The Movie I'll Never Watch.
July 10, 2926I haven't actually done a lot of missing over the last twenty years.
In my marriage, we've always done everything together. Grocery store? Together. Random Tuesday night errands? Together. Watching TV while simultaneously scrolling our phones and pretending we're paying attention to the same show? Together.
That's what I know.
So now that I find myself in a situation where I miss someone...
Where I long for someone...
It's painful. Brutal, really. I miss her all of the time.
From the moment I wake up until the moment I fall asleep. And sometimes even while I'm asleep, there's this uneasiness that settles somewhere deep inside me. It's hard to explain, but I know exactly what it is.
It's the knowledge that I'm about to wake up, look across my blue sheets...
...and she won't be there.
But that's what I signed up for, right?
So for now, I'm relegated to waking up and looking across the bed, to see a man who has been steadfast in his love for me. A man who has loved me faithfully, even if it wasn't necessarily the kind of love I'd spent my life quietly longing for.
So when the bed feels empty... Or the passenger seat beside me is empty... Or it's been days since someone has really kissed me...
I miss her. I miss her so much.
And what's funny is that, with all the memories we've made together already, there is one that my brain insists on replaying.
Not the big moments. Not the dramatic ones. Just... One frame. Like my ADHD finding a favorite song and putting it on repeat for six straight hours.
Except instead of a song, it's...
her.
We were supposed to watch a soccer game that night. Except, for some reason, she didn't want to. Which is honestly suspicious.
She loves sports.
She claimed it was because her favorite player wasn't playing and she'd rather just go to bed and watch a movie with me.
Uh-huh. Sure. In my mind, I like to imagine she looked at the options...
Watch soccer on the couch...
Or climb into bed with me...
...and thought, "Yep. Definitely choosing that one."
Will I ever know if that's actually what happened? Probably not. But it's my version of the story, and I'm sticking to it.
We started the movie with her in my arms.
Actually... "Draped across my chest" is probably more accurate.
We were both sitting in bed, meeting somewhere in the middle. She leaned back into me, and I wrapped both of my arms around her.
She wasn't wearing her contacts. She wore her glasses.
Because she knows I love her glasses. And I sat there absentmindedly playing with her hair.
God, I love her hair.
Every few minutes I'd steal a glance at her instead of the movie. The light from the TV would catch the rims of her glasses, and every so often her eyes would close... not like she was falling asleep... just holding them shut for one heartbeat longer than a blink because having someone play with your hair is one of life's greatest gifts.
I should know... she's done it for me. A night I will never... ever... forget.
I'd let my fingers wander softly along her neck, tracing familiar paths I already knew made her melt.
Then she'd turn toward me. Always leading with her lips. And mine would meet hers.
I know that kiss happened somewhere near the beginning of the movie. But by the time we finally came up for air... The credits were rolling.
That realization still catches me off guard.
For as long as I can remember, intimacy with men always felt... long. (Even when it wasn't actually all that long.) There was always a part of my brain somewhere else.
Thinking. Analyzing. Wondering how I looked. Wondering how he saw me. Wondering if I was doing everything "right."
Yes. Truth be told, I enjoyed feeling wanted. I enjoyed pieces of it. But so much of it felt... performative. Like my body was present, but my mind had wandered off to reorganize a junk drawer somewhere.
I blamed ADHD. I blamed insecurity. Maybe both were true.
But with her? Time stopped existing.
I have absolutely no idea how we made it to the end of that movie. Fifty Shades of Grey runs just over two hours.
Two. Hours.
And somehow it felt like both five minutes...and forever. The rest of the world simply disappeared. There was no noise. No overthinking. No mental checklist. No wondering how I looked. There was just...
Her.
And that still amazes me. But even more than that, I'm amazed by the memory itself.
Out of everything we've done together... Everything we've laughed about... Every conversation... Every adventure... The image my heart refuses to let go of is so unbelievably simple.
Her. Curled up in my arms. White sheets wrapped around us. The television casting soft light across the rims of her glasses. Those lips. That peaceful look on her face.
It's just one frame. One still photograph my brain keeps pulling from the shelf over and over again. Because she's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
And when I'm with her... Time doesn't just fly.
It stands perfectly still.
~Me
This is Lisa's fault.
July 9, 2926Yesterday, I found myself sitting on my therapist's couch, my brain short-circuiting on every worst-case scenario floating through it. And my therapist said, "Girl... you need to write." And while Lisa explained that there's something special about putting pen to paper, the things I feel compelled to write... they need to stay anonymous. So needless to say, a journal stuffed under the mattress is a no-go.
Afterall, I can't blow up my life. And surprisingly... that's not the first time I've said that over the last few weeks.
So, here I am. A girl with a therapist.
Girl? No. I guess I'm a woman. A woman on the second career of her life, with a husband and children, a house, hundreds of responsibilities...
And you know what? I still have absolutely no idea what I'm doing in this life. You think your parents had it all figured out? It's the same lie that's been passed down generation after generation. Newsflash, your parents had no idea what they were doing either.
Quick question... Do you remember where you were on 9/11? What about when the world shut down because of COVID?
I refer to these types of events as fault lines. To me, fault lines are moments in time when the landscape of your life changes because enough pressure has finally been applied to rupture what you knew. That pressure creates a very clearly defined before and after.
Afterwards, the before is gone. It's left only to memories. Because mow you're living in the after... and everything looks so very different.
What did life look like in your before? Before... the Twin Towers fell. Before... COVID shut everything down. Before... the levee broke. Before... the internet changed the world as we knew it.
If you're honest with yourself, you have other fault lines, too.... don't you? You know the ones the world is blissfully unaware even exist? The mysteries no one else even knows they need to solve? The ones that stay silent, locked in your heart, until your last breath.
I have a few.
But nothing leaving me with an after as big as the after I'm sitting in now.
Just like most fault lines, it started small. It was a fleeting thought. A lingering touch. A joke that hung awkwardly in the air. Patterns that left more questions than answers.
But over time, the pressure grew. And on a very unexpected night, the landscape of my entire mindset... of my entire life... changed.
You find me here today, writing to you from my after.
From the outside looking in, my after looks exactly like my before. To the world, I'm the same person I was almost four weeks ago (to the minute!). No one in my life has the slightest clue that something has changed. My family continues to live just as we always have, going through the motions of every day life.
But unlike everyone else in my life, I know I'm in the after. I know this with complete certainty because, just like all fault lines do, mine changed my life.
My life appears to be the same.
But how I move through it has changed.
At first, I wanted to describe my fault line as an event that gray-washed all of the dreams I once had. Dreams that were once painted in vibrant colors now seemed capable of printing only in grayscale. But really... if you look closely, those dreams are still painted in the same colors they always were.
It's just that now, standing in the after, I notice they've faded ever so slightly... Because my after has painted new dreams in colors I didn't even know existed. My after quietly urges me to consider... and to want... a future that leaves me completely in awe. And it's important to note that this dream, freshly painted in vivid color here in the after, only exists because of this fault line. A fault line that clearly defines the after... and highlights everything that's different from my before.
A before I never want to know again.
Not created by a plane crash.
Not created by a levee breaking.
Not created by a tragic event.
But my before?
It includes a version of me who is no longer here.
Someone I loved. Someone I appreciated. But someone who is no longer here.
And I admit... I can no longer live there.
Because my before...
Was before...
Her.
~Me