To a sleeping Rita, “I think you’re the kindest, sweetest, prettiest person I’ve ever met in my life. I’ve never seen anyone that’s nicer to people than you are….The first time I saw you, something happened to me. I never told you, but I knew that I wanted to hold you as hard as I could….I don’t deserve someone like you. But if I ever could, I swear I would love you for the rest of my life. ”
I can’t believe it happened again.
This time it’s not just a day. The loop is different, longer. I wake up the next day with Rita by my side and we start a relationship that lasts for the rest of our lives. And it is sweet and good. After living together for a few years we get married. We have kids—two of them—and that too is amazing. I love them more than myself and being devoted to them makes my heart ache beautifully. I didn’t know I could love so much, but this love also brings pain. My son dies too early. It’s different each iteration—motorcycle accident, cancer, car crash—but each time, it’s the worst. It’s unbelievably painful.
Amid all of the ups and downs of life, Rita and I stay strong in our relationship. I’m sure it’s because of all the things I learned in the previous loop. I’m lucky to be with her and know it. Of course, there are annoyances and some dullness—I’m not trying to romanticize us—but all in all, it is good, very good. And then she dies. And I’m left alone. I have my daughter and the grandkids, who live in L.A., but I feel like my heart has been cut out. She was the love of my life and, BAM, I wake up again, that first morning with Rita. Our love so new and exciting, and we start it all over again.
What’s different is I keep forgetting I’m in a loop. When it was twenty-four hours, it was impossible to forget. When Ned Ryerson said every day, “Now, don’t you tell me you don’t remember me, because I sure as heck fire remember you,” I always thought, really, dude, again? But this time when the same things happen, they feel only vaguely familiar, like, hasn’t this happened before? It’s harder for me to remember that I’ve done all of this again, and again, and again. When the loop is decades long, the loop is forgotten. Most of the time, the events of the day are forefront in the mind and the awareness of the loop is barely there, if at all. It returns when we wake up after our first night together, but that rush of first love and finally getting what I want propels me into the loop again (and again).
But now that I’ve completed the loop so many more times than I ever did on Groundhog Day, I’m ready for something else. Even though it’s a great loop, I cannot do it again. So this time when we wake up, I apologize and say you are lovely, but I must be on my way.
February 3, I exit the B&B. I’m alone, but not afraid. I know where to find my teacher. In this loop, she’s always been there, on the periphery, waving to me to come over. Sometimes I went and dipped my toe in, and carried the taste of Consciousness with me. But this time I go with the intent to fully jump in. The end of all loops.
Enlightenment Fan Fiction 