The Monster, The Mirror, & Me.

Sometimes a story holds up a mirror when you least expect it, and what you see changes you a little. This one did.

I just finished watching Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, and it landed heavier than I expected. The moment the monster stepped into the light, something shifted. It was a feeling, the kind that settles in your chest with its own weight. Something reached past the story and into my own life, and I knew I needed to write while the feeling was still warm.

I didn’t relate to the monster because of his rage or his violence. I related to him because of the loneliness. The deep, stretching kind that makes a quiet room feel louder than a crowded one. The kind that sits beside you at the kitchen table while you eat, reminding you that you’re in the middle of becoming someone new and you haven’t grown into them yet. That in between state. The transition. It’s a strange place to live, especially when you’re living it by yourself.

The monster tried. He really did. He learned, he loved, he wanted to belong. And the more he understood, the more it ached. There was something painfully familiar in that. Growth has its own kind of sting. Like a seam inside you pulling wider to make space for who you’re becoming. The more you wake up to your own life, the more you see what cannot stay the same.

Moving to Spain was my choice. I own that. I left behind a life that could have continued growing in a direction that made sense on paper. I uprooted everything at a time when I probably should have waited, when my grief was fresh and my foundation was cracked. Because of that timing, I made decisions here that were driven by loneliness instead of clarity. I can see that now, and yes, there is regret in the mix. It sits in me sometimes like a stone I have to carry until I learn how to put it down.

But here is the truth I am sitting with tonight. This part of my story, the part where I am cooking every meal myself, cleaning every dish myself, handling every detail of life alone, this is the transition chapter. It is uncomfortable, isolating at times. And if I am being honest, there are days I pull away from the world on purpose. I close the door, I dim the lights, I disappear, even when a small part of me wishes someone would knock and say, I see you, come back.

That moment in the movie where the monster wanted a companion, not to fix him or save him, but simply to sit in the same world with him, that is the part that stayed with me. It reminded me how human that longing is. We don’t always need someone to carry us, sometimes we just want someone to witness us as we learn how to carry ourselves.

I’m not sharing this for sympathy. I’m sharing it because I know I’m not the only one living in a transition season, learning the difference between solitude that heals and isolation that hides. Sometimes loneliness is not a punishment, it is a passage. And sometimes sitting with it for a while is part of how we build the next version of ourselves.

The movie ends on a note of hope. I’m not quite at that sunlight moment yet. But I’m here. I’m awake to my life, even the messy parts. And if being alive means we are meant to live, then I’m choosing to keep showing up, one steady step at a time.

PS: If you’ve had your own “mirror moment” lately, I’d love to hear it.