Letter from the Editor: May I? On asking permission for your own life.
May I move out first, or does that look bad? May I be angry, or is that too much? May I start over, or is it too late? May I fall apart for a minute, or do I need to hold it together for the kids?
May. The whole word is a request. A hand raised. A pause before the sentence even starts, checking to see whether you're allowed to have the feeling you're already having.
We have been trained, most of us, to ask. To wait for the nod. To measure our grief against someone else's and decide ours is probably too loud, too small, too soon, not soon enough. To consult the imaginary rulebook that must exist somewhere — the one that tells you exactly how long to stay, exactly when it's okay to leave, exactly how much anger is appropriate and when it curdles into something you should be ashamed of.
There is no list. There is no rubric. There is no correct number of months to feel wrecked.
Here's what I know: the rulebook doesn't exist. There is no list. There is no rubric. There is no correct number of months to feel wrecked, no proper sequence of emotions that guarantees you come out the other side a person others will recognize as having done it right. No one is keeping score. And if they are, that's their problem.
May was always the wrong word. Not because permission is never worth asking for — sometimes it is, from the right people, about the right things. But the sentence "may I begin again" was never supposed to need an answer from anyone but you.
This issue is for the people still waiting for someone to tell them it's okay. Consider this the tell. You don't have to ask.
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