I held her hand and it felt so fucking good in the way that it feels to stretch out your legs and take your first clumsy steps after a six hour drive without so much as a bathroom break in the same goddamn cooped up Honda civic. In the way that it feels to sit down on the subway after a day spent running around in a thousand-and-eight different directions... then put on your headphones, sink into your seat, and just shut the whole world out.
In the way that it feels to see your mother smile for the first time after months spent dealing with surgery, illness, and the depression that couldn't help but come with.
What I'm saying is: in and of itself, the fact that I was holding Jess' hand was a pretty ordinary thing. Put in context, given everything I'd put myself through, it gave me hope in a way I wasn't sure I would ever be ready to feel again.
