two things can be true
June was Lanzarote.
Heat on skin. Salt air. Black volcanic ground against impossible blue. The kind of place that makes your nervous system unclench before you’ve had time to argue with it.
It was our wedding anniversary. Which means it always carries something else with it.
A reminder of the trip to our abroad wedding. A reminder of the moment things between me and my mum cracked for good. Somewhere between airports and wine glasses and me saying something I thought was reasonable and her hearing it as rejection.
I pointed out her overconsumption.
She heard judgement.
I didn’t yet understand trauma well enough to see what was happening in front of me.
I’ve talked about it enough in therapy. I don’t want to dwell there. I know now it was her acting from deep hurt and old wounds. I also know I never forgave her for how she behaved on my wedding day.
Both things live in me.
Lanzarote didn’t fix that. It didn’t need to.
It was incredible in its own right. Long days. Light everywhere. That half-feral feeling of being sunburnt and barefoot and slightly outside normal life. The kind of trip where you remember you have a body, not just a head full of thoughts.
I let the anniversary pass without forcing meaning onto it. I didn’t try to rewrite the memory or redeem it. I let it sit beside the present instead.
June held joy and grief in the same hands.
Beauty and resentment.
Love and the places it fractured.
I didn’t choose one over the other.
I walked on warm ground.
I celebrated my marriage.
I carried what still hurts.
Two things can be true.
They often are.
