The Gentle Touch of Good Fortune

(and the sting of rumination)

June 19th, 2025

I’m sitting on the porch, the morning quiet except for the soft clink of a spoon in my bowl—cereal and berries, familiar comforts. My roommate left me coffee before heading to work, a kindness I didn’t ask for but needed. I stayed up late, caught in the slow unraveling of thought—the kind that loops, then lingers. I let them trickle in.

I found myself thumbing through old photos, watching videos I hadn’t touched in years. Hearing the clashing of our laughter echo from my phone. And just like that, the ache returned. The sting followed close behind. One video—one I don’t even remember taking—held me in silence.

We were stretched out on the couch, bodies aligned like matching bookends, turned toward each other. I was looking down at him as he brushed a strand of hair from my face. The camera only caught the tops of our heads, but I remember where our eyes met. His gaze was anchored in mine, and mine softened there, at home.

Yeah. Let’s not go there.

I set my phone down, irritated with myself more than anything—for redownloading Snapchat after two years just to revisit a chapter I already knew the ending to. As if the past could somehow surprise me. As if I didn’t already know it would sting.

And so, the ruminating returned.

I thought about my younger self—how she wore insecurity like armor, convinced she was too fragile to be stayed for. I thought about how I twisted simplicity into knots, how I wove doubt into things that only needed grace. And still—he was good. Always. Unshakably good.

He, with the gentlest touch and a soul full of quiet wisdom. I, with a heart that mistook walls for boundaries. And still, he saw the light in me. And still, he believed that if I could ever learn to love myself—to work at it and water it and speak softly to it—I’d find peace.

Now, living in that peace, I see that he was right.

Damn it, he was right.

The wound is closing, but sometimes it feels tender, like a bruise you forget about until you press too hard. I don’t know if it’ll heal altogether.

I don’t think we have to stop loving the ones who once took care of us. We don’t have to reduce them to passing footnotes in our stories—especially not the ones who wanted better for us, not for themselves, but simply because we deserved it.

That kind of love doesn't expire. It becomes a thread woven into the cloth of who we are.

No one has felt like home since then.

I don’t know if it’s subconscious self-sabotage, or the silent comparison I keep tucked behind every new smile, but nothing has quite met the echo of him. 

Time doesn’t heal.

It stretches the space between now and the moment we broke open. But it’s in that stretch that I stop myself from asking, How do I live with the regret of who I wasn’t?

Instead, asking, How lucky am I to have been loved so fully, even in my becoming?

I quiet the “what ifs.”I hush the ghost of almost. And I whisper to myself:

How fortunate I am to have known what love looks like—so I can recognize it when it returns.

How fortunate I am to know that I will never settle for anything less than what he showed me.

How fortunate I am to have once been held by such a gentle touch.

Sarita