One of the things I've been dealing with lately is whether to change the narrative tone of the last two decades of my life, whether and at what point "we" becomes "I". There were so many great episodes in our eighteen-year run. I can't abandon them all because one of the actors has abruptly left the show. But how do I change the stories so that telling them doesn't sound like I'm clinging to the memory of that old life?
"My husband and I used to..."
"We loved to..."
"Accountant Boy was always..."
I'm still working it out on a case-by-case basis. I rarely use "we" anymore. I'm starting to retell our stories as mine alone. It feels strange, like re-cutting a beloved film after watching it hundreds of times.
The one thing I am going to do, starting with this post, is move forward by retiring his alias. "Accountant Boy" was a loving, jokey nickname I gave him not long after we met. I kept it for the blog, because I wanted everyone I talk about to have at least a tiny bit of plausible anonymity. Long after that became impossible, when everyone started signing up on Facebook with their honest-to-God names, he was still Accountant Boy here.
That isn't who he is anymore. He's moved past that, both professionally and personally. Accountant Boy doesn't fit now.
Peter. His name is Peter.
Very difficult. Those years you spent together are part of you but now you're remembering them from a different perspective through a different lens.
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