Every day seemed to be a grind for Lou, Henry, and Jim.
The delay in the filings for the new company — and a series of crazy issues that no one could’ve predicted — kept sidetracking the funding. It was incredibly discouraging. As one week passed into another, everyone kept holding out hope that the next week would be the week when the filings were completed, and Henry could finally raise the capital to launch. There was always so much evidence that things were lining up, so we all kept believing.
But the waiting felt like it created a drought of hope for Lou and me about our life in Utah.
A few days after I first met with Sam, Lou left for LA to meet the investor relations’ team Henry had hired. Lou made arrangements for me to fly to LA a few days later, so while I was in town, I made plans to see Roy in person. Sam was still reading the novel when Lou booked my flight, but Sam and I had traded a few jenky texts, and he seemed to be enjoying the book. That felt like good news to me.
If Sam liked the story, then I felt sure he’d agree to help me write the pilot. But I was eager to know, so the day before I was flying out to LA, I finally just called Sam. I left him a short (and I’m sure awkward) message.
I remember perfectly that I was standing in the middle of Forever 21 when Sam called me back. I was trying to find a cheap yet fashionable jacket from their Fall/Winter collection to keep me warm.
Stores like that always make me feel so old, but when I saw that Sam was calling me back, I felt like a silly girl that didn’t have a very advanced vocabulary. When I took the call, all I can remember is that Sam said he wanted to help me, and my best response was, “Cool.”
Erg.
Sam gave me a few things to consider about the pilot before we hung up, but the most important part of the call was that he gave me permission to tell Roy that I was working with him on the pilot, plus the first three episodes. I was so excited! This was really happening! Sam was in, and maybe now, I could actually impress Roy, and things would finally take shape for me and Eloise Butts!
A few days later, when I saw Roy in LA, he was the same kind and attentive person he had been the first time I met him. He was incredibly gracious to not bring up how bad my first pilot was. But he seemed really pleased that I had found a professional scriptwriter to help me.
Roy didn’t seem to care all that much about Sam or his past writing experience. He didn’t even take down Sam’s last name or any information so he could check out his writing credits. Roy simply said if I liked Sam, and he had experience with writing a pilot, that was a great start.
But I do remember how serious Roy was when he told me that he didn’t want me to lose my voice when I was writing with Sam. He encouraged me to take everything that made me special and then let Sam show me how to make that into a script. Roy’s words were very empowering to me, and I remember savoring this wonderful feeling of possibility.
On the flight back to Utah, I felt like I might burst open I was so excited! It almost made me forget how depressed I was to be heading back to Salt Lake City. And while I think Lou was trying to be happy that something was tracking for me, I think he was also frustrated and fearful about everything that was going on in our world at that time. His health seemed to be holding steady, I guess, but I could sense this growing rift between us that I realized could have been the result of any number of things.
It was always so heavy when Lou and I were together — the unspoken worries we each had about imposing in Henry’s basement, Lou’s iffy job situation, and his health issues were like some kind of relentless and maddening white noise pulsating in our ears. This scratchy and emotional friction between us made me sad, but I didn’t know what to do about it. And the worst part was, I felt like Lou was checking out on me.
I immediately assumed Lou was checking out on me because I might’ve accidentally started to check out on him, too.
There are a series of journal entries from this time in my life where I wrote about that. I was feeling torn and sad about my relationship with my husband, but I couldn’t let go of Eloise this time just to make Lou seem happier with me. Lou had never asked me to give up my fiction writing for him in the past, but it was always an awkward unspoken thing between us — especially after what felt like my many failures — that my career wasn’t something he took very seriously.
In all fairness to Lou, I never directly asked him to unpack how he really felt about my writing, and truthfully, there was always so much important surviving to do that his feelings or my feelings didn’t really matter. We had to do whatever it took. So I ultimately made my own choices. I had always picked surviving with Lou over Eloise every time there was a contest in my mind.
But not this time.
I was afraid I might not ever be happy again if I gave up on Eloise for Lou’s sake like I believed I did in the past. Even though Eloise is a complete work of fiction, she is me. I put things inside of her character that I always am, and things that I wish I could be. She contains something very real for me that maybe you have to be a storyteller with narcissistic tendencies like me to fully understand.
But at that time in my life, I was so scared that I was going to have to choose between Lou and Eloise again, and that made me feel heartsick. So I just started praying that God would let me have Eloise in my life and that God would somehow help Lou still love me.
The other thing that was troubling me was the fact that Lou seemed dubious that I had it in me to actually succeed. That might not be true, but it was the take away I most often felt from Lou. I don’t have the same kind of natural gumption that Lou has, and he was often quick to share his opinions about how poorly I’ve managed my past opportunities, and how I’ve always relied too much on people like Roy to make things happen for me.
And for Lou, Roy would not be his top choice of people to bet on anyway. Lou had a personal business connection to Roy, and the deal they worked on never went anywhere. As a result, Lou wasn’t so sure I was hitching my hopes to the right person — even though he would always concede that he didn’t doubt Roy was who he claimed to be in the entertainment world.
It’s just that I had already established a pattern of clinging to rising stars that inspired hope inside of me, but in the end, would leave me lost and wandering because I was holding on to them too tightly for my only sense of direction.
Among the stars that I’ve clung to in the past is my very first storytelling muse, Allison. In truth, for me, she was, is, and probably always will be a True North in my storyteller’s constellation. She’s a young and beautiful film director who shares my love of telling relevant stories that have spiritual Truths woven into the narrative. The first year Hurricane Season was out, she read it and wanted to help Eloise live a life beyond the pages of a novel.
Over the years, our friendship and faith deepened, and at times, we’ve dreamed together, planned together, and believed we were going to do big things together. But somehow, our timing always tends to be off, and it often feels like we’ve attached ourselves to this supernova that burns incredibly bright and hot just before it explodes and shatters our emotions into a million tiny pieces.
Unlike Roy, however, Allison is someone I knew that Lou respected, and even though we’ve often hurt each other when our plans for Eloise have fallen apart, Lou knew that I would always find my way back to myself and to my love of storytelling if I aligned myself with Allison. So when I called Allison to tell her that I was going to write the pilot with another writer, my immediate attachment to Sam seemed off to Lou, but even more disorienting and selfish to Allison.
I remember feeling like every part of me was growing restless and reckless right after my first pilot bombed. And, I felt like I only had this one chance to make something happen in my life. So even if it meant heading into a galaxy I was invited to enter by someone Lou didn’t fully believe in, and one where my compass had no True North to guide me back to who I really am, I was willing to take that risk.
I was literally losing my mind, and the only thing that I thought made any sense to me was to attach myself to someone new…
So whenever I’d try to share my excitement about Eloise or Roy with Lou, his eyes would often dim, and any connection I had hoped to share with my husband over my work would vanish. I felt as if I was at a crossroads in my life, and taking the road that I always avoided — because of how that road would impact the people I cared about the most — was suddenly the only choice I could see in front of me.
The truth is, I may never know what was really going on in Lou’s mind back then, but to be fair, I can imagine it’s pretty difficult to get excited about the one thing that has literally broken your wife’s heart every time she touches it.
