EMILY PRATT SLATIN

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She/Her/Hers Lesbian

Retired Career Fire and EMS Lieutenant-Specialist, Writer, and Master Photographer, living in Vermont.

We Are Still Married

The person I was at fifteen deserved considerably more kindness than she received. Somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting revenge against people who hurt me. I sought solace in distance instead.

I have lived several lives without actually dying between them. Child. Rescuer. Mother figure. Wife. Writer. Photographer. I never knew what I wanted to do with my life, and like my mind, I’m always changing.

I have been called brave for things that did not feel brave when I was doing them. Mostly, I was busy. Fear frequently has to wait. There is an extraordinary amount of life hidden inside the sentence, “I don’t do that anymore.” Sometimes it means you quit. Sometimes it means you survived long enough to become someone who no longer has to.

I am not proud because everything worked out. Everything did not work out. I am proud because enough things failed catastrophically that I eventually stopped requiring a perfect outcome before permitting myself to call a life good.

There are still moments when I encounter the person I used to be. She appears in a song, an old photograph, a road in the Adirondacks, the smell of diesel, a radio station callsign announcement, or handwriting I have not seen in decades. I no longer wish I could go back. I just wish I could tell her to keep going.

Amelia woke me up this morning at 1:00 AM asking if I had her purple beanie.

I did, in fact, have it.

Amelia left Mom’s house this morning at 6:35. I had done her laundry and helped her pack her car yesterday afternoon. The closing on her new house in Amherst, New York, is today. Amelia scheduled both the walk-through and the closing for the same day, exactly one hour apart.

At 11:31, she sent me a text letting me know that she was at Wegmans looking for lunch.

Someone at John’s last night suggested I write a bestseller titled We Are Still Married and focus exclusively on my marriage to Amelia. I laughed and agreed with them, while secretly dismissing the idea entirely in favor of my Dark Horse series.

Later in the evening, Larry offered to drop his pants at John’s again. I told him that if he does so and, at that moment, I’m not already preoccupied or distracted by something else, and I get even the slightest glimpse of his pubic area, I will be forced to sell Mom’s house, renounce all of my childhood friendships, sell my 25% interest in my oldest friend’s business, and then disappear from Stamford forever just to try and get the image out of my head.

Amelia took all the Uncle Ben’s rice except the cilantro lime.

Outside, it’s just Monday somewhere in the middle of Upstate New York.

I ended up spending the day in my childhood bedroom editing my photos and writing. A little after five in the evening, I walked across the street to John’s in search of some mindless entertainment delivered in the form of dispensing intoxicants to a select group of the general public.

The moose head on the wall above the bar has flies stuck in the bottom lip of the moose.

I wrote my name on the wall of the women’s bathroom.