Life Is Not A Film Strip 🎞️

So, one of the craziest parts about thinking you’re about to die is that you totally get to do the whole life flashing before your eyes thing. It’s for real, and it’s not at all like I always thought it would be. For some reason, I had imagined it as a comic strip, with a series of cartoon bubbles, but in video form.

Now that I think about it, why is that what I thought it would be like? That’s really weird. It wasn’t like that at all. I didn’t look back on my memories, I didn’t think about all the things I had done and accomplished or the things I had yet to do. I simply thought about the only thing that mattered to me.

My kid. It’s always been for my kid. I am one self-centered girl, and it’d always been the Jamie show in my mind, until the day she came along. Then I was just the quirky mom in the spin off sitcom. So, when I was about to die, the thing I thought about was, “How dare you leave my daughter without a mom!” And, that’s a really weird way to feel and think, but in that moment, controlled by nothing but sheer fear and terror, that’s the thing that came to mind.

That’s the thing that keeps coming back up. I know there are all those stages of grief and what have you, and I am definitely mourning the life that could have been, but the thing is– that life never actually existed. (side note: every time I emdash I realize I look like a robot. Sorry, not sorry I will die on this hill with emdashes strewn across my body if I have to. They bring me joy.)

I made it up in my head.

That’s right. The perfect little life that I have been displaying to the whole world this whole time has been a total lie, and I think maybe I even told it to myself in order to sell it. That’s weird, right?

I mean, look… I know what I did– I was a blogger. I needed sponsorships. Single moms didn’t get those things. Ten years ago the nuclear family was the only thing you ever saw in media.

But, why didn’t I fight against that? Why wasn’t I strong enough to go in and be the one who bucked the trend and said, “I would rather raise my kid alone and be happy than raise her and be miserable with a man who is a terrible human being.”

Kevin was never a good person, and the thing is, I still have hope that someday he figures out how to be. I just don’t want him anywhere near me or my family. I want to be safe, and I feel like that isn’t something I will ever feel again. That’s the part I can’t shake. He instilled so much fear into me for so long that I don’t really know how to not feel it, and when I start to feel like there isn’t anything to be scared of– well, you get where I am going… this is where it gets all mixed up in my head. (Holy run-on sentence, batman. I am so sorry.)

I still don’t know why he stopped strangling me. Did he think I was dead? I mean, I passed out, he had to have thought that, right? Or did he realize what he was doing? That’s a lot to process, and it’s something I have to work out in therapy, on a mountaintop, or maybe on some sort of sabattical to a foreign country… I just know that it’s weird to me that I am a little grateful to him for stopping.

Like, what? How am I grateful to the person who pinned me down with his knees, tried to garrote me with my necklaces, and strangled me to the point I had a raccoon face for weeks after? What even is that? But I am so happy to be alive, and even though I lost so much of the things I have worked so hard for all these years in order to get out of the marriage, I still feel like I am winning my life back.

That’s kind of how it feels. It’s like I get to have my life back, and I get to decide what it looks like. It’s no longer about Kevin forcing us to stay home so he could have good enough internet to play World of Warcraft with a bunch of strangers for 50+ hours a week while I took care of all the bills and whatnot.

But the thing is, I don’t know what that is. I don’t know what it is I want my life to be. I haven’t even given that any thought for the last ten years and that feels like it should be a lie even as I type it, but it’s not. It’s like… for real. I really feel like that. And I don’t know what to do with that.

So I am going to just see what’s next. What life looks like when it’s just me– without the thought of what a man who does nothing but spit on me and kick me and throw me to the ground needs in order to be happy.

Because if I have to be terrified for the rest of my life anyway, then I might as well use it to my advantage, right?