Nora Kinkaid Wants Her Life Back

Epilogue: 2 Years Later

It's funny the way things work out isn't it. I didn't choose to speak to Oliver and that changed the entire path. When I went to Boston, I breathed in the fresh, crisp air and I thought "Home."

The next thing you know, my book is being published and suddenly I'm moving. It all happened quickly so my apologies for not explaining more. But it was really quite simple. My book got picked up. I went back to New York and I took care of myself. I mean, really took care of myself. It turns out the migraines are from nerve damage. The auras are from the unexplainable and I'm okay with that. I've made my peace with being intuitively gifted. It's just the way I'm built.

When I came back to New York I decided to pull it together because frankly I'm too young and too good looking to be this miserable. Some physical therapy got me up and running again. Well - not quite running. I still can't do that. But I can go outside and hear sounds and not want to curl in a ball and cry. I can walk down the block most days and sometimes you might even see me smiling as I tilt my head towards the sun on a park bench.

After a few months like this I was together enough to leave. It was time. You could probably tell that I had outgrown my bedroom. I saw my house in a vision before I saw it in person. It's this gorgeous old Victorian on Winchester Street in Brookline Village. It's old and homey and I'm still surprised I live there. It's one of those places that's objectively too good to be true. When I moved in I kept thinking, I can't believe this is where I live. Sometimes I still feel like that.

The one thing I wasn't surprised about was Oliver. You can pick your jaw up off the floor. It's shocking for sure. But less shocking than my delivery would have you believe. He came back. Or rather, we found each other again. Yes that feels right. Oliver and I found each other again on a snowy day in January two years after everything. I was walking down Harvard Street in Brookline and stopped by Dunkin Donuts to get a reprieve from the frigid snow and icy that had settled over Boston practically overnight. I didn't need the coffee. I just needed to feel my hands again. I heard the chime above the door as I thanked the cashier for handing me a steaming hot cup. I could feel him before I saw him. Before I heard him even. It was as though something outside of me moved my body and turned it towards the door. We didn't crash into each other like they do in romantic comedies. I didn't accidentally bump into him and spill my coffee everywhere, all the while profusely apologizing until I suddenly notice who it is I've doused with caffeine. I felt my body turn towards the door and there he was. Exactly as I remembered him but completely different at the same time. His hair had more grey in it than before. He has certainly aged gracefully and he would be handsome well into his eighties at this rate. His eyes were exactly the same with new crows feet weathered into the edges. But I didn't mind. He still had that deep, baritone of a voice – the voice that filled the cavity of my ribcage up until it felt like it could burst.

He was Oliver. But his soul was different. It's funny to think that after all the time and energy I spent speaking to and fighting for his soul, that it would actually be different when I re-met it in real life. I failed to consider that while I can see souls, I only see the purest version of them. I don't often feel a soul as deeply as I experienced Oliver's and then feel it again in the human body. It's as though transmuting it through its rightful place makes me feel like I've seen it naked. In this case, I had.

I thought I knew Oliver's soul but the only thing I knew to be true is that his soul belonged with him, not with me. That's why I chose myself back at Moynihan Station. It's why I had to learn how to love myself before I even considered loving someone else. Over the last two years since we had crossed paths, I had to relearn what it meant to love. I went into my heart and figured out how to take care of myself. It's mildly embarrassing to admit I had never done this before. But each day I asked my heart what it needed and slowly but surely I started trusting my heart once again. It was as though my heart said "thank you for remembering you never needed another person to make you feel whole" and then I became whole. Life got easier when that happened. I stopped looking for his face when I walked down the block. I trained myself to stop searching the eyes of strangers to see if they could hold my heart. I brought myself home to myself and it made all the difference because on the day I met Oliver, I didn't ache for him or pine. My heart didn't tug for his and my soul didn't leap out of my body trying to reconnect with him. We were two people standing in a busy coffee shop in Brookline trying to figure out what to say next.

My stunning opener was "Hey, you." Clever, I know. His was a slow, cautious smile and a "Hey, how have you been." We cautiously began speaking in the way that only two people once close can. It's the dance of how intimate can we be when we've seen each other naked but we haven't spoken in years? We stood there talking for what seemed like ages but must have only been five minutes. He offered to have coffee with me and we sat in the chilly Dunkin for over two hours navigates the rocky terrain of figuring out if we were okay. I think it was surprising to both of us that we were, individually, okay. He had lived his life and I had lived mine. We did the things we always said we would and some things we never thought we would. He got a new job. I published a book. He got a tattoo. I got a dog.

Coffee turned into dinner and dinner turned into walks in the Common. Each meeting felt precarious and safe at the same time. I know they're opposites so I'm contradicting myself. But the best I can explain it is my mind always felt uncertain but my soul felt safe and grounded. If I was going to trust one over the other it would always be my soul. So that's what I did. I told my anxious mind to quiet itself and I let my soul lead, just as I should have all those years ago.

About six months after we started seeing each other again, he moved into my place. Six months after that he proposed on the beach. The love we have now is nothing like the one we had before because this time it's unconditional. Sometimes I'm still shocked we found each other again. But the thing is, deep down I think I always knew we would, I just didn't trust it. I didn't realize that we needed to become the better version of ourselves to make this love worthy of rekindling. Oliver and I were better versions of ourselves this time around because in our own, unique way we had learned how to take care of our own hearts and souls so we didn't require each other; we chose each other and that has made all the difference.