I’m on an Andrew Scott kick at the moment. I’ve even just paid to watch Vanya in theaters for way more money than I’d pay for a usual ticket.
Most recently, my heart was torn open by his performance in All of Us Strangers. I won’t give too much away, but he encounters his neighbor played by Paul Mescal (also, obsessed), who listens as Andrew’s character talks about his late parents. They’d passed away in a devastating car accident when he was a young boy. Paul apologizes for this.
“It was a long time ago,” Andrew says.
Paul’s reply shattered me.
“I don’t think that matters.”
This March will be seven years since my divorce. That literally sounds like a lifetime ago. Ages of life has happened since then, yet the ripple effect of those events still haunt me.
It’s not the divorce itself, nor even the person I was married to that sticks with me. It’s how it made me feel. It’s certain words, manipulations, and tactics that sculpt the way I speak to myself inside my head — and it’s not very beautiful. This gets compounded with a recipe of other words and behaviors I’ve collected from male relationships since then, times where I’ve second-guessed the very essence of who I am and what I am worth.
I continue to work on my physical and mental health, though I fall short some days where the loud voices in my mind tend to overshadow what I know with how I feel, but the conversation between Andrew and Paul reminds me that no matter how much I beat myself up over allowing past events to slither into scope, time doesn’t matter.
Healing is not a linear process. I write this as my neck is raw and red, my inner arms are bright and burning, and my tired eyes are dying for a nap after having done very little today. It’s a merry-go-round of grief, really. To think you are past something but you simply aren’t, and when I assess the physical damage in the mirror, I also assess the mental. They go hand in hand.
It’s also hard to say something was so long ago when it continues to stare you dead in the face. The difficulty of moving on when a scar keeps busting open or a scab keeps bleeding. I just hear the comments in every crevice of my cracked skin and the abandonment in every running bath. It’s a science of survival, placing one foot in front of the other when you’re just wanting a break. Freedom.
I guess that exchange between those two characters highlighted how it’s okay not to be okay with things that have happened in your past. That continue to happen out of your control. To not dismiss something and say “it was a long time ago”, because that doesn’t matter.
What does matter is the witnessing. To have that person allow you the space to be in your grief while also watching you explore the ways of healing it all. To have them stay, not out of obligation, but out of tenderness and connection. These are the moments, the breaths, which cultivate that medicinal eraser where we can examine and expunge toxic thoughts that get tangled in our healing. Because as much as growth is a solo trip, it also involves community. It involves partnership. Resilience manifests not only in flexing our own strength and will, but how we allow others to walk beside us while we figure out this thing called life.
So, as much as it may pain you to admit that the past is still very present, and that certain circumstances continue to prevail, it is just part of the journey. We all have shadows that follow us. And if you can see the shadow, at least it means you are standing in the light.
“You are deserving today and always, with redness or without. You’re a brilliant, beautiful soul with love to give and a wonderful story to tell. Keep pushing forward, love. Warmth will find you.” – a dear friend’s text today.
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