Self-healing by the river

Her tear-welled eyes tracked the gull as it skated the air just above the surface of the Hudson. As it continued on, out of the line of her sight, her gaze came to rest on the sunset-sky-streaked peaks of the water's ripples, as each gentle wave lazily danced to lap at the boulders on the river's edge. With this observation, her head and heart recalled a deluge of mournful moments.  Her throat began to tighten from within, tears surfaced to meet the air from her lacrimal glands, and her chest felt devastatingly heavy under the weight of her emotions.  Brows furrowed, eyes closed, she took a focused, intentional breath, deep into her belly, to center herself into a peaceful state. As she released the air from her lungs, through her nostrils, her eyelids floated open. She had prepared herself to untangle specific threads of memories from the knot in her head. One had been selected from the mix. It was the most painful; red, thin, sharp, and cutting. Focusing on it, she remembered, in exquisite, torturous detail, how it felt to have his lips pressed to hers in passion; his arms enveloping her in tight, warm embrace. How it felt to be wanted, loved, desired, and cherished by him.  This memory struck her much more profoundly now than it ever had before, in light of the recent impositions of social distancing and self-quarantining.  Exercising her nascent self-healing muscle, she took a second to galvanize herself, preemptively placing her right hand underneath the neck of her v-neck shirt, onto the upper half of her left pectoral muscle.  She asked herself now, as she had a few times in the past, what exactly she was missing from her relationship with him.  The answer reached her intellectual, rational brain before it reached her aching, mournful heart.  To anyone who knew her past, who knew her struggle and her pain, they made perfect sense. Reassurance. To be seen and heard. Understanding. Validation. Security. Unconditional love. Care. Consideration. Comfort. Protection. To know that he wished the best for her and would act in ways that would demonstrate this.  Purposefully channeling her energy into her right hand, she decided it was all up to her. It always had been. And it always would be. And she stated with conviction, out loud to herself, eyes blinking away tears at the dusky river's edge: "I will never forget about you or neglect you. I love you. I see you. I hear you. You matter. You are important. I care for you. I am not going anywhere. I will always protect you. I am here for you. always. You are part of me."