Months after its release, I went to see a matinee of Interstellar by myself. I sat in the back row, dead center, and stone-cold sober. For the first half, all systems remained normal, emotionally speaking. Then, out of nowhere, the metal shielding of my safe and sound heart stripped away like a falling object through the atmosphere. I wasn’t prepared for that scene. The one where Matthew McConaughey realized the magnitude of Anne Hathaway’s—pardon my French—royal f**kup. Twenty-three years pissed away on a fool’s errand. As if under the spell of a burning house, I watched a man melt into a puddle of misery as he watched recordings sent to him by his children on a very distant Earth. Life’s milestones reduced to digital timestamps in the cold expanse of space: his son excelling in school, finding love, marrying her, and having a son of his own. Then a recording of Matthew learning of his own father’s death. But wait, there’s more. Just when we’re all wondering if the daughter, who he abandoned at the beginning of the movie, will leave a message, the recording ends, and up comes her fully-grown face—the two now galaxies apart, connected by the emotionlessness of undulating radio waves stretching over time. Her frustration. His anguish. My lachrymose mourning. All she wants is to crawl back into the arms of the man who left her. Let me tell you, the levee broke. Watching his face crumple under the weight of lost years, guilt, and isolation, it was too much. In the stillness of the theater, a man let out a wail like a spontaneous belch. A group down in front turned around. Slapping a hand to my mouth, I sunk further into my seat. But it didn’t matter. I had lost kids I never even had.

Anyway, I’m a copywriter. Hire me.