Don't Tell Me Twice: Chapter Three

“You spend half of your life thinking you’re Superman and the other half realizing that you’re not invincible,” Ziggy Johnson said to herself as she looked at the crumpled flyer in her hand. Jems and Jamz were holding auditions for a lead guitarist, and she had told herself this year she would start fulfilling her dreams. Her friends had always had a ton of plans for themselves, like falling in love, getting married, and having children, but she was ready for any of that anymore.

She had tried love before. It hadn’t panned out. She had fallen in love with her college roommate, Lana, and once upon a time, her dreams consisted of other things. The two did everything together back then. They even had the same friends, and at one point, being around Lana seemed like it was the only thing that Ziggy needed. They had gotten an apartment together and contemplated the future.

The two of them were in love. A year went by, and they got married and planned on having children. Lana even set-up an appointment to pick out a donor and began the Invitro process, but after the first appointment, Ziggy’s entire life had changed. Lana found out that she couldn’t conceive at that appointment, and instead of trying to look into adoption and other means of having a child, Lana decided that she didn’t want to have children anymore. Instead, she began hitting the clubs by herself and drinking heavily, leaving Ziggy behind.

Ziggy became worried, and eventually, she approached Lana and tried talking to the other woman about her change in behavior. This just made Lana mad. In fact, she was furious anytime that Ziggy brought up having children or her newfound drinking habit. Ziggy understood that Lana was upset about not being able to birth her own children, but she didn’t understand why it had brought her to the point of self-destruction. She didn’t understand why Lana wouldn’t consider other options like adoption or a surrogate. It wasn’t like the baby wouldn’t still be theirs if they birthed it in another way. Lana wouldn’t have it though. She wanted a baby with her DNA, and nothing else would suffice.

Eventually, Ziggy had stopped bringing up the thought of having children with the other woman and tried and communicate with her partner about anything that she could. They had grown so distant that they felt like strangers, and Ziggy wanted to feel close to Lana again, how they had when they had first gotten together. Over a matter of months, Lana and she had grown so far apart that she barely knew the other woman. They no longer liked the same things, and Lana had even made friends with a new group of people. The respect in the household wasn’t there either, and Ziggy felt sad and depressed. She did what she could to repair the relationship. She brought home flowers and cooked Lana’s favorite food, but nothing would suffice. They just weren’t compatible anymore.

Ziggy clung onto hope until Lana up and left one day, leaving her a note, stating that they were finished. There was no explanation as to why, but Ziggy didn’t need that. She had seen with her own eyes that Lana and she weren’t getting along. Lana had changed, and even though Ziggy believed that the other woman was responding how she was because she couldn’t have children, Ziggy wasn’t sure that Lana could ever be the woman that she had originally fallen in love with.

Since then, Ziggy had decided that she was better off alone. Her heart had been more than broken when Lana had left. It had been smashed into a million pieces and Ziggy didn’t want to endure pain like that again. She knew now that she wasn’t invincible, and she wasn’t willing to subject herself to the unhappiness that she had felt at the end of her relationship with Lana again. Besides, hanging out with her friends and playing guitar made her happy. She loved getting on stage, even if it was in a small bar. She loved the feelings that flowed through her when she played and sang, and she loved looking into the crowd and knowing that she had touched people’s hearts. Playing the guitar gave her a different happiness, one that being in a relationship couldn’t, and she wanted to expand her dream to play bigger venues in front of thousands and share that experience with a band that understood music how she did. With her career choice, she knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to be in a band, traveling, and meeting people from all over the world. Music was one of the few things that made sense in her life. She played her guitar every night, and she wrote songs during both the troubling and happiest times in her life, so when she saw that Jems and Jamz was holding auditions, she knew that it had to be some sign, a chance to try again and create a better life for herself.