EPILOGUE

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2022

          I decided that the way to best prevent a relapse would be to place physical distance between me and Chase.

          It wouldn't solve the biggest underlying issues—namely my addiction to self-destructive behaviors and horrifying fear of the unknown—but it made me feel better in a way only a temporary fix could. After the clean break, after all the horrible things I'd said and that I knew I couldn't regret, I knew I'd have to physically step away from everything that reminded me of him if I wanted to make it right by myself.

          It hadn't been easy, not when I was covered in reminders of him from head to toe, even in my bloodstream and deep within my bones, but I had to make it work somehow. I also knew I'd have to go back at some point, being too big of a homebody to leave permanently, but also because the city was one of those things that stuck with you for the rest of your life, inescapable. That was fine by me. The city hadn't been the culprit for my heartbreak and it wasn't responsible for my subsequent attempts at rebuilding and rewiring.

          I couldn't escape the city and I didn't want to, but, if I had to carry Chase and his damage for an unknown period of time, I needed to take it elsewhere. I couldn't allow for it to continue corroding my city any longer, and I needed to breathe. As far as I knew, he would still be leaving for California, which meant the required distance had to be even bigger than what I had originally anticipated.

          It was how I had ended up renting a seaside cottage in Scotland.

          Though it was early summer, it rained more than I thought possible, which forced me to stay indoors most of the time, but it kept me distracted. I'd been writing, mostly streams of consciousness, but it was a decent way to keep my head clear and devoid of painful thoughts. I'd been seeing a therapist weekly, too, and had somehow found the strength to be fully honest for once in my life.

          Being in a coastal town somewhere in Scotland—I'd tried to pronounce it a few times, but failed miserably every time—had required adjustments, some easier than others. I wasn't as malleable as I'd spent years pretending to be and I needed my strict routines to keep me afloat, but it still served as a reminder of why I was staying there and what I had waiting for me back home. I didn't want to return until I felt strong enough to handle the pressure of having my short film adapted to the big screen, which involved meetings, edits, and auditions, so I wanted—and needed—to be at the top of my game.

          I couldn't risk having my father and his crew think I wasn't strong enough to handle it. I would show up, behave like a mature adult, and would prove to them I was more than capable of keeping things separate. Though Girlhood was a deeply personal project and contained an entire piece of myself, I needed people to see and acknowledge that was exactly what made it appealing and, therefore, worth taking a risk on.

          Sometimes, it felt more like exploiting my heartbreak for the sake of entertainment. Other times—and it was mortifying to me to admit it—I felt myself crumbling under the unbearable guilt of exploiting Chase and private aspects of our relationships, even ones I hadn't commented about publicly around my parents, Ingrid, and Savannah. It was easy to feel that way and, though it sounded contradictory, it also brought an old sense of familiarity, as that had been the most prevalent emotion coursing through my brain throughout the relationship—that and fear.

          Every time I felt myself slipping back into those dangerous thought patterns, I held on to the objective facts I knew to be true. Chase had irrevocably hurt me, ruined my life, and blamed it all on me—my immaturity, my ineptitude, my last name, my failure to immediately disclose my age and where I went to college that first night at the speakeasy—and had demanded too much from me. I hadn't asked for too much by wanting to be loved.

          So, I decided to take it slow, survive one day at a time.

          I'd started drinking my coffee and tea with oat milk, mellowing out the stronger tastes and the more overwhelming kick of the caffeine. I'd found it helped with my jitters and insomnia, as it was to be expected, but it still allowed me to have warm drinks throughout the day, which worked wonders for my general mood during the perpetually stormy summer.

          I had a neighbor, too—Fraser, a tall fisherman who was a year older than me, sporting an impressive beard. It was just me and him by the coastline, waking up at the earliest hours of the morning, before dawn broke, and we'd share a cup of hot cocoa before he left. He called me Penny Lane and had gifted me his spare record player, along with granting me unlimited access to his vinyl collection to keep me company when we were apart.

          I was listening to new music, figuring out what I liked outside of the obscure indie bands I'd pretended to like for Chase's sake, to look more attractive and knowledgeable in his eyes. I found I quite enjoyed Fiona Apple and Joni Mitchell, as cliché as that sounded, particularly Blue; in fact, that album had spoken to me at a deeper level than anything else in my life.

          I was still cooking, feeling more comfortable with my skills. I'd taught myself how to play the keyboard, wishing it would help me build up the courage to switch to the piano eventually. I'd gotten a dog, too, a one-year-old Border Collie Fraser had affectionately nicknamed Princess Diana ("It's funny because we're in Scotland and not in Wales," he'd explained).

          Whenever it wasn't raining too heavily, PD and I would go out for jogs or calm walks by the sea, steering away from the taller cliffs, just so I could get some fresh air. After escaping a city coated in pollution and smog, my body wasn't used to air that clear, which had only intensified my whiplash at first, but I was slowly growing accustomed to it.

          Fraser and I were friends. He understood I wasn't ready for anything serious—anything other than a friendship—at least for now, and the isolation we shared was a different kind than the one I'd gone through with Chase. We weren't hiding and I didn't feel like a dirty little secret, but it was something quiet and private that still made me feel seen and heard. It was a safe space where I felt valued, for once. It made me wonder why I still felt like I had ever deserved anything less than that, but old habits died hard.

          It was a rough process. It was. Not all of my days were ideal, and I often had to cry myself to sleep, repeating the same affirmations day after day, struggling through therapy, struggling to understand and validate my feelings. Even with the promise of a loving home waiting for me across the ocean, I occasionally slipped up and relapsed mentally, longing for simpler times when my safety net had been Chase.

          It wasn't supposed to be easy. It wasn't supposed to be immediate. Realistically, I knew all of that, and my new therapist had been tremendously helpful by reminding me it was meant to hurt. It was meant to be difficult, and I shouldn't try to rush the process, whatever that meant, and, though that made sense in theory, it was hard to keep the frustration at bay. It was easy to depend on the foundations that already existed and, the more I reached for them, the harder it became to keep dismantling them to build new ones. It was like a constant itch, a permanent ache in my bones that nothing but time could heal.

          The all-consuming guilt came in waves. 

          The intensity was variable, too, and I welcome the days when it didn't swallow me like a tsunami, and sometimes I even dared to go for a swim in the dangerous waters to get reacquainted with the ocean. Under the gray Scottish skies, the sea was a sharp shade of steel blue and, most of the time, I almost allowed myself to be swallowed by it. It lulled me to sleep, numbing me down before sucking me into a whirlpool. It wasn't always chaotic and thrashing, something I would have avoided from the start because I could tell how dangerous it was, but I supposed that was true for many things. 

          I used my surroundings to ground me back in reality—the salty scent of the ocean, the sea foam lingering on the ends of my hair and on the tip of my tongue, the earthy, novel feeling of my boots sinking into wet dirt and soaked sand, and all the different shades of blue I'd never quite knew how to properly appreciate. The past four years, I'd only cared about a particular one, seeing it everywhere I went and taking it as a sign that it was all there was in my future and that it was somehow a good thing.

          I saw other options, now. I'd learned to love the dark brown of my own eyes, finding beauty in the golden speckles that popped up whenever the sun hit them. I recognized myself whenever I looked in a mirror or at any surface that reflected my face back at me. Seafoam green was my new favorite color.

          It was the color of the sweater I was wearing when I got the call from my father.

          "We found your leading lady and she's coming in for an audition in a week," he told me. "We'll see other actresses, but I think she's the one, cariño. You ought to be here and see for yourself."

          "Do I know her?" I asked, kicking off my rain boots.

          Fraser was slumped on the navy armchair in my living room, Princess Diana sitting patiently by his side, reminding me there were days she loved him more than she loved me, but that was fine. We'd all chosen each other here.

          "Harley Kane. She's landed a few small roles here and there, but she has potential, and her vibe is exactly what we're looking for on the technical side of things. Her agent has been waxing poetic about how enthusiastic she is about Girlhood, and we both think she'll be a great fit; at the end of the day, it will be up to you. You'll get the final say."

          I chewed on my bottom lip, never hard enough to draw blood. "I'll see what I can do. Will there be room for two more?"

          "Your fisherman boy?"

          "And Princess Diana." Fraser raised his stare from his newspaper, where he'd been filling in today's crosswords, and smiled, eyes crinkling at the corners. Gently, kindly, warmly. Not the kind of smile I felt like I had to jump off a cliff to feel like I'd earned it. "I want to meet this . . . Harley Kane."

          "It's like looking at another version of you. It's uncanny, really."

          I caught a quick glimpse of my reflection in the window. For the first time in an eternity, I looked okay. I looked healthy. "It's like looking in a mirror."

THE END

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okay NOW we're over. story wise. carry on over to the final note in the next chapter. i promise it's worth a read. it's also extremely important