold you up. Your support system is important. They want to help you.”
I placed my hands in my lap and fidgeted. “I don’t have friends anymore. They ditched me when everything happened, except...” My words fumbled off. Ash crossed my mind. I shook my head. He wasn’t a friend. He was just an odd boy who seemed intrigued by me.
“Except what?”
“Nothing,” I said. “He’s no one.”
“Everyone’s someone. Tell me, if you want.”
I sighed and brushed some of my hair out of my face. “There’s a new kid in school, and he saw me being bullied. He stood up for me, and I snapped at him. I got mad because he made the scene bigger than it had to be. But now I feel bad because he was doing it to protect me, and well... he was nice, and I was mean.”
“You were triggered, and you had a strong reaction. That happens in life. We can’t go back in time and change what happened, but you know what we can do while we’re still alive and breathing?”
“What’s that?”
“Apologize.”
I sighed.
That seemed harder than me yelling at Ash. I felt embarrassed by the whole idea of it, telling him I was sorry for being a raging psycho when he was trying to do nothing but help me.
“He’s nice to me,” I confessed.
“That’s good.”