Hello, I’m Tiffany, your resident town hermit. Welcome to my fellowship—a haven where you’re free to talk about taboo subjects you can’t anywhere else. Learn more about The Untangling here, or subscribe to never miss a post.

Housekeeping:

• If you have Kindle Unlimited, click here for some books now available on there. Look for yours truly. 🩵
• Surprise! The audiobook for A Girl Made of Time is now available. It's narrated by Emily Lawrence, whose voice I'm in love with. She brought this story to life and it is amazing. Click here to purchase yours! All Inklings get the ebook for free here.

Dear Inklings,

There’s a truth I learned about forever.

It was there on the sofa in the living room of my childhood house, the walls an ugly burnt orange, the Hallelujah chorus blaring in the background, twinkling lights of red, green, and yellow against the green of that artificial tree.

And they, whose friendships I most treasured, the day we stepped outside together to play as we had done a million times before, not knowing we would nevermore return to the days of foraying into unknown groves and the climbing over walls.

Perhaps we are all but memory in the end, as the poets say. Those flashes streak across the canvas of our minds, the paint cracking with the passage of time until faded past remembrance.

And the present becomes the past becomes a memory the instant we think of it.

And forever is a series of moments that we never realize until they are gone.

There's a truth I learned about love.

It was there in the times my mother dropped what she was doing to make my favourite noodles, just because I said I wanted them, the phone calls when she said, "I made some food for you; come pick it up sometime."

And there, when my godsister asks, "How's work going?" referring to my writing, and I realise that the path I've chosen is valid and seen.

The small and fleeting moments that could pass me by, unacknowledged, if I let them, like when my husband says I needn't do a single thing to be named, "Useful," then brings me my favourite snacks for no reason at all; like when my best friend brings a giant cooler to my house for a three-day visit so she can make sure I eat when despair is clouding my will to survive.

Perhaps love is not the grand displays that capture media attention, but in the quiet day-to-day instances of presence that say without words, "I see you, no matter how messy you think you are."

And it stays, and stays, and stays.

There's a truth I learned about living.