Out of Time

TW: Death and themes of mental health

The day I met Phillip, nobody would’ve known that I was drowning.

I know, right? What a great way to start off. You’d think that I would succumb to some glorious, sweet, slow-burn romance: “The first day I met Phillip, a little flying baby wearing a diaper with a bow and arrow shot me and him with a love arrow.” But no.

The real way to start off is with the real, raw truth: “The day I met Phillip, nobody would’ve known that I was drowning.” Yeah, that’s the real, raw truth.

So, the first day I met Phillip, nobody would’ve known that I was drowning. I was drowning, drowning, and drowning. Nobody would’ve known that I had just gotten back from visiting my mother’s grave in Sunrise Cemetery. Nobody would’ve known that my mother had died just two days before; that we’d already moved on, had her funeral.

I would never move on, though.

Let me tell you the full story of why I was going on a date with Phillip anyway on that day…

“God, Julia, you need to like, go on Tinder or something and find a date, with your single self,” My best friend, Violet, had said. Mom had been sick for only two weeks then.

“I don’t need love,” I’d said.

“God, that is like, the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard you say,”

“Oh well,”

“Come on, Julia! I’ll pay you!”

“Oh, well, this heightens up the stakes, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, shut up,”

“How much are we talking?”

“Ace said you owed me ten,”

“Don’t go full Home Alone on me now,”

“Get out, Julia. Come on, please? You don’t even have to go on a date! Just try it; besides, that’s how I met Noah,”

“Oh, I suppose I must since the two perfect lovebirds met on Tinder,”

“Shut up and make a profile already,”

And so that is how I created a Tinder profile and met Phillip. Well, not in person, which is what I consider truly “meeting”, but whatever. He seemed nice in the conversation we had. We exchanged phone numbers and he asked me out to this Italian place downtown.

I thought I would go through this with Mom.

I opened the doors to the restaurant, and saw Phillip sitting at a booth in the corner. He waved enthusiastically while I was dabbing at my eyelids, hoping no loose tears had fallen uncontrollably. That’d been happening a lot recently.

“Hey, Julia,” He said.

“Hi,” I replied. My voice cracked and I could feel the familiar tightness in my throat when his face softened microscopically. Everybody pitied the girl whose mother died.

“How are you?” He asked.

“I’m doing okay; how about you?”

“Just fine, thank you,”

“God, I’m sorry, this is way too formal. This is supposed to be a date, not a White House dinner,”

“Yeah, no, I was thinking the same exact thing,”

“So… what have you been up to recently? Any adventures or anything?”

“Nah, not recently. I just came back from seeing my parents in Tampa, so I haven’t had any major adventures- unless you count migrating from freezing Chicago to still-sixty-degrees-weather Tampa,”

“Cool,”

“Yep,”

“I, um, I’m gonna order us something,”

“Okay,”

“What do you like?”

What do I like?

20 Years Ago

“Baby, do you want the red pasta or the white pasta? They’re both really yummy, and they are fun colors!” My mother said, pointing to penne pasta and chicken alfredo.

“Hmm… do they have anything else in them besides the noodles and red and white sauce?” I asked, my four-year-old voice cracking and changing octaves in the cutest way possible.

“Well, the red pasta does have some chunks of really yummy peppers, like the ones from Grammy’s house. But the white pasta has really yummy chicken strips in it. But it’s not like dino nuggets; it’s fancy, grilled chicken,”

“Oh, wow,” I said, like deciding which pasta to eat was the most important decision of my life, “I think I’ll take the red pasta, because I really love red and Grammy’s peppers were very yummy in my tum-tum-tummy,” I patted my stomach and smiled all goofy.

Mom smiled and then gave our orders to the waitress. Since then, penne pasta (or red pasta) has been my go-to pasta.

Maybe, if I just wished hard enough, Mom wouldn’t have four major blood clots and not find out until it was too late. Maybe, if I wished hard enough, she would be here with me, instead of Phillip.

“Uh, Julia?” Phillip said, bringing me back to the present.

“Oh, um, yeah, sorry about that,” I said, feeling my face turn red as a radish.

“No, you’re fine. What do you want to order?”

“I’ll take the red pasta,” I said, feeling tears welling up in my eyes.

“Oh, uh, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m okay. I’ll take the penne pasta, sorry,”

“O-okay,”

Phillip looked at me like I was an alien from another planet, his eyes meeting mine. The waiter came over and cleared his throat awkwardly.

“What will I be getting for you today?” The waiter politely asked.

“Oh, uh, one penne pasta, one Evergreen Salad, and one basket of bread sticks, please,” Phillip said, eyeing me across the booth.

As we waited for our food, Phillip looked at me, his eyes gleaming in the sunlight. Something about the way he looked at me made my heart melt into my rib cage. He sighed and put his hand on the table. I could feel my heart practically beating out of my chest as I lifted my hand out from my lap. It was juvenile, me getting ‘butterflies in my stomach’ when I touched Phillip’s hand.

For a first date, I feel like he threw a life preserver or something, to somehow lift me up from drowning. It’s almost like he knew the pain; the fact that I’d been at the graveyard earlier, crouched down, criticizing the size of my thighs, and crying silently over my mother’s grave.

I was still holding his hand when the waiter came to us with our food. I felt the tightness in my throat again, and I was afraid I would really start to cry if I didn’t inhale my pasta soon.

I took my hand away from his and grabbed my fork to then stab four pasta noodles in a row and gobble them down as he gracefully speared and chewed his salad. I suddenly felt self-conscious and I felt like I was floating out of my seat, barely able to eat my penne pasta that Phillip had ordered. Phillip looked at me and smiled slightly, bringing me back to the ground.

"So, uh, how was your week?" He asked, so innocent.

Great, just great! My mom died, but that wasn't that big of a deal! I wanted to say.

"It was fine," I ended up saying.

"Cool,"

"Yep. How was yours?"

"It was good. I started a work project, so that's been taking up a lot of my time,"

"What do you do for work again?"

"I'm a senior lobbyist,"

"Ah, right,"

"What do you do for work?"

"Oh, I am a forensic psychologist,"

"That's like, really cool,"

"Yeah, it is,"

I took a small bite of pasta and then grabbed a bread stick and picked it apart. Phillip stared at me, his eyes softening. He cleared his throat and then looked at me. "I didn't want to tell you this, but, uh, I saw you earlier this morning,"

He saw me in the cemetery.

"You... You did?" I asked, my heartbeat soaring.

"Yeah. I left you alone, obviously, but I walk through the cemetery on my way to work everyday; my grandparents are buried there,"

"Oh. Well, um, sorry, I guess,"

"It's alright. It's been two years; I should get over it,"

"You don't have to, you know?"

"Yeah, I guess so,"

I sucked in a breath and it got hitched real fast.

"My... My mom died two days ago," I said quietly, almost like a whisper.

Phillip's eyes went wide, his hand reaching for mine as the waiter came over, asking if we were ready. I gave him a look that I hoped looked like I wanted to do this outside of a restaurant.

"Yeah, um, we're done. Do I pay on the way out?" Phillip asked, trying to keep his voice calm.

"Yes, you can," The waiter said, taking our plates and basket.

I smiled really weakly and pathetically at the waiter, then I grabbed Phillip's hand and we got up from our booth, and paid.

When we had made it to a scenic park, the one in the middle of downtown, he squeezed my hand as we walked down the trail that overlapped with the park.

"Julia, I can't even say anything. You don't just say something like: "oh, so sorry for your loss" when it's something like this. I mean, I can't just say 'sorry'. It doesn't explain what I'm feeling right now, you know?

"Losing my grandparents three days apart from each other was horrible, and I had a close bond with both, but I can't even fathom the idea of losing my mother.

"I also minored in counseling, surprisingly. Specifically grief counseling, but yeah. I know you might think it's your fault, whatever happened to her. But it's almost certainly not, Julia. I am here for you. Seriously. I know this is our first date, but I feel like we've known and needed each other for years, you know?

"But I really want to hug you right now, if that's okay. Can I hug you, Julia?" Phillip said, looking at me.

"Please," I said, trying to recount the last time someone hugged me. Like, really hugged me. I teared up at the thought. I couldn't remember. It had been so long.

Phillip entombed me in a big bear hug, and I let my shoulders relax; my breathing slow. I hugged him back, and sighed into his shoulder.

I walked into that date, wiping at my eyes, thanking God for water-proof mascara. My mother had just died, and I'd just visited her grave. I walked into that date having not eaten for three days straight, yet still picking apart every inch of my body. I walked into that date, ready to go in and go out, making polite small talk. Faking smiles, faking laughs. Faking everything, everything, everything. I walked into that date drowning, and nobody saw. Nobody ever saw.

I walked out of that date, wiping my eyes, but for a different reason. I walked out of that date, able to recall the last time I'd gotten hugged. Like, really hugged. I walked out of that date, no longer drowning. I walked out of that date, having eaten a bit of pasta. It's a start. I walked out of that date, feeling like maybe I'd found my one. I walked out of that date, seen.

Two Years Later

"Do you, Julia Robertson, take this man, Phillip Beach as your lawfully wed husband?" The minister said.

"I do," I said, laughing slightly.

"Now, do you, Phillip Beach, take this woman, Julia Robertson, as your lawfully wed wife?" The minister said.

"I do," He said, rubbing his thumb along mine. We exchanged rings, then he read from Psalms 34.

"Now, by the power vested in me, I now proclaim you husband and wife," The minister said, smiling at us.

"You may now kiss the bride," He said, nodding towards Phillip.

That was the singular most happy day of my life.

On our first date, Phillip rescued me from what I thought would be my last day.

It wasn't, because of him.