I just watched Vanilla Sky, a movie whose depths seemed almost unfathomable to me as I watched it. I laughed with my friend as a deformed Tom Cruise ran through the streets, and as he shouted through a slightly limp lip. And, despite the laughter, which might indicate I found the movie overall humorous, I whispered to her as the movie finished, as the guitar music played and my dog snored on her lap, “I will see you in another life when we are both cats”. That quote, even of itself, struck me before I had ever seen the movie. It brings up so many thoughts within me, as pretentious as it might sound. We watched the behind the scenes footage, admiring a man three times our age and remarking on how gorgeous and wonderful Penelope Cruz is. And then I said it again as I walked her to her car and she drove away “I will see you in another life when we are both cats.” I returned to my house and continued to post long, overly constructed Facebook statues about the movie, which I felt oddly connected to. That’s not strange for me, I often find myself falling into a movie more than even a director would have hoped for, and for hours afterwards I’m swimming in it, and then I get out and dry off in the sun of reality. I sat in my dark living room until I realized I was writing nothing at all but fluff for people online to read. And now, I do the same, but I’m blogging so it must be different.
I then went upstairs, having turned off the internet for now, and waded through the enormous pile of dirty clothes that had grown on my floor. I had, earlier in the day, begun to clean my room, which posed a challenge as always. I sorted through greeting cards I had stacked up on my dresser, and hung up jewelry I had placed around the room but had not worn. But I had lost patience for the almost never-ending chore and had abandoned it. So when I went back up there, I realized that after this emotional breakthrough I had imagined having after this movie, I was still a teenage girl with a messy room. I was of course saddened by this obvious and heartbreaking epiphany, but I continued to try and clean anyway. But, like I most times do, I ended up trying on my multitude of hats and making faces in my mirror. During this bit of routine silliness I realized I wasn’t ready for love. This may seem like an out of the blue thought for a girl playing with too-small sun hats, but my thought process was this.
I was being incredibly not normal, like Penelope Cruz’s character in Vanilla Sky, why Tom Cruise’s character had fallen in love with her, like all men in movies who fall for the vibrant woman. But I hadn’t mastered the fine line of playful but not childish, sexy but not dirty, confident but not arrogant. But being only 17, there is so much time to master. I’ve spent years wondering why other girls have boyfriends, flirtations, dates, and I have my cat and my love for eccentricity. It’s really been my deepest weakness, and I’ve known that fact for as long as I’ve had the weakness. They always say that when you’re single, you shouldn’t focus on changing that, you should focus on perfecting yourself. But they’ve never said whether you should perfect yourself so that the relationship status will change, or if you should perfect yourself so that you can live with yourself without anyone else. Really, that’s a very large conundrum they’ve left open.
If I grow as a human, develop kindness and an interesting point of view on life and a confidence that highlights my physical features a man might find alluring, isn’t that perfect for hooking just that man? If I do all that for just myself and I’m left with my bait in the water, my hand constantly on the reel waiting for a bite, what then? I suppose someone would answer that you shouldn’t even be looking at the fishing pole, but rather out at the ocean beyond it, but I’d respond that I’d be thinking that that ocean is full of fish I’m not catching. So you’ve got this bait – this charming personality matched with an inner fire that is somehow also an inner peace as well as a focus on perfecting your outer beauty as much as my inner, and you’re not supposed to use it as bait? I can live perfectly well with myself knowing that I’m loud and annoying and a bit of a glutton with a touch of sloth as long as I don’t ever want someone to love me for it. But I want to love and be loved, so I work on my insides (as well as my outsides because I’m a realist’s and an optimist’s daughter). But they, the people who told me to be the better me when I’m not with someone, didn’t clarify why exactly. If I say it’s to be a better second half, then I’m needy and not independent. But if I say it’s just to be the best I can really be without ever truly needing someone to justify it, then I get this cold feeling inside that if I think that way, it will be true and I’ll just never have someone to appreciate all the hard renovations I’ve done on myself. I thought all of this in one gigantic rush while I stared into my own eyes with a woven hat squished onto my head. Sometimes I think I’ll think myself to death, and then I notice the irony of that and the thought grows stronger still.
No comments:
Post a Comment