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Sharon reaches out and gives my hand a squeeze. “You don’t have to do anything. Just let yourself feel what you feel. You can’t control it, Emma.”
“Yes. And that’s the problem,” I reply.
“Because you can’t control it?” Debs asks.
“You know, my life was far less complicated three weeks ago. I guess I’m just afraid. If I let myself feel this way again, if I let these feelings run free, what happens when it ends?”
Sharon smiles sympathetically, her gaze soft. “Well, that’s the risk with anything real, isn’t it?”
“But how do I know if this is real?” I cry. “And more to the point, do I want it to be?”
“Look at it this way,” Debs says. “Right now, does it matter?”
I frown at her question because, in my head, why wouldn’t it matter? She gives me one of her looks. It’s a look Sharon and I are well used to. It’s a look that means she’s about to explain something from a perspective that’s completely alien to us.
“At this moment on your timeline, you have a job to do. You’re in the perfect place, at the perfect time, doing the perfect thing. Nothing else matters. Whether you like it or not, you’ve attracted this situation to you, and it’s going to play out exactly the way it should.”
I’ve heard Debs’s metaphysical explanations before. Sometimes, she makes complete sense; sometimes, she loses me entirely. Like right now.
“So, my feelings are irrelevant,” I say.
She screws up her face, her expression telling me that I’m half right. “It’s not that your feelings are irrelevant, Emma. It’s the idea that whatever is going to happen is going to happen for your benefit.”
I stare at her a little glazy-eyed for a minute, and then I say, “I don’t get it.”
“I think what she’s trying to say,” Sharon jumps in, “is that the Universe has your back.”
That might be so, but it doesn’t really help me in this situation.
“Okay, let me explain it differently,” Debs says, clearly seeing that I’m struggling. “Pretend you’re a colander.”
“What?” I gawk.
Sharon lets out a giggle.
“No, hear me out,” Debs continues, her face all serious. “If you have your colander in the sink, right? And you turn the water on, the water runs through it.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Well, that’s how you need to be with your feelings. You need to let them run through you.”
“And how is that going to help?” I press.
“Because you’re not holding on to them. You’re still experiencing them, but unlike a bowl with no holes, they’re not going to fill you up and overwhelm you.”
As her words sink in, this strange calm passes through my body. I can’t explain it, but clearly, she has.
“Oh,” Sharon gasps, feeling the same comprehension I am. “Wow. That’s…”
“Yes. It is,” Debs says, smiling now that we’ve gotten her point.
“I don’t need to have it all figured out right now,” I say. “I can just take it one step at a time.”
“Exactly.” Debs nods.
Sharon throws her a look. “How the heck did you get to be so smart?”
“It’s called reading,” Debs quips back with a deadpan face.