Sometimes I feel like my life is just a series of scenes from an indie movie. It’s only been within the last year of so that I’ve realized that those scenes are going to fit together one day. Then what’s going to happen to me? What if the movie finishes in my head and then my life becomes empty. 

No more scenes. 

No more moments with flirty and summery music playing in the background with filters altering the light. Altering perception. 

No more memories of my youth. 

I don’t think I want to wait around long enough for the movie to be done. 

I’ve ruined a lot of people’s movies in my time. I’ve been the center role in other people’s scenes, always too big of a role to be cut from production but too horrible of a symbol to leave in the final product. 

If I could title my Sunday nights, it would be something like:

“Stolen Sweatshirts, Skateboards and Passing Streetlights”.

It’s the kind of night where everything looks yellow and the culd-de-sac that we don’t belong to is quiet except for our own conversations.

It’s one of us dancing.

It’s the look on his face when the taillights of the car were too bright to see me inside.

It’s when the play toys from when we were kids developed motors and the risk of broken bones made us feel alive. 

I’ve grown too accustomed to saying “this is what I’m going to remember when I go to college” but I know the memories will fade. I know that goosebumps on the arm will start to feel different and the smell of the night sky will never be the same.

I know that in a short amount of time, the people that I don’t know if I can live without will no longer be in my life. 

Who will be the actors in my indie movie then?

Who will fill the empty roles? 

If I could title my Friday nights, I would call them

“Gasoline”.

What if I forget falling asleep to Scarface and drawing on the dew of car windows?

Gasoline tells the tale of ping-pong games, piggy back rides and fooseball taken too serious. It depicts a life of strobe lights and microwaved pizza. 

If I could title my Monday afternoons, they’d be called

“Cake and Pasta Sauce.”

And in a few years, I’ll try to remember how it felt to rest my head on the granite countertop and watch the ingredients of a cake fall together and the aftertaste of balsamic vinegar between my teeth.

The day when we finish filming the scenes of us curled on a couch watching Breaking Bad is too soon.

The day will come when my indie movie doesn’t need any more takes of that. 

What if my indie movie suddenly doesn’t need any more ukulele scenes? No more sitting in the bed of trucks listening to people talking, listening to music, listening to the emptiness. 

No more watching the lightning come over the horizon and the stillness before the wind overpowered us, flattening our shirts against our chests and our eyelids against our eyes. 

Suddenly my movie won’t need any more pictures in front of the batmobile or fights that turn into being hoisted on someone’s shoulder.

Suddenly, throwing someone down on the bed no longer means that they won the fight, but that they want something more. Suddenly, my life won’t be so simple. 

Couldn’t we just stop filming now?

Couldn’t we stop filming before I ruin anyone else’s’ movies,

couldn’t we stop filming before we realize we don’t need any more takes?

Couldn’t we stop filming before I get too old and the ten pounds that the camera adds start to worry me?

Couldn’t we stop filming before the filters on the camera become more realistic and the leather jackets become nine-to-five work clothes? 

Can’t we just turn off the camera now, before Peter takes Wendy out of never land? Can’t we just…stop?