On some level, she wondered if she was always policing herself. She was always afraid she would be that person. Who jumped out of the car at a national park into something idiotic.
Who wildly went against what she actually wanted in the heat of the moment.
So she was always on a leash. Always gauging her actions through the lens of other people.
It was why what Will wanted was more important than what she wanted. Why her mother being proud was more important than her having what she wanted.
It was why she was Patricia’s daughter. Will’s wife.
Jude, Aiden and Ethan’s mother.
A volunteer. A friend.
But not just herself.
Herself, she had decided, wasn’t trustworthy.
Herself was a problem.
Herself was a drunk girl that was going to get herself tossed in the air by buffalo.
But you never have.
Your marriage wasn’t you breaking the rules. It was you trying to be what everyone needed you to be.
“Sorry,” she said, realizing that she had lapsed off. “I… I was thinking.”
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m okay. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be okay again. There are just things you can’t put back in the box, can you?”
She realized that that could be taken several different ways. “I mean, the thing with Will. The thing with our marriage. Now I want to get a tattoo. He doesn’t like them, and I’m going to do it anyway.” She laughed. “Because seriously, fuck everyone’s opinions.Fuck.”
“Okay.”
“My mom hates that word.” She put her fingertips on her forehead and rested her knees to her elbows. “I’m still a child. I let all these other people tell me what to do. Even without them having to tell me. It’s crazy. I know it is. But I do it anyway. I do it anyway because I’m afraid.”
“That’s fair. Fear keeps you safe sometimes. You know. From them.”
She laughed. “I guess. I think I’ve always thought my fear and common sense were the same thing. I don’t want to run with bison, though. Maybe I need to separate the two. Maybe sometimes fear is just fear, and I can trust my common sense more than I think.”
“That’s a pretty bold statement. I like it.”
“We can drive away from the buffalo now. The longer we linger, the more I actually am afraid that I’m going to jump out of the car. Because I’m having revelations at a pretty lightning speed, and that is more or less terrifying. The amount of times a day I challenge my own worldview is getting exhausting.”
“I bet.”
“It’s grief, in a way. When you lose somebody that you love, you find yourself completely disoriented. You have to find a new way that you fit in the world. A new way that your life looks. This isn’t the same. But it’s like I’m tearing apart every little piece of everything, which I was afraid to do. I was steadfastly not doing it on that first trip. Because I kept asking myself, ‘If I tear it into too many pieces, at what point will I not be able to put it back together?’”
That was really when her stomach hollowed out. She wasn’t sure anymore if putting it back together was what she wanted.
She wasn’t sure she cared. She was beginning to wonder if maybe she had to keep tearing it apart. Because if it could be broken into so many pieces that it couldn’t be recovered, then it didn’t deserve to be.
But then, who was she?
She couldn’t be Patricia’s daughter, and she couldn’t be Will’s wife…
Samantha.
