#itszara

hey, 

today is august 31st 2021; the last day of summer and the last day i can call my "family" my own. it feels surreal that i woke up this morning not knowing just how badly my day would end but with just fifty minutes of summer left, i can confirm that this is rock bottom.

dad never accepted danny and i knew he wouldn't. in a weird way, i'd accepted that. i figured we'd coexist and dance around the subject like we do with one million other topics in our family, but no. first, he tried to set me up with another boy - mattheo sinclair - who, can i add, i've never officially met. and then, when that didn't work, he decided the next best thing was to cut me off.

i've been cut off before and i figured it was a bargaining chip to persuade me to come around to his way of thinking. but then the words came. i'm an ungrateful bitch, a disappointment, forever living in lacey's shadow, i should've disappeared rather than her and i make him sick. the part that hurt the most was that he said it with such force and certainty, and if made me wonder just how long he'd been waiting to get it off his chest. had it been forever? has he ever actually liked me?

of course my sisters were supportive enough but i think not pushing back on him or questioning his judgement cements where their loyalties lie. they can tuck me into bed and offer me reassurance all they like, not one of them has come out and straight up said that he's wrong...not to his face. they're his family first and that's something i feel like i need to remember. when it comes down to him or me, it's always him.

now the dust has settled, i feel like everything is out of reach. reaching for danny feels more like annoying him; even if he says it's not. reaching for friends feels like i'm being whiny; they all have other things going on. even reading the group chat makes me feel worlds away. i can't relate to any of it. none of it matters and sometimes i wonder, if i stayed quiet forever, would anybody really even give a shit?

the topic of porches and beautiful homes came up today and for me, that's escapism. the life i've dreamed of for as long as i can remember is a french country styled home with a beautiful porch dressed in season appropriate decor. in spring, pink and yellow flowers bloom with seasonal vegetables. and, in the summer, it becomes lighter. strings of fairy lights run through the cascading leaves of willow trees and i can sit in the garden with friends, drinking wine and talking about nothing in particular. autumn brings halloween & colder nights; pumpkin scented everything with colour schemes of warm brows and oranges. and as for winter, do i really need to put it into words? pure magic, of course.

it's not the most ambitious of dreams and falling out of a family like mine, some might argue that it'd be taking a step back, rather than climbing the "success" ladder. the absence of designer labels, camera angles, photoshop and social gatherings filled with the most unsociable people is failure to some people. but, what i think they don't realise is that "regressing" in the eyes of society can be just as hard as progressing. how do you achieve peace when you were raised to endure inhumane levels of chaos?

in my last entry, i said september would be the healing. 

i was right. 

the month passed in quiet moments, reconnecting with my family, seeing friends...and then just before it decided to end, on the twenty-ninth day, i got married. 

i guess that makes this my first entry as zara coleman. has a ring to it, don’t you think? you know, i was always set on keeping my name when i thought about marriage. there’s something pretty about ‘calloway’; the way the l’s loop into one another and then the tail of the y ties it all in together.

not to mention ‘zara calloway’ is somebody i’ve spent two decades with. she was the one who self-soothed her stage fright because she had to spend 18 hours+ on set. she was also the one who lost and then found her twin sister again. zara calloway gave her heart away easily and got it handed back a little more damaged each time. 

being her was tough but it was her who brought me here, and i love her unconditionally. 

the one thing that ties me to her and her to me is danny; my husband. 

from the moment i saw him i knew it was him. i knew on the night he’d come and lay with me in clark’s apartment when we argued. i knew on night’s out when i could pinpoint exactly where he was in the room without looking. i knew on the day he found out i never read with my parents as a kid and has read to me everyday since. i knew during the weeks we wouldn’t talk much because i’d freaked out and pushed him away, or said something dumb that caused rifts between us. 

i remember once we argued at the cabin and he let me storm out. i did a lap of the lake and the fact that he let me go was the scariest feeling in the world & something i never want to feel again. 

there’re women out there who feel like marriage is out-dated; you give up the perfectly fine woman you were to become a man’s possession, and everybody knows it because you have to strip yourself of your own name. i get that. but, my marriage didn’t feel like that. not even a little bit. 

zara coleman is the fusion of him & I. i imagine his surname as the signature of an artist in the corner of the canvas, taking responsibility for the painting of zara people see today. rightfully so. the person who can mould and shape you without having to pull your arm or twist you in unnatural ways is the one worth keeping. even now, i can’t tell you how he’s changed me, but i can feel it. 

right now, i’m sitting on my couch with the television and all of the lights off. i was supposed to be in bed ten minutes ago but i’m too lazy to get up. this isn’t the first time either. one thing nobody told me about marrying the love of my life is that i’d lose my appetite for sleep. sleep used to be how i escaped. i’d rush through the daytime hours so that the time to shut myself down would come around even faster.

not any more. 

lately, staying awake has felt easy and i’m present.