30: Croissants

Wednesday morning I sat looking out the window of a patisserie, streaming and sniffling, trying to eat a chocolate croissant.

I woke to the darkness of 3:30 a.m., after just three or three and a half hours of sleep. I lay for hours in the quiet of the growing gray light coming in through the window, listening to the birds, wondering at everything that had happened—the way Jack and I fit, the perfection of it all—turning things over and around in my mind. I was in awe at the certainty of it, having never felt so strongly about someone in so short a period of time, for reasons which seemed incredibly sound. I wanted to go to breakfast alone, to not have to exert the energy to talk to strangers—to talk to anyone.

The patisserie is on a small, quiet street full of restaurants, a pub, a sandwich place, a florist. There is a full window along the front, with a bar alongside. By 7:30, when I sat down with everything—cranberry juice, cappucino, water, and 2 chocolate croissants—I began to sense just how much trouble I was in. I was devastatingly tired. My brain couldn’t quite sort things out.

I started to cry and couldn’t stop—not a loud, shaking, full-on cry, but a quiet stream, as though God had turned the faucet on low. I was afraid of the surety I felt. I thought that I could never have imagined Jack so well. I was overwhelmingly grateful. And I was positive that I would never be able to sort out my emotions through so much exhaustion. So I let myself cry, and tried not to worry about what the owner or the lady at the table nearby would think. I was not entirely functional.