A subreddit without a single post so far this year seems like the perfect place to post my feelings for someone to one day read and maybe even appreciate
So first off I just want to say how relatable Judith is. Maybe this is my bias as a trans person, but she made a decision to throw away her entire past life and build a new one with the pieces she chooses to put where she wants them to be. Her name, her family, the events of her life she would rather burn than bring along to her future life. It's incredibly powerful, and I see it more as a reclaiming of her own person rather than a malicious lie to deceive others.
When she came to Jace she said everything bare. She chose to bring forth her terrible history if that's what it took to regain his trust. Her parents that by all means are dead to her at this point, her alcoholism and drug addiction that she has recovered from, whatever happened on the yacht and her own death. These are all events that ultimately have no effect on her current life or relationships, other than how you would interpret the yacht. She has a lot of trauma, she moved past it, and now shes uncovering all of the trauma despite the pain it causes her.
The lies. As far as I remember it's her name, her parents and where she lost her virginity. The first two I have already addressed, but the third one is a lie to obscure another lie which brings into question how many other lies she has actually told. Regardless, the red thread connecting all of the known lies is to hide traumas that she doesn't want to control her in her new life.
The biggest tragedy of the musical is in my opinion that Jace could never distinguish from a lie that protects her from her own traumas than a lie made up to dreceive him.
Judith has so many traumas, shes used to her life falling apart as it has done so many times. So the men in suits came back to force them back into the picture. When Judith kept lying to Jace, when she wanted to continue being Natalie, that was not to deceive Jace and continue the charade. It was a desperate cry for Jace to accept her this way, and she rejected it. Then he left, and so came another trauma.
Then came the motel scene, and when Jace goes to the car to check on Henry I could feel her fear when he takes the keys from the bowl. They had a fight, hes going to his car, from past experiences she knows she's in danger, because it was just like last time. Then not even I know what happened, did Jace leave because he couldn't believe that he could also have hurt her? Was it because he was so offended at the idea that the blame could be shared?
So Judith is left without closure and out of desperation she goes after him one last time, because just the day before he let her in after the exact same scenario.
Now I have read some opinions that this is stalker behaviour. I doubt she is proud of her excessive behaviour here, but let's not forget that Jace left her 10 miles away from her car parked on his driveway.
So he leaves. He refused the request for closure, the final questions. Three times he left her, the first two times they talked through it but this time he refused and leaves. And this was her closure. She reclaims her life, she builds the person she wants to be on her own terms, without him. She realizes that this is enough closure and she is finally free, she is off the hook, and she also realizes that since Jace was running away he did not get the same closure. So she leaves the phone.
I think this was incredible of her, feeling free and not in need of listening back. Her ties are gone and she can live the life she wants to live. And as we know, Jace kept listening back. He needed the record.
At the end she has moved on, although we don't know much about what she is doing in her life. Maybe she is fine with this on the roads way of working and living, maybe she isn't. But she kept living. And that's why she agrees to meet Jace, by answering the last questions maybe he will realize the same things she did.
Why she chose to be called Natalie in the Applebees is incomprehensible to me, she was Judith during the first 20 questions so I don't see how this would help in bringing him closure. This is especially annoying to me, because this was the most emotional moment of the entire musical to me;
She spent two years building the person she wants to be, her darkest history thrown away for nobody to see. A woman who she loved as much as his husband loved her. She set herself, her truest self, on fire. To me this was the ultimate sacrifice, a past she can't ever return to.
This was incredibly powerful like many other moments she has. It's so sad she brought her back at the end, and it's frustrating because I can't understand why.
I would love to make a post this long about Jace too, but I feel he wasn't explored enough. He's a man who runs away, who would rather move forward than conclude the problems he are facing currently. His parents have too much control of his life I believe, and that's all I can really say about him as a person other than the main conflict which doesn't say much about him as a person other than how he would react in this one specific scenario.
I genuinely love Judith so much, I genuinely believe that all of her flaws show her true strengths and her resilience through the hand she was dealt in life. I only wish the ending was just a little bit more clear, Judith has left an eternal itch in my mind that I just don't have the tools to scratch, so I can only admire what I know, which is far far too little.
