Page 39 of To Her

Geri

One year later.

M y flight back home had come and gone nearly a whole year ago.

I stood at the kitchen window of my mother's cottage, watching the spring rain pattern the glass, and marvelled at how much had changed.

The woman who had boarded that plane in a state of fragile sobriety, terrified of what lay ahead, seemed like a stranger to me now.

I had done the time, and I had put in the hard work.

I had settled into a life in England with my mother, who had been my biggest rock throughout the whole thing.

She had held me when I had come close to relapsing, she had blocked the door from my need to go out and find things to numb the pain, and she had held me through the night when I had received a letter back from Con.

The letter had arrived three weeks after I'd left rehab. I'd recognized his handwriting immediately—the slightly messy scrawl that somehow managed to look both careless and deliberate at the same time. My hands had trembled as I'd opened it, my mother hovering nearby, ready to catch me if I fell.

He hadn't written much, but he had said this:

Thank you for the letter, and you are right, once people know someone's secrets they do look at them differently, but your secrets will always be safe with me.

I now see why life was a struggle for you, and I'm proud of the person you became after it, and I'm proud of the person you're finally allowing yourself to become.

I understand you need to leave, I understand you need to let me go.

I also need to let you go. I need to be able to have love and happiness in my future and again you're right that person right now isn't you.

But that doesn't mean that person won't be you, it just means that right now you and I are not meant to be.

Please stalk my Facebook, please keep me updated on your own future as I know I will be doing the same.

Thank you for the other letter. If I ever end up standing at the end of an aisle, I will give it to her.

She will need to know the path I took to get where I was, she will need to know the path I crossed to become the person I am today, and you are a big part of that.

So thank you, Geri. I love you. You will forever hold a place in my heart.

But I release you from the promise we made, and I hope you have the future you deserve too.

That had broken my heart and put it back together all at the same time. Because he had been right; Con had always been right.

I'd cried for hours after reading it, curled up on my bed with my mother stroking my hair, not trying to fix it or make it better, just being there. It had been the kind of grief that feels like it might never end, waves of it crashing over me until I was exhausted and hollow.

But then, gradually, something else had emerged from the wreckage—a sense of peace, of rightness. We had both acknowledged the truth: that we loved each other, but that love wasn't enough, not when I was still putting myself back together, not when he deserved someone whole.

The months that followed had been a strange mix of pain and progress. Some days I'd wake up feeling strong, capable, ready to face whatever came my way. Other days, the weight of everything I'd lost—Con, my life back home, my sense of who I was—would press down on me until it was hard to breathe.

On those days, my mother would gently coax me out of bed, make me tea, sit with me in silence or talk about nothing important until the darkness receded. She never pushed, never demanded, just steadily reminded me with her presence that I wasn't alone.

"You're allowed to grieve, love," she'd told me one particularly bad morning, when I'd apologized for being such a mess. "You've lost things that matter. But you haven't lost everything, and you haven't lost yourself. Not anymore."

She'd been right about that. Slowly, painfully, I'd started to rebuild. Not the person I'd been before—she was gone, and maybe that was for the best—but someone new. Someone who could look in the mirror and not flinch away from her own reflection.

I had gotten a job in a local oil and vinegar shop where I had worked, and I even went back to school for adults.

I'd dived into literature and studied writing.

The job had come first, a small step toward independence.

The shop was tucked away on a cobblestone side street in the village near my mother's house, the kind of place that attracted tourists and locals alike with its rows of gleaming bottles and the rich, complex scents that filled the air.

The owner, a woman named Eleanor with silver-streaked auburn hair and laugh lines around her eyes, had hired me despite my spotty work history and the gaps I couldn't fully explain.

"Everyone deserves a second chance," she'd said simply when I'd thanked her, and I'd wondered if she could somehow see my history written on my face, or if she just believed that about everyone.

The work was straightforward—stocking shelves, helping customers find the perfect olive oil for their salad or the right balsamic for their strawberries, keeping the books balanced.

But there was something soothing about it, about the routine and the sensory experience of the shop, the way customers' faces would light up when they found exactly what they were looking for.

And Eleanor had become more than just a boss. She'd become a friend, someone who saw me as I was now, not as who I'd been or what I'd done. She didn't know my whole story—few people did—but she knew enough to understand that I was rebuilding, and she gave me the space and support to do it.

The writing classes had come later, a suggestion from my mother after she'd found me scribbling in notebooks late at night.

"You've always had a way with words," she'd said. "Even as a little girl, you were always making up stories. Maybe it's time to see where that could go."

I'd been sceptical at first. What did I have to say that anyone would want to read? But the local community college had offered evening courses in creative writing, and on a whim, I'd signed up.

The first class had been terrifying. I'd sat in the back, barely speaking, certain that everyone else belonged there more than I did.

But then the instructor, a retired professor with kind eyes and a gentle voice, had asked us to write about a moment of transformation, and the words had poured out of me.

I hadn't shared what I'd written that day—it was too raw, too personal—but I'd gone back the next week, and the week after that. And gradually, I'd found my voice. Not just on the page, but in the classroom, in discussions about character and plot and the power of storytelling.

Within the twelve months I had spent in England, I had drafted my first ever book, and I had called it "To Her.

" I'm still not sure if I will ever publish it, or send it off to see if anyone else would like to publish it, but I did it.

I had become the version of myself I was meant to be, and I wouldn't have become that way without the path I had walked.

The book had started as a series of letters—to Con, to the woman he might love someday, to my younger self, to the people I'd hurt along the way.

But as I'd written, it had evolved into something else: a story about a woman learning to face her demons, to stop running, to believe that she was worthy of love even with all her flaws and failures.

It wasn't my story, not exactly. I'd changed names, places, circumstances. But the emotional truth of it was mine, the journey from self-destruction to self-acceptance, the painful process of letting go of someone you love because you know it's the right thing for both of you.

Writing it had been its own form of therapy, more effective in some ways than the sessions I'd endured in rehab. Because this time, I was the one asking the hard questions, the one digging into the painful places, the one deciding what to reveal and what to keep hidden.

My mother had been the first to read it, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, turning pages with careful fingers as I'd paced nervously around the cottage.

"It's beautiful, Geraldine," she'd said when she'd finished, tears in her eyes. "It's honest and raw and hopeful. It's you."

I wasn't sure about that last part. The protagonist of my book was braver than I felt, more resilient, more certain of her path forward. But maybe that was the point of fiction—to imagine possibilities, to create versions of ourselves that we could aspire to become.

Or maybe she was right, and I just couldn't see it yet. Maybe I was stronger than I knew.

I thought about Con often, wondering where he was, what he was doing. True to my word, I'd checked his Facebook occasionally, careful not to like or comment on anything, just watching from a distance as his life unfolded without me.

He'd done well in the season in Canada. There were photos of him with new faces, grinning widely, looking happy and fulfilled. No sign of a serious relationship, at least not one he was sharing publicly, but that didn't mean there wasn't someone.

I hoped there was. I hoped he'd found someone who could love him the way he deserved, without reservation or fear. Someone who could give him what I couldn't.

And yet, a small, selfish part of me was relieved each time I checked and saw no evidence of that someone special. It was a contradiction I lived with, wanting him to be happy but not quite ready to see him happy with someone else.

Dr. Winters would have had a field day with that, I thought with a wry smile. She'd have seen it as proof that I was still holding on, still not fully committed to letting go.

Maybe she'd have been right. But I was working on it, day by day, choice by choice. And I was getting better at recognizing the difference between loving someone and needing them, between holding them in your heart and holding onto them.

My sobriety had held firm through it all—the grief, the uncertainty, the slow process of rebuilding.

There had been close calls, moments of temptation so strong I could taste it.

A particularly bad day when I'd found myself standing outside a pub, the sounds of laughter and clinking glasses calling to me like a siren song.

A night when memories had crashed over me in waves, and all I'd wanted was the oblivion of chemicals coursing through my veins.

But I hadn't given in. Each time, I'd called my mother, or James, or one of the few friends I'd made in my writing class. I'd talked it through, ridden out the craving, reminded myself of how far I'd come and what I stood to lose.

One year sober. It felt like both an eternity and the blink of an eye.

As I stood at the window, watching the rain turn from a drizzle to a downpour, I thought about the letter Con had sent, about his words that had both wounded and healed me. About how he'd said that the person he needed wasn't me—not now, maybe not ever.

But he'd also said something else, something that had lodged in my heart and refused to leave: But that doesn't mean that person won't be you.

It wasn't a promise. It wasn't even really hope. It was just an acknowledgment that people change, that futures aren't fixed, that doors closed now might someday open again.

I didn't know if that would ever happen for us.

I didn't know if I wanted it to, or if it would be right for either of us.

But I knew that I was changing, growing, becoming someone I could be proud of.

Someone who didn't run from pain or numb it with chemicals.

Someone who could face her past without being defined by it.

And for now, that was enough.

I turned away from the window as I heard my mother's key in the lock, her voice calling out a greeting as she shook rain from her umbrella. I moved to help her with the groceries, smiling at her cheerful complaints about the weather, the easy domesticity of our life together.

This wasn't where I'd expected to be a year ago. It wasn't the life I'd planned or the future I'd imagined. But it was real, and it was mine, and I was grateful for it in a way I'd never been grateful for anything before.

One day at a time. That's what they'd taught us in rehab, the mantra of recovery. Don't worry about forever, just focus on today. Make it through this hour, this minute, this breath.

I'd thought it was a platitude then, a simplistic answer to the complex problem of addiction.

But I understood it better now. It wasn't about avoiding the future; it was about being present in the now.

About recognizing that life is built in moments, in choices, in small acts of courage or kindness or perseverance.

And in this moment, rain drumming on the roof, my mother's laughter filling the kitchen, the weight of my completed manuscript sitting on my desk upstairs, I was okay. More than okay.