Replaced
There is a particular kind of grief that follows the loss of someone you imagined spending your life with. That grief becomes even more painful when the memories you believed belonged only to the two of you are quietly replaced by someone else.
After my heartbreak, I was confronted with the realization that the moments I thought were uniquely ours had continued without me: the same holidays, the same white helmet on the back of the motorcycle, the same Brooklyn streets where our story began. The life we built together did not disappear, it simply carried on with someone else in my place.
To process this loss, I staged reenactments with an actor, returning to the locations where those memories had been replaced. Each scene exists in the space between documentary and fiction, memory and imagination. These returns become acts of revision rather than recreation. Through this process, I attempt to let go of both the man I once loved and the version of myself who loved him.
2026
I ask the actor to dance with me.
He guides me to the center of the room.
I hum Sinatra in his ear.
The camera captures us from a neighborhing apartment.
For a moment, I forget it’s there.
On a cliffside in Capri,
I wear the same white linen dress.
I am tense.
“Make me laugh,” I whisper.
The Super8 films us.
I am trying to reenact a memory.
To return to a feeling.
In Nice, I lead the actor to the room we once shared.
I am having trouble breathing.
I open the balcony door to let air in.
“This is where we’re going to argue,” I tell him.
At night, as we walk through town.
I tell him I can’t do this anymore.
“Fight for me, convince me to stay,” I direct the actor,
enacting a moment that never happened.
On our final shoot, the actor and I hold each other in the shower.
“You should want happiness for him,” he tells me.
“What if I am not there yet?” I ask.
“I thought you were over him,” he says. “Isn’t that what the project is about?”
