Back in 2014-2015, I was living like a rockstar. Not only was my husband (then just a boyfriend), Emmy-nominated, but he was bringing me along to the Silver Addy and PAB awards (much, very likely to his boss’ chagrin) and putting me in commercials (which, of course his boss swapped out with another girl). I was wearing pretty dresses from Ross and sandwiched between Emmy winners and Ad Club representatives, soaking in the magic of dating someone famous. Well, famous to me, at least, in the television world. 

On New Year’s Day, I got to see his name appear in the scrolling credits at the end of the Mummer’s Parade. He always filmed his annual credit, but that first year, my mom and I perched upon the end of my bed waiting anxiously to scream, “There he is!” as his name quickly floated by — a blip to others but I knew the truth: he was something special. 

I felt fortunate to go along for the ride, but the magic was from something deeper: a true sense of belonging. Growing up, all I wanted was for life to look like a fairy tale. I wanted to be a chapter in a book; as robust and charming, as lively and as charismatic as the heroines I always wrote about. She was always fearless, even relentless in her pursuit of love, and yet, at 24, 25 years old, I had just found it. Precocious and immovable, I was living out my greatest fantasies. We went to Broadway. We visited flower gardens on the weekend. We ordered Pei Wei and he introduced me to lime rice and spicy sauce. We watched the Office and Arrested Development and Portlandia and Once Upon a Time — shows that spurred on trips to Scranton (what, the Electric City) and the City of Roses and my best-selling set of Mouse Ears (magic, my friends, comes with a price — and that price is $28 plus shipping). 

On a whim, he’d buy tickets to Cinderella at the Academy of Music. At night, during winter, he’d drive me into the city of lights, er, brotherly love, but the other name would have been apt after seeing Boathouse Row in all its glory. The buildings towered over us, many of which we visited; Memories made at Macy’s in Center City for Dickens Village, the Free Library of Philadelphia to hear Jennifer Weiner speak, falling in love and running up the steps at the Art Museum, dressing up like Jesse and James from Pokemon at the Pennsylvania Convention Center for Wizard World— the first time I did something so far-fetched yet innately part of my skin all at once. I was home with him. Figuratively and metaphorically. My fondest memories included walking up the icy stairs to his apartment, hands full of plastic grocery bags with that weekend’s menu: London broil and biscuits with sausage gravy. We’d get up to cook Sunday morning and then immediately do the dishes, a couple well-formed into their routine roles but we had only known each other less than two months. It fit. He fit. We fit. And everything else that followed…followed suit in that same, mundane but brilliant way. 

As these things tend to do, the spontaneity fizzled down. Some weeks we struggled to pay our bills and others, struggled to buy our food. As the tragedies began mounting, our sparkle faded. I went from wanting to write and publish a children’s book to wanting to get a shower spurred on by my own motivation. He went from chasing Emmys to chasing the buzz that came with actually wanting to swing his feet over the bed in the morning. Life sucked and life sucked us dry and only has the true nature of the beast been seen in our first year in Florida. 

I’m nowhere near where I thought I’d be. I’m not a mom. I’m not a professional writer in the direction I assumed it would take. I’m not happy in the general sense of things, always somehow burdened by what’s been, and anxiously awaiting the moment the swelling dies down. In these times of melancholy, I reverberate back to what life used to be. The fulfillment that came with being able to afford the random guilt-free lunch. The weekends spent rotting on the couch, already justified from a hard-earned week. The pursuit of passions in their individual forms. The nights spent cooking together and falling asleep, not to phones but to his voice, lulling me off to dreamland by excitedly retelling the story of watching Wrestlemania 14 — the first show that ever got him hooked on the sports entertainment behemoth. 

I miss the normal, non-melancholy days when I felt spurred on by dreams. As of late, my dream has been to survive, to get in touch with the woman I’d been. But, what about the life that’s been? When I think about life 10 years ago, it wasn’t about the materialistic aspects in the way they are now – used as a bandaid, a shield from grief. Back then, it was about living life to the fullest. Experiencing new adventures, fearfully and on purpose. Cooking meals together and building lives, dreaming big in the way I often dream of my belly doing soon — pregnant with hope, pregnant with joy, pregnant and ever-expanding into the world we create. Together. A home built upon love and dedication and, of course, a little childlike wonder and whimsy. Child or not, it’s the absence of hope and excitement that I miss the most. No wonder when we talk about kids, his top name for our future daughter is Hope. Real or imagined, that’s what she is. That’s what she represents.

And in 2025, I hope to greet it. I hope this is the year I get reacquainted with myself, the most honest version of myself from a decade ago. She was the woman who dared to dream and somehow managed to get everything she wanted.

It’s possible, I think.

Oh, do I dare to believe it’s possible to recapture?