Short Stop: A Good Enough Reason

L.C. Hill

“I don’t understand how we got here,” he said to me. He was the nice guy, the one I had been looking for all these years since my divorce.

He wouldn’t understand even if I told him. It took me weeks, after all, to give myself the permission to break up with him because I wasn’t happier.

Happier. I could have been happy, I suppose, but it would have been a diminished happy, a lesser happy than I was before him. I could have stayed and searched for its traces in a future that wouldn’t be exactly what I want for myself.

“Why?” My friends lament as they lean forward, waiting for a good enough reason.

“He didn’t add to my happiness,” I answer.

The recognition dances across their faces, and then it’s gone. They lean in even closer. They demand more, as if my compromised happiness isn’t a good enough reason to be alone. They even chuckle a bit when I explain how hard-won this happiness of mine is, going to hell and back for it like I did.

I was congratulated when he and I made it official, like I had been bestowed a prize of some sort, like I had accomplished something worthwhile. What do they do, now, with this aloneness—this contentment—of mine?

Photo by Thomas Griesbeck on Unsplash