I’ve just finished watching Definitely, Maybe. I’m crying more than a little bit, and trying to figure out why, and trying to understand how a movie can be good yet make me never want to see it again. P.S. I Love You had the same effect. Normally I don’t watch so-called “romantic comedies” because, for one thing, they’re never funny. They’ve always been sort of melodramatic, like a Gothic romance novel. Bleh. But these two movies both depict realistic situations. Definitely, Maybe focuses on a man, which is different, and a complicated situation that takes years to resolve. It really struck a chord with me, and I think part of the reason I found it so heart wrenching was all of that wasted time, time lost to pride and willful blindness. Anyone over 40 knows what it’s like to wish they’d known something twenty years sooner so that their youth wasn’t wasted on naivety and ignorance. Though the people in the movie don’t appear to age, more than a decade passes as they hide their feelings, afraid to venture forth and be stung. One reaches, the other flees or jumps to erroneous conclusions… over and over. This is a dynamic I’m all too familiar with.
But moving things through is good, and I may yet live another forty years – who knows? I’ve been 15 years with Meridjet and it’s been 17 since I was intimate with another living person, and I have no regrets. At least I don’t think I do. I just miss the stronger contact, and though it’s been more available in recent months, I haven’t been strong enough emotionally to hack it. Ironic. I’m not prepared to handle this sort of emotional response on an ongoing basis. The work with my therapist has graduated from intellectual to emotional work as of the last two or three months, and it seems to be not only dredging up schemata, but also stripping away my defenses and making it harder for me to distance myself from my emotional pain. The intrinsic irony of this is not lost on me, though I don’t expect anyone reading this to know what I mean when I say so. I still think moving things through is good. It just hurts a little more acutely, a little more immediately.
Meridjet has actually requested, for the first time in history, that I reserve Valentine’s Day evening just for him. He was with me today as I ran errands, and was behaving very warmly, exhibiting a lot of affection. This is a revelation, because he’s always been such a guy in that he resented holidays – he hated being told when to buy gifts and most importantly, what gifts were appropriate to buy. (Not that he can buy gifts in the usual sense, but we do have this whole other level to our interaction where such a thing is demonstrable.) So, even though he’s taken much more on an interest in any holiday involving children, Valentine’s Day has always been high on his bitch list. Until now. I can’t help but wonder what’s come over him. But I certainly like it. 
About Sheta Kaey
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