A List of Things to Keep You Grounded (When You Feel Like You’re Losing Your Footing)

1. Remember the feeling you get every time you have nothing but a long stretch of road in front of you. Remember the freedom you feel, headlights glaring off the dark, empty highway. With good music, even better company, and all the time in the world. This is contentment.

2. Remember all of the times you’ve been doubled over with laughter. In the kitchen at midnight, the soft glow of the oven lighting your best friend’s face. In the passenger seat at dusk, tears shining in your eyes. This is friendship.

3. Remember the high peals of laughter that escape his lungs as the wind blows past his face. Tiny finger wiggling with pure, unadulterated glee. This is happiness.

4. Remember the smell of homemade cookies. Of fresh Sharpie drying on door frames. Remember classic rock music playing in the background. Remember soft sunsets becoming the perfect picture backdrop. How you feel when you look down the edge of the mountain, toward the pinprick world below. This is peacefulness.

5. Remember the way he says your name. How it rolls from his tongue as familiarly as his own. Remember midnight conversations, and falling asleep first. Hours long talks about nothing and everything important. Blue and black and Venus and Mars. Remember how you can’t remember a life before him, a life after him. How his arms have become the equivalent of home. This is love.

6. Remember the heart beating wildly inside your ribcage. Remember the feel of metal winding around your fingers and beads pressed against the insides of your wrists. Remember the feel of air filling your lungs, how your chest expands with the weight of it before falling again on every exhale. Remember the thoughtlessness that comes with swallowing and blinking and cracking knuckles. This is you.