“Make Peace with the Past”

I landed a movie role in March 2022. My character was getting married to a man whose father had died, and he is struggling to cope with the loss.

In May, amidst filming, I matched with a man on a dating app whom I had matched with two years prior and spoke to, but never met. We finally met, then he moved to San Francisco weeks later, and we began dating long distance. I learned soon after that his father was ill, then his father sadly passed away that August.

Filming a similar plot felt strange. Six months later, my partner’s grief was sinking in, and he became empty. We had a confusing final FaceTime call in February that left me broken. The next day, in my therapist’s waiting room, I read an article in a magazine, titled “Make Peace with the Past” and sent him one final message of the featured article on grief and recovery.

Much later, the film’s director invited me to the movie screening in Chicago in April, to speak on the panel. I sat there watching the scene where my on-screen fiancé is in therapy, and to my absolute surprise the camera pans briefly to the cover of the same magazine’s cover, “Make Peace with The Past.”

I was speechless. I had never noticed this before in previous screenings. The magazine is dated May, the month and year we met. My ex eventually moved back to Chicago the following June, but we haven’t met again. I later discovered that we both became employed ten minutes from each other… we know a few mutual people and word traveled back that he has not been doing well.

I still love him deeply. There were multiple coincidences between us before we met… so it has been difficult to let go.