Episode 8: Personal Journal Entry [Billie Fisher] (Patreon)

Subject: Let the ground open up and swallow me whole.

Urgh, Journal. I am SO embarrassed. I did the most embarrassing thing I have ever done today, which, considering my impressive history of humiliating myself thus far, is saying something.

I seem to only talk to you when I'm feeling mortified about something, haha! Admittedly, that seems to have become a far more frequent occurrence than I would like. You're probably asking, "What is it this time, Billie?" Your binary code shaking its little binary code head at me in exhausted disappointment.

Well. I'll tell you.

Let me begin by setting the scene.

I have been reflecting a lot lately. I've been reflecting on ideology, I suppose, on the things I've been taught to believe and the way those beliefs - whether I like it or not - have shaped the person I have become.

It's funny, really. I guess. Maybe. These thoughts have always been there, simmering somewhere beneath the surface, occasionally rising just enough to make me uncomfortable before I hurriedly push them back down again. But lately, they seem to have developed a really annoying determination to make themselves known.

And it has a lot to do with Andrea, I think. Well... everything to do with Andrea.

I couldn't bear to look at Dylan this morning. I just... I don't know. We're not really speaking at the moment so things are tense, tenser than usual (tenser, is that even a word? I need to Google that). Ever since that night he came home completely drunk and then spent the next day nursing his hangover, we've barely exchanged more than three words.

I know how awful that sounds, Journal. I know. I know I need to tell him, we've already established this. You're judging me, aren't you?

Anyway, this morning I found myself watching him for a moment when he wasn't looking and I couldn't help but wonder when the familiar comfort of being around him shifted into becoming something I feel so compelled to escape.

I ended up leaving for work with that sick heaviness in my chest. It's definitely taken up permanent residence there, right in the middle of my chest.

On the drive into work my thoughts wondered to Mom and Dad. And then, somehow, to Andrea. Well, not 'somehow', my thoughts always wonder to Andrea, who am I kidding. She's taken up permanent residence too.

But, specifically, I began wondering what it would be like to introduce her to my parents. God, I feel sick even writing that. And I KNOW. I know, Journal, bold thought even fantasising about introducing Andrea to my parents, stop judging me. You're so judgemental tonight!

But there I was, imagining Andrea standing in my parent's living room, possibly offering one of those heart-stopping smiles of hers while my mother, on the other hand, scrutinised every inch of her. I mean, it was hard enough telling Mom and Dad about Dylan!

I don't know if i have ever told you that story? I guess I should recount it but I'll be brief about it. So, this was before I left the church properly (that's its own long, sordid story).

I met Dylan back in college. He was handsome, kind, gentle, sweet... everything I knew I should have wanted. Except he wasn't religious. And that, in my parents' world, was no small obstacle. I remember the apprehension of telling them about him, the very careful selection of words, my many rehearsed explanations and that awful sense of panic, as though I were confessing to something terribly wrong when all I'd one was meet a boy.

A boy. Imagine that.

Thankfully, once Mom and Dad met him, their initial horror gradually gave way to affection. Actually, they fell in love with him far more quickly than I anticipated.

There is, obviously, a whole lot more to that story but that's about all I can be bothered writing right now. You get the point. And the point is... the moment I tell them about Andrea, about who I am, about what I feel, about anything REAL, for once, I'll lose them. Forever.

I've known that for years, I think. Long before Andrea. Even before I had the courage to put a name or a label to the things that I felt.

There has always been this invisible boundary around my life, drawn long before I was even old enough to understand that it was there or what it meant. I could wander freely within that boundary so long as none of those choices took me beyond the edges of what Mom and Dad believed was right.

I've lived far too carefully within those lines.

So, I spent the morning thinking about that, about how much of my life has been shaped by the fear of losing their love. How many times I have swallowed a thought or smothered a feeling or made myself smaller because some part of me was still that little girl who was desperate to be good. Desperate to be worthy.

Somewhere in the middle of all that driving and thinking, something just... happened. I don't know how else to describe it. It was kind of like a thread I had been pulling at for years and it finally gave way and snapped and everything I had spent so long holding together came tumbling down around me. It was in that moment I realised I DON'T CARE. I mean, I do care, they are my parents, I love them. I don't think there is a version of my life in which losing them wouldn't hurt.

But if losing them means I get to be with Andrea, isn't that a worthwhile trade?

If getting to feel the press of those gorgeous lips against mine, even just one more time, means I'll be ostracised, isn't that worth it?

Isn't it worth being able to wake up in the morning and draw a breath that belongs entirely to me? To live without measuring every tiny piece of myself against someone else's idea of who I should be?

And to love someone without feeling the need to apologise for it?

I love Andrea. I'm insanely crazy about her. I'm practically obsessed with her. But you already know this. I want to love her openly, without having to glance over my shoulder or pretend that the sight of her doesn't make my heart do the most ridiculous things.

I want to be able to look at her and feel something beautiful without that poisonous whisper creeping into the back of my mind, telling me that beauty can somehow be sinful.

It all sounds so wonderfully simple when written down. I assure you, Journal, the revelation was anything but simple. It felt like the impact of a thousand trucks against my chest. My heart was thundering so violently I could feel it in my throat. The air seemed to disappear from around me and I remember sitting there in my car trying to draw a breath.

Now, you are probably wondering what any of this has to do with my humiliating episode today. I haven't got to the embarrassing part just yet! Patience, Journal, we'll get there. What happened is that somewhere between my huge personal revelation and arriving at work, I also managed to lose possession of whatever small amount of common sense I had left. Something came over me, I can't explain it.

I marched straight INTO ANDREA'S OFFICE and I told her, in no uncertain terms, that I'm crazy about her.

Just like that.

The words practically stumbled over one another trying to escape my mouth. I hadn't rehearsed anything! I didn't have a charming speech to back me up. All I had was me, Billie, standing in front of this extraordinary woman, blurting out something I only just recently realised myself.

And then... god. This is the embarrassing part.

Then I burst into tears.

IN FRONT OF DR ANDREA WILLIAMS, THANK YOU.

I could feel my face burning. My throat had tightened so violently that the next words I tried to speak came out as this awful, fractured sound. I pressed my lips together, blinking furiously and willing the tears to stay exactly where they were but my eyes decided to betray me. And the harder I fought it, the worse it became. My chin was even trembling, I mean, honestly.

I can't begin to imagine what Andrea must have thought of me. Maybe she was wondering whether her assistant had suffered some sort of catastrophic neurological event. That would have been a perfectly reasonable conclusion, given the circumstances.

But then.

Then!

I can't really remember exactly what happened next. I remember trying to speak but the words kept catching in my throat. And then, suddenly, there was Andrea. Her arms were around me before I had even begun to understand what was happening.

One moment I was standing there (utterly mortified, by the way) and then the next I was folded into her, my face resting against her chest and her arms drawing me closer until there was hardly any space left between us. I could feel the rhythm of her heart beating. I think I stopped trying to speak, there didn't seem to be any need.

In that moment I wasn't trying to be brave anymore. I wasn't trying to be good, I wasn't trying to be anything at all. I was just... Billie. A thoroughly embarrassed version of Billie, admittedly. But Billie. And Andrea held me anyway.

I wonder if she knows what that meant to me.

I wonder if she has any idea what it feels like to spend so much of your life believing that love is something you have to earn by being what other people need you to be.

In that moment, just for a little while, the voices I'd carried in my head for so many years grew faint. I couldn't hear Mom. And I certainly couldn't hear Dad. There was just Andrea and the soft sound of her breathing, the rhythmic beat of her heart.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I am so hopelessly, ridiculously, completely in love with Andrea Williams. I have never wanted someone this way before.

I want to know what she thinks about when she can't sleep. I want to know what makes her laugh when no one is watching, what she was like as a little girl. I want to know the things she never tells anyone, the many pieces of herself that she keeps tucked away somewhere behind that composed exterior.

I want to make breakfast with her. Or sit across from her at a cute cafe somewhere while I watch her become animated as she speaks about something she's passionate about. I want to walk beside her with my hand tucked in hers, without having to let go whenever someone approaches.

Sometimes when we are standing close enough, there seems to be this almost tangible something between us. Almost like the air becomes charged and I think neither of us know what to do with it.

If Andrea reached for my hand tomorrow and asked me to take that frightening, wonderful leap into the unknown with her, I would take it.

I would be terrified. I would probably cry, because apparently that's something I do now.

But I'd take her hand.

And I wouldn't let it go.