a year from today

On July 25, 2020, the directors of “Life in a day” sent out a call to people around the world to film whatever they happened to be doing in their lives on this day. I watched the one they had made ten years earlier — a dazzling visual collection of strangers’ intimate lives. I wanted to take part, but it was also an extremely painful time for me. I was losing the love of my life, and every day was another tortured trial at life. I could not understand, nor learn, how I could go on when I’d lost the only thing that mattered. I had no money, no finished car, no courage, and I hid behind what I was missing because I needed every excuse not to leave.

And now, watching myself then, that girl, a year ago, living in all that pain, alone, having to watch her lover recede further and further away from her…I want to hold her, walk with her, speak with her. Not that everything’s all right now, or that those beautiful memories are any less painful, but I made it out when I thought I never would. I survived. It’s more than I ever expected of myself.

This child-like film is a visual record of our last moments together. I could tell now how unhappy and desperate I was then. How scared I was to leave, how badly I wanted to kill this new man that had risen in him and find the boy I fell in love with. It’s like following a stranger who goes by the same name, same history, same love story but has nothing at all to do with that name, that history, that love story.