it's going to be okay

(I think)

I am not, as you might have realized from the titles of my books or the subject matter of Terrible, Thanks for Asking, always the most optimistic person. I tend toward the melancholy — or, as recent Instagram ads have indicated, MAJOR DEPRESSION.

I am prone to falling down into the Pit of Despair, where nothing is okay and things are very dark.

Neither of my husbands are like this, but Aaron was particularly buoyant. He was a balloon, and I was the brick he chose to tie himself to.

No matter what I was repairing about — a cruel email from a creative director, a particularly horrible piece of news, his recurring brain cancer actively killing him — he’d look me in the eye, hold my face in his hands and say,

“It’s going to be okay.”

I did not believe him. I especially didn’t believe him when he was literally dying in our guest room. He was not going to be okay, and I would not be okay without him. Our son growing up without his father? Not okay!

But you know what? Aaron never said everything would be okay. He just sai…