You know how every once in a while you look back on your life and you wonder how so much time has passed? You wonder how each moment bled into the next and created the days, months, and years that now all feel like seconds?
That’s how I feel.
Right now.
In this moment.
It feels like our entire past together spans eons and the time I’ve spent without him is an insignificant little flash.
I have loved Jesse since the day I saw him at that swim meet.
And I’m having a hard time remembering how I lived without him, how I could bear to look at a world that I thought he wasn’t in, and why I thought I could ever love anyone the way I love him.
Because it has been him.
My whole life.
It has always, always been him.
How have I spent all of my time forgetting who I am and who I love?
The last couple of hours have been a daze. I’ve stood by, saying barely anything, as the whole family embraced Jesse’s return home. I watched as Francine cried her eyes out and prayed to God at the sight of him, as Chris and Tricia introduced him to their son, Trevor, and their baby girl, Ginnie. As Danny introduced him to his new wife, Marlene.
My phone has rung a number of times but I have yet to bring myself to even look at the caller ID. I can’t handle real life right now. I can barely handle what’s happening right in front of me.
And I can’t even begin to reconcile what is happening right in front of me to my real life.
There is so much for Jesse to process. You can tell there is a great deal that his family wants to say, so much they want to do. I find myself wanting to tell him every thought I’ve had while he’s been gone, wanting to describe every moment I’ve spent without him, every feeling I have right now. I want to plug my heart into his and upload the past three and a half years right into his soul.
I can only imagine that everyone else here wants to do that same thing.
It must be so overwhelming to be him, to be the person everyone is staring at, the person everyone wants to see with their very own eyes and hold in their own hands.
As I watch Jesse interact with his family, I feel suddenly like I don’t belong here.
Jesse is holding his niece, Ginnie, for the first time, trying to remain calm. But I know him. I know what the downturn of the corners of his eyes means. I know why he pulls his ears back, why his neck looks rigid and stiff.
He’s uncomfortable. He’s confused. This is all so much for him. Too much.
I catch his eye. He smiles.
And I realize it’s everyone else who doesn’t belong here. There may be twenty people in this room but there are only two people in the whole world to Jesse and me and they are Jesse and me.
When his family has calmed down, they all start discussing how they will make their way back to Francine and Joe’s house. I watch Jesse pull apart from the pack and then I feel his arm on me, pulling me aside.
“Is your car here?” he says.
“Yeah. Just right outside.”
I can’t believe I’m talking to him. He’s right in front of me. Talking to me. Jesse Lerner. My Jesse Lerner. Is alive and talking to me. Nothing has ever been so impossible and yet happening.
“All right, great. Let’s get out of here soon, then.”
“OK,” I say, stone-faced.
“Are you OK?” he asks me. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” The moment he hears it come out of his mouth, he closes his eyes. When he opens them back up, he says, “I’m sorry. You are seeing a ghost. Aren’t you?”
I look at him and I am hit with a wave of exhaustion.
Do you know how tiring it is to see a dead man in front of you? To have to remind your brain every half second that your eyes aren’t lying?
I’m overwhelmed by the stunning incredibility of the truth. That I can, right this very second, reach out and touch him. That I can ask him any of the questions I’ve spent years of my life wishing I’d asked him. That I can tell him I love him.
The desire to tell him, and the belief that he would never hear me, has gutted me