I spent some quiet time alone today. An occurrence that seems to happen less and less these days, causing me to ponder the fact that I not only enjoy my alone time but that I covet it. I've been thinking this a lot lately... that being alone is a good thing, the way I like things to be. That, at the end of the day, the person I'm meant to come home to is... no one.And then I watched a sappy movie for the billionth time. One I've seen more times than I can count: a tale of a family with lots of kids... all grown after a lifetime in a home of love and memories... with all their trials and tribulations but full of joy and laughter, acceptance and love. I'm drawn to it, time and again, this glimpse into a life I will never know, a life that probably doesn't even exist in the real world. A life of happy endings, even after sadness and heartache.
I don't know why I do it to myself, these movies. These shenanigans. Silly thoughts and hopes that leave my heart heavy and sad for what I've lost... these things I never had to begin with.
I blame Hollywood. For grandiose ideas that exist in my head and heart. Of storybook tales that exist onscreen and never off. For thinking that everyone, maybe even me, deserves- and gets- their happily ever after.
I think of myself, so many years ago, and my heart aches for that girl. The one I let down. The one who was so jaded, refusing to see what lay before her out of sheer disbelief and stubbornness. I mourn what she lost... and the loss of her. I'm sad to have let her down. It seems unfair that she didn't watch, or believe in, such movies... while I watch them time and time again with a heavy heart. I spend every day trying to make it up to her but how does one even begin... when movies play of families gathering at Christmas; couples sharing a love-filled embrace amid silent snowfalls beneath moonlight; and coming-of-age stories of women ten years my junior finding it all in The Big Apple? How do I tell the old me that the life I live alone is the life I've come to realize I actually want and enjoy when sappy movies tell me that the best life possible is anything but the one I'm living?
I wish I had been a pioneer woman. Life would have been so much simpler then. I'd be a nun by now and my parents would be so proud.
2 comments:
I totally get this! I can't tell you how many times I have watched a movie and it influenced me to be unsatisfied with my own life. It's actually a running joke in my family. When I was little and would watch a movie about, say, witches, I wanted to learn witchcraft. If I watched one about a famous jockey, I was determined to race horses (never mind that I am 5'10" and no one would want me racing their horse).
I still do it occasionally. I will watch a movie about an incredibly romantic guy and I will wish Josh would make huge romantic gestures too. I usually just have to step back and be grateful for everything I do have and realize that movies are fiction. People like movies for a reason; because they aren't true. If movies were just documenting real life, no one would want to see them.
I agree with you.
I blame Hollywood for telling us that if we aren't crazy in love 24 hrs a day then we need to get out of that relationship.
So many people are serial marriers b/c they're in search of the Hollywood movie marriage: and that's not life.
Life is hard.
marriage is hard.
Living with someone is hard.
Co parenting is hard.
It's all work.
And Hollywood tells us that if it doesn't come naturally, leave it and find something else.
SO WRONG.
Loved this post.
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