This Will All Be Over Soon

by Cecily Strong

  So maybe…

  May 30, 2020

  My best friend from college, Sam, has a beautiful band with her husband, Jim. The band name is Jim and Sam.

  She sends me a couple of songs before they are finished. As soon as I listen to one particular song, “Good on the Other Side,” I start weeping.

  I tell her how much I liked it.

  She says, “Is it weird to say I was thinking of you while writing it? And Jack?”

  I cry even more after she says that, although now, looking back, how could I not know?

  I listen over and over all night.

  See me from my spiraling

  If I let you inside

  I promise not to hide

  The shit in my head

  I’ve got some stuff

  But if you can look past it

  There’s good on the other side

  I really do think sometimes people see so much sad in me. More than I imagine is there anyway. But they misname it. They think my loneliness comes from being alone, without a romantic partner. I don’t mind that part so much. I have odd moments sometimes where I wonder if seeing me alone hurts my friends more than it hurts me. And why? I feel so proud of the work I’ve done on my own. And feeling alone is not limited to those of us without partners.

  But I am not so closed off.

  I am always lightly ready to fall hard, because truly, in my opinion, if you have to fall, fall hard.

  But I say all of this wondering if it will ever be a possibility. Will I like someone so much and they like me back enough to stick with me? I know it sounds cliché but I have felt it so much in life. I believe we all leave. Especially the ones who once chose me. They’ve all left. And I swear I don’t mean to be dramatic. But that’s what I’ve known.

  I will never be pretty enough.

  I will never be relaxed enough.

  I will never know how to make someone feel he’s home.

  I will never fully control this big mouth.

  I will never lose my humiliating and unhelpful fear of him leaving.

  My dad, my best friend, left our home in 1995 and said one night a week is good from now on; my brother held that axe to the fridge but not me. He wouldn’t hurt me. Whose side was I supposed to be on?

  All I know is I don’t know how to be on my side.

  I call myself a werewolf. I hate saying this to anyone.

  When I get feelings for someone, I lose control. I can’t get rid of it or even quite access it in solo therapy. It’s so physical. My brain is the most creative when it comes to how someone can hurt me. I black out. I cry. I have punched my fists into walls. And forgotten the next day. And I’m left so embarrassed. This pain wasn’t meant for you to see! It’s mine!

  I scare people. And I should, I think.

  Owen and Leda cheered for me and still do. Not because they think I’m in need. But because they recognize something I don’t. They love me with glassy eyes, the older cousin, as if I’m Michael fucking Jordan! (I am very much not MJ.)

  Can I stop scaring people? Can I stop feeling like any second I will be left?

  Now what?

  This is one I’m having a harder time with, O. Navigating my path to feeling okay alone. Or navigating my life to a comfortable place if I’m attempting “not alone.”

  You did it so well. You did it with cancer. You did it with panache!

  Girls still write me about you.

  But you are Owen and I am me.

  So I hold my Owen compass up to my sky, to my head, to my heart, and try to figure out how the hell he did it.

  And tonight I just break down because WHY COULDN’T I HAVE ASKED YOU MORE WHEN YOU WERE HERE?

  It’s fruitless. It’s stupid. I know. I just needed to let go of one more thought.

  I love you, O, and I’ll keep waiting on sunny days and birdsong and knowing that’s maybe enough for a day.

  June 1, 2020

  Matt has decided to move back into his apartment in Brooklyn. It’s sad to see him go, but I think he misses his things, like his own bed. Those little comforts are so important right now. He isn’t far away though, since driving is now the only form of travel that feels safe—Los Angeles may as well be in outer space at this point—and we let him know that he’s always welcome back (following a quarantine and negative test).

  Our friends Tommy and Shawn come up to visit. They live in New York with Tommy’s mother, who has preexisting conditions, so they’ve been very careful. They get tested often. Tommy especially seems to be as crazy as I am about monitoring COVID news. So I feel comfortable with them visiting, entering my bubble.

  It’s the most I’ve laughed in months I think. We went to a small local farm and I bought lettuce plants and a tomato plant. We drove there in a convertible they’d rented for the drive up to see us. What a gift: driving through windy country roads surrounded by green. I wore my mask on my head to control my hair like Thelma and Louise. I took out my phone for a minute to take a video.

  I remember a snippet of a video played at Owen’s service. I remember watching it in Ed and Laurel’s apartment, actually, wearing earbuds and sitting in front of a laptop with Ed over my shoulder. He’d asked if I wanted to see the video montages Owen’s friend had been putting together. I had done such a good job of not breaking down in front of them and I knew I would not be able to hold it in if I watched. But I couldn’t say no, and I think it was okay, even though I wanted so much to be the strong funny one for them, knowing the trauma they had just gone through during that last week. Not even a week. It was faster than that. I don’t like thinking about it.

  My hands shook as I watched the video, sitting in that room, in the heaviest silence because Owen wasn’t there speaking loudly, and it was hard for anyone else to speak for a while because of the shock. And if you start speaking, what’s the first thing you’ll say? Where does your story go now? Are you ready to acknowledge this horror? How?

  I was holding a tissue Ed handed to me at the start. My body shook the way it had that day on my bed in California. It was hard to breathe. In those moments, it’s like my body does not want to take another breath because it’s so painful, so I exhale and shake until I’m forced to gasp for another breath.

  Owen’s face came on the screen. And it hurt so much, as it does today when I picture him. He’s smiling. He smiled a lot. He has a really great smile. But as I watch, I’m seeing so many parts of his life I didn’t share with him. I didn’t know he was so dizzy so often, and would lie on the couch on his back, looking up. There were a lot of shots that started this way: Owen looking introspective maybe. Then someone would say something, he’d notice, and he’d instantly grin. Without fail.

  Then Ed says, “This is my favorite: the dudes in a convertible.” Owen is in the backseat of a convertible and his friend is taking a video. They are listening to “Pretty Woman.” There is a bit of silly self-indulgence like any selfie video and they are certainly cool-looking dudes. But Owen is less concerned about being cool. He’s smiling again, his auburn hair blowing in the wind. He’s really happy. He’s just cruising with friends and letting it feel good.

  I felt good in the car, at first, but I noticed on the way home that I was holding my breath. My chest was tight. I am still so full of anxiety about being out, about driving, about being among other people in any way, about leaving the safety of this house. I worry there won’t be emergency services if we get hurt. I worry other drivers are less careful because there are fewer cars on the road. I worry about deer jumping out in front of us. I worry about windy turns and small bridges. I start really noticing a weird intersection: “Oh, I guess we don’t have a stop sign, only them. That seems confusing.” I try to keep the panic out of my voice. When I notice my chest is tight, I wonder if I got COVID just now from touching fruit at the produce stand. Did I just ruin everything? I’m so relieved when we get home. But I don’t say it out loud. I smile and say thank you and run in to see Lucy.

  I wonder how long it wi
ll feel this way. I wonder if someday I can just cruise, like you did, not scared, listening to “Pretty Woman.” Making your dad smile as he watched you, even during impossible grief.

  I wonder what Owen was thinking in those videos when he’s just looking up. Is he ever anxious? Is he curious about where he will go?

  But he doesn’t stay there. He always comes back.

  “Hey, Owen.”

  And he turns to the person with the camera, and immediately he grins.

  * * *

  AT THE END of the night, we laugh hard in a way I really needed. We are wearing wigs and watching that new show about ball culture on HBO Max, Legendary. We cheer for the House of Balmain tonight. We’ve had wine and my favorite pasta and salad. We get a little high from this “Unicorn Dust” edible that Tommy and Shawn brought. I start walking the room in my blond hair and I say that I am “Jennifer Convertibles of the House of Convertibles.” The boys become Keevin Convertibles, Sharmy Convertibles, and Monchichi Convertibles. I stay up until one thirty or something, much later than I’ve been staying up these past couple of months, and I’m laughing so hard the whole time. I stop for a second every now and then, wondering if there’s something I should be worried about. But I let it go, I’m fine, and I let myself just laugh. And I just keep laughing. It feels so good.

  Maybe that’s how I can cruise for now.

  June 2, 2020

  People are reaching out to their exes; so says the New York Times. This is not true for me. I can’t.

  Yours is not the only story I don’t know how to tell, O.

  I always say I have two exes that really mattered in my life. I’ve dated plenty, enough for a lifetime maybe. Not because I’m a person who seeks it out. I don’t. I’m actually very comfortable being single. I just enjoy any kind of adventure, maybe. And as I said, I like to smooch. Sometimes I play a dumb game with myself and try to see if I can remember and write down all the names that have drifted in and then out of my life. I had my first real boyfriend, although it was brief, when I was fifteen. It’s been over twenty years going in and out of companionship. It’s just another home I haven’t quite found.

  My first real love is a hard story to tell because it’s heavy. For many different reasons. And I can’t tell it like a normal story where there is a fixed morality and therefore good guys and bad guys. I don’t want you to hate him. I don’t want you to hate me. I don’t know if I’m allowed to take that stance without feeling like I’m letting people down.

  I might have to bounce around this one, too. I won’t tell you everything. Some of it doesn’t feel like my story to tell. So here are parts, because it’s easier that way.

  The beginning:

  I’m fifteen and I’m sitting outside on a lunch break at my public school with my friend Alex. (I’m changing her name because after we lost touch later in life, I heard she struggled with mental illness and joined a very strict cultlike church and cut everyone out. Maybe this detail isn’t important, but I think it is pretty sad and just another example of how many ways we lose people in life.) I’m a sophomore. I don’t know it yet, but I’m going to be expelled right before spring. We notice a boy I know from chorus, Adam, sitting across the way. He’s a tall, friendly, goofy guy with messy curly blond hair. He’s sitting with a boy I don’t know.

  “Oh, that’s Henry,” Alex says. “He was really popular in my junior high school. All the girls thought he was cute.” Well, that certainly piques my interest. I try to get a better glimpse of Henry. Okay, he is very handsome. He’s got a big smile and long eyelashes and dark hair and caramel skin. He and Adam are looking over at us, laughing with each other. Alex and I look back and maybe yell some dumb teen flirty thing out like, “What are you laughing at?” Adam motions that he will tell me later. Yes, he will. I’ll bring it up casually if he doesn’t, pretending it’s not all I’m thinking about all day.

  “The guy I’m with said you were pleasant to look at.”

  I find out we have mutual friends. I find out everything I can about him, obviously. He’s half Indian. He wears Adidas. He’s a year ahead of me. He used to live in the wealthy town next to mine, but now he lives in Oak Park. We hang out with friends a couple nights. He and I sneak glances at each other often.

  I am at my friend Liz’s house one night. I sleep over there all the time. Her family jokingly calls me “the other sister.” Liz and I are really close, joined at the hip. She’s a year older and drives us around for hours some nights as we sing along with the radio and smoke cigarettes. She’s the best singer I know. We had a million inside jokes that I can’t quite remember and won’t ever get to laugh about with her again as Liz passed away from a heroin overdose in 2015. I didn’t even know she had been using.

  Liz and I talk about boys a lot. She has a crush on Adam. I have a huge crush on Henry. We call Adam on her landline, heads together so we can both hear the speaker. We look up Henry’s number. I call him, somehow. Liz and I are giggling. We make plans to hang out on our own. Oh my God.

  He drives his mom’s little black BMW. It has a police scanner that is constantly making bizarre sounds and lighting up. He says it’s a common feature in that type of car. I believe anything and everything he says. We drive around one night, going anywhere but home. At one point we pull over. I keep saying, “Well, what do you want to do?” And he says, “I don’t know, what do you want to do?” We are both shy but somehow not too shy, because here we are, in this car together, alone finally. He exhales and looks out the front window. He says, “Actually there is something I’ve wanted to do for a while.” He turns to me. “And that’s kiss you.” I think I managed an “Okay” before we were kissing. I feel like fainting. He’s good at making me swoon.

  Some nights we talk on the phone for hours, until my mom yells at me that it’s time for bed. We start making secret plans, and it becomes a regular occurrence for Henry to drive over around midnight so I can sneak him into my living room. We kiss and sometimes I just lie in his arms, in the dark in my living room, hoping my mom won’t wake up. He usually leaves after an hour or so. He seems to want to be around me as much as I want to be around him.

  Months later, we are driving around again, daring each other to “say something mushy.” I’m driving now. Around and around but neither of us is saying it. The letters I’ve slowly traced on his back for weeks now, while we lay next to each other, wondering if he’d be able to read my secret message: “I-L-O-V-E-Y-O-U.” I decide neither of us is going to be brave enough to say it. I take us back to my house and park in the garage. We walk out of the door together, and he stops me. We are standing right where I saw my mom and dad five years earlier the day they came home to tell me they were separating. My back is against the door. He says, “I don’t know if I have anything mushy to say, but I can tell you that I’m in love with you.” I say, “Me too,” and then “I have to sit down.” Due to my vasovagal fainting thing, I’m going to pass out. But I am so happy.

  A year or so later we are in this same spot. I’m crying hard. He’s been drinking and he’s yelling at me. Loud. Mean. He slams his hands into the door. I’m sobbing and I go inside. Not long after, the doorbell rings. I look through the glass puffy eyed, still crying. It’s my neighbor. He won’t stop pounding on the door. Finally, I open it up. His son thought he saw a man hit me. Am I okay? I assure him I’m okay. I just got in a fight with my boyfriend. I promise I’m okay.

  He goes to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for college. He’s really smart and a great writer. He writes stories about us. He will do this for years. He always uses the names “Henry” and “Sophie.” I’m doing the same now.

  He doesn’t stay long at school. He leaves. He stays between my house and his parents’ apartment. We spend weekends in the summer at his beautiful home in Union Pier, Michigan. His family takes me on vacations I never dreamed of, to Florence and Rome and Seville. We dip bread in bright green olive oil from Umbria while sitting at a restaurant in the Piazza Navona. He takes me to
what will become my favorite place to visit, La Carbonería, a flamenco bar in Seville. I will follow him anywhere.

  He lives with me and friends in a tiny apartment my first year of college at CalArts. I’m nervous when we go out. He’s gotten even worse with drinking. He drinks a case of beer one night and I cancel our plans to go out with friends. He’s got that look on his face where I know he’s not there. My good friend Markus is visiting. Everyone just kind of ignores Henry because he’s rambling and rolling cigarettes and playing his music loudly and laughing with us as if we are all having a great time. Then he decides he’s mad. He grabs a coffeepot that isn’t quite empty and he walks over and throws it at me. The hot coffee burns my chest. I go into the bathroom and quickly take my shirt off to get it off my skin and look to see if I’m burned. He storms into the bathroom, knocking over a glass that shatters on the ground. He pushes me down, almost choking me, on the broken glass. I have never done this before, but I’m scared, so I yell for Markus and my roommate Alex. They both run in and pull Henry off me. I quickly grab a towel. I’m not wearing a shirt and I’m so humiliated. Henry leaves and Alex locks the door behind him. Both he and Markus ask if I’m okay. None of us know what to say or do.

  Later that night, I open the door so he has a place to stay. We spend the morning with him crying in my arms. He’s so sorry and he’s such a monster. I should never forgive him. But I do. I love him so much. He’s the gentlest person I know when he isn’t this way. We know everything about each other. He loves me as completely as I love him.

  We break up a bunch of times over the years. We call it final after a doomed vacation back to Spain and Italy right after I finish the run of a show I did my last year at school. We got to perform and tour France for five weeks. Henry meets me and we break up after fighting the whole time. I do not miss the irony of visiting the Italian ruins with him.

  I move to Los Angeles that summer and move in with Markus and my friend Cindy. I’m going to try to make it work in LA. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do as an actor? I start to see someone I work with for a month or two that fall. He is older. He rides a motorcycle. He spends all of the tips he’s earned to take me to nice dinners. I think he’s sort of a fun bad boy. Then I realize he drinks a lot, doesn’t he? And one night he cuts his hand at work and I’m bandaging him up, realizing I don’t want this again. I don’t tell anybody at work that we were starting to date. I just break it off with him. I don’t feel like a nice person.