We've had a lot of loss this week. First Bernie Mac, then Isaac Hayes... they say that death comes in threes and I hope to God that "they" are wrong about that. No more dying! (I know this is a unrealistic request, but this is really stressing me out!). There may be additional blog posts because of these losses, but I'm not making any promises. Even though it's only Monday and the week JUST started, it's turning out to be hellish thanks to someone at work (NOT my boss, thank God) who happens to be the devil incarnate. I guess the honeymoon is officially over... Anyhoo, inkeeping with the promise I made to you and to myself, here's this week's post. If I can keep this up consistently (looks like I might succeed!), then maybe we'll move up to two posts a week, and then three, and then... well, you get my drift.
Totally random thought.
The question that begs to be answered is – when did it become imperative for me to take a nap in order to be fully prepared for a night out with the girls? When I was a kid, you couldn’t pay me to take a nap. I remember when I was in pre-school, all the other kids would pull out their cots and their pillows and blankets and hit the sack for at least an hour during the school day. But not this little Brown Girl. I’d be helping my teachers put toys back in their places, or assist with decorating our classroom, or simply sit and listen to my teachers gossip or discuss the intimacies of their home lives. I’d do a lot of things during that nap hour, but the one thing I wouldn’t do was sleep.
When I got to be a little older, every night around the same time, I’d complain to my mom that I didn’t feel well. To which she would roll her eyes and respond, “You feel fine, baby. You’re just sleepy.” Today, it strikes me as odd that I wouldn’t know the difference between feeling sleepy and feeling tired since the feeling of fatigue is so familiar to me at this point in my life.
I never took naps in high school because during the week I’d come straight home from school and rush through my homework in order to be able to socialize or watch television. And, why waste time sleeping when I could be talking to my boyfriend on the phone or watching a good movie on cable? On the weekends, when I actually had time to sleep, my goal was always to go out with my friends late at night. My father, a champion napper, understood a nap for nap’s sake, but didn’t understand the logic behind sleeping during the day to go out with your friends at night. And, in fact, if he caught me sleeping during the day and then I asked permission to go out at night, he’d use my nap as evidence that what I really needed to be doing was going to bed early (because obviously I was tired – why else would I need a nap?) instead of hanging out with my friends. So, of course, my solution for that was to pretend that I was upbeat, chipper, bright-eyed, and bushytailed ALL DAY – even if I was exhausted – in order for me to pass his test. It usually worked and he’d let me go out and stay out late. And rarely did I need a nap the next day. But, of course, this was when I was young and had energy.
I didn’t, in fact, become a fan of naps until college. I took them not because I needed them, but because they seemed like a luxury. After my first semester, I arranged my classes around two things: Jerry Springer and naptime. In between classes, I would leisurely make my way back to my dorm room, kick off my shoes, wrap my hair and tie on a scarf, and lie down for at least an hour, during which I’d fall into a deep and peaceful sleep. And, best of all, there was no one there to judge me. My roommate understood the value of naps just as much as I did, if not more, and therefore respected my quiet time. Come to think of it, she and I had a beautiful roommate relationship built on mutual respect and understanding and a common love of naps.
But back then, napping was something I wanted to do, not something I needed to do. Imagine my surprise a few years ago when I first uttered the words, “Whooo girl. If we’re gonna go out tonight, I need to take a nap.” The words didn’t even sound right coming out of my mouth. “Need” to take a nap? But why? I’d never needed a nap before. And then, it hit me. My youth – those reckless days of staying out til 5am, only to awaken at noon and do it all over again – were in the rearview mirror. Never again would I be able to survive for a week on no more than 10 hours of sleep. Gone are the days of me partying six nights a week and “catching up” on that sleep with a 2 hour nap on Sunday afternoon that would leave me good for the rest of the week. Those days are behind me now. Now, I NEED sleep. It’s a bit disconcerting to know that most weekends, I am unable to function like a normal person if I stay out past 3am two nights in a row. That means that I have to decide whether I’ll go out on Friday or Saturday night because my near-30-year-old body, it turns out, is not cut out for sleep deprivation.
Right now, it’s nearly 1am on a Friday night. The original plan was to go out with the girls to a party that some people from college invited me to. But, when I got home from work, I felt that familiar blanket of exhaustion wrap itself around me and I knew that I would be no good to my friends (or to myself for that matter) if I didn’t get a nap in before the night began. The plan was to lay down around 7pm and wake up around 8:30 to start making myself presentable. I had a bunch of things to do after work and so I didn’t actually stretch out until 7:45 or so. I slept right through my cell phone alarm at 8:30 and didn’t actually crack my eyes open until 9:35. When I woke up, I felt terrible! I’d missed four phone calls and six text messages from my girls, trying to determine the plan for the night. I was embarrassed. Had I really slept that long? How could I have ignored my alarm? Why was it that I needed the nap in the first place? What kept me from being able to come home from work, eat a nice dinner, make myself presentable, and go out and have a good time with my friends – without the need for a nap?
As soon as I’d had a glass of water, I picked up the phone and started reading my text messages. I had received a text from Bestie at around 8:45 saying she had a headache and was bowing out of our plans (she has been doing that a lot lately – BORING), I rolled my eyes and then returned calls to Shawn and Soleil. Shawn answered the phone, her voice thick with sleep. She had fallen asleep, too. So we agreed that we’d hang out another day. Soleil had actually left a text message saying she was going to bed and that she would call me later. I sent her a text apologizing for being inaccessible and told her that we’d kick it another time.
And then it hit me. I am not alone in my need for beauty sleep. All my girls were asleep, too, and it wasn’t even 10pm. While I took some comfort in a “misery loves company” sort of way, I was also sort of sad for us. We were no longer the nocturnal party girls that we used to be. That energy eludes us now. But I guess these sorts of things will come to pass and, eventually, more and more signs like this will remind me of the fact that I am not the person I used to be.
In some ways, I grieve the person that I was. I liked her. She was fun. She took a few risks and didn’t care about the consequences. But, only a FEW risks. In fact, I often wish that I had taken advantage of my youth more. When you are young, you can make mistakes and nobody says, “Wow, look at that pathetic woman who has seen so much and, as a result of her experiences, should really not be making immature decisions like that. Shameful!” No. In fact, when you are young, people laugh and say, “Look at that crazy kid, taking a chance to see what life has to offer. She messed up now, but she has many more chances to make it right.” It’s sort of depressing to realize that youth will not always be on your side. No more will you have a defense for your naïveté or your gullibility. You should know better. And because you know better, you should act better. You should BE better than what you once were.
I don’t know if I’m better than what I was back in my college days when I partied til the sun came up and thought that it was passé to go to bed before 10pm. What I do know is that now, I need a nap before I socialize at night and, sometimes, I need to stay home on Friday nights. Somehow this change in my routine has made me aware of the fact that whether or not I’m “better” than who I used to be, I’m certainly “different” than what I used to be. And, actually I’m ok with that. I think…
Monday, August 11, 2008
Sunday, August 03, 2008
The Opposite of Love
I'm going for weekly posts. And, if I'm feeling extra creative, maybe more than once per week. Let's hope I can keep it up. You know consistency is one of my biggest challenges. But, I'm workin on it...
There’s a thin line between love and hate. At least that’s what the old folks say. Before today, I had always thought of that saying as just a figure of speech. But, very quickly, I learned that – like most figures of speech when you break them down – there’s a lot of truth behind those words.
Yesterday I experienced a flash of such pure hatred that it was almost scary. Ok, a little background on hate. Hate is not the opposite of love. Love is fiery and passionate and, therefore, the OPPOSITE of that is indifference. Indifference is when you just don’t care about whatever you are considering. Hate, on the other hand, which is often mistakenly cited as the opposite of love, is also fiery and passionate. Sometimes, you can hate a person or a thing with so much fervor that it causes you to feel high. You become lightheaded, your heart beats a little faster, you might even sweat, or blush if your skin is light enough. These are also physical responses to love. Actually, though your mind is keenly aware of that which you love and that which you hate, I wonder if your body even knows the difference.
But I digress.
As I was saying, yesterday, I was having a heated conversation via instant message with MBF and – it wasn’t the first time, but it was certainly the time that I felt it with the most intensity – for a split second I hated him. Like, genuinely hated him. It happened so naturally and so quickly that I was startled by the feeling. Just this week, I was busy typing out an ode to my love for him and days later if he had been in my reach I would’ve done physical harm to him and not thought twice about it.
It occurs to me that I have never had a romantic relationship that wasn’t complicated. There are always things left unspoken, an elephant in the room so to speak. I have been angry with every partner. Mostly because, contrary to popular belief, none of my relationships have come easy. Every one of my boyfriends has had some doubts about relationships. I can’t say whether the doubt surrounds their relationship with me specifically (though I obviously am the common denominator here) or whether they all have had an aversion to monogamy, which for all of them has turned out to be true on some level. The thing that I do know is that I’ve nearly had to convince each guy that I’ve dated seriously that I was worth dating. And then after we’d been together and gone through the motions to cement our “love” for one another, they would do something to let me know that they had not believed that I was worth it after all. Maybe they had cheated. Maybe they had done something to disrespect me. Maybe they just seemed INDIFFERENT to me at the moment. Whatever the case, something inside me would snap, I’d see red and in that split second my love for them would quickly mushroom into a cloud of hate. And, no matter where we were or what we were doing, I’d stare indignantly at his face, or at the receiver (if we had been speaking by telephone), or in MBF’s case study his words on a computer screen, and be thinking as my uncle would say, “Dude, fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”
The anger wouldn’t necessarily result from what had just been said right then, nor by the perception that I had of the way that the guy was behaving toward me in the moment. No, the anger would result from a lot of little things that built up over the time that we had been involved. Sort of a “straw that broke the camel’s back” situation. Of course I would feel some hostility and resentment. This was a person that I had spent time trying to convince that I was really worth his time, energy, and exclusivity, and after tireless effort on my part, he would have shown me that he didn’t believe me. And then, logically, I would hate him.
I was startled when it happened with MBF. Shocked, really. I had expected it with boyfriends – it had become a familiar turning point in my relationships… and, yes, I am aware that this is not healthy – but MBF is not a boyfriend, although I probably feel more strongly for him than I’ve felt for any of the boyfriends I’ve had up to this date. At any rate, I wasn’t sure what to do with the feelings that I had. MBF said something that cut me to the core. I’m sure that he didn’t mean for the words to harm me, but I was hurt. So, I made a stupid threatening statement to him in the moment that I hated him. And when he didn’t react – he didn’t even seem surprised at what I had said out of desperation – I became bold and defiant and took my words even further. Dug even deeper in an attempt to hurt him the way that he had just hurt me. Did he even know that what he had said had confirmed what I already knew – that he doesn’t think I’m “worth it”? Again, I spoke out of desperation and almost sounded a bit crazy for saying something so outrageous, ludicrous, and untrue. He paused, laughed, and told me that he forgave me, even before I apologized. And, just like that. Snap! The hatred dissolved and he was my friend again. He had literally fought my hatred with love and, as I always suspected, love won that battle.
It’s sort of crazy how you don’t even know what you are capable of doing until you’re backed into a corner. When you feel forced to act to save face, you will do what it takes to protect your interests. I did that so many times with Mr. Ex, it wasn’t even funny. I had said that I would never again maintain fond feelings toward a man who caused me to act out of my character. With Mr. Ex, I didn’t even recognize myself and that scared me shitless. Numerous times, during our interactions, I’d feel hatred bubble up inside me and settle on my chest like a 25-lbs weight.
Who was this person who wanted to destroy things, who wanted to cause physical harm to other people, who shouted and screamed and made idle threats? Surely, it wasn’t this Lovely Brown Girl. Nothing about who I was with Mr. Ex was “lovely”. It was all ugly and it made me unsure of myself, all the while trying to convince him and everyone else that I was sure of both who I was and what I was worth. But is that exactly why I was so angry all the time? Because how can you successfully convince someone that you’re worth it if you don’t even believe it yourself? That’s what I started to recognize after nearly two years of conflicting emotions, of a daily split between intense love and passionate hate. At the end, I was exhausted. I was tired of trying to convince someone of something they were never going to believe and sick of doubting myself about something I knew to be true from the beginning. Of course I was worth it! I knew it, he didn’t. I was trying to persuade him to believe that I was good enough, when everyone else around me (including, on some level, me) knew that I was in fact TOO good for him. He didn’t deserve me. So I left. End of story.
And now, there is no more hatred of Mr. Ex. That’s how I know I don’t love him. The other day, someone asked me if I knew what he was up to, what he’d been doing since we broke up. My reply: “I don’t know where he is, what he’s doing, who he’s doing it with, when he’s doing it, why he’s doing it, or how he’s doing it. And I don’t care to know.” For the first time, I realized that this was actually true. I don’t wonder about him. When I think about it, I wish no harm to befall him. In fact, I don’t wish anything for him, good or bad.
Mr. Ex has called several times in the last couple of weeks, but I’ve ignored his calls and have not been motivated to call him back. He doesn’t leave messages and the last text that I received from him was on my birthday when he had signed it “A guy you used to know”. I liked that he used the past tense. When I got the message, I read it and smiled and forgot about it until a friend who was there with me when I received it reminded me of it days later. This is indifference. The opposite of love. Golly, it’s great to be here.
There’s a thin line between love and hate. At least that’s what the old folks say. Before today, I had always thought of that saying as just a figure of speech. But, very quickly, I learned that – like most figures of speech when you break them down – there’s a lot of truth behind those words.
Yesterday I experienced a flash of such pure hatred that it was almost scary. Ok, a little background on hate. Hate is not the opposite of love. Love is fiery and passionate and, therefore, the OPPOSITE of that is indifference. Indifference is when you just don’t care about whatever you are considering. Hate, on the other hand, which is often mistakenly cited as the opposite of love, is also fiery and passionate. Sometimes, you can hate a person or a thing with so much fervor that it causes you to feel high. You become lightheaded, your heart beats a little faster, you might even sweat, or blush if your skin is light enough. These are also physical responses to love. Actually, though your mind is keenly aware of that which you love and that which you hate, I wonder if your body even knows the difference.
But I digress.
As I was saying, yesterday, I was having a heated conversation via instant message with MBF and – it wasn’t the first time, but it was certainly the time that I felt it with the most intensity – for a split second I hated him. Like, genuinely hated him. It happened so naturally and so quickly that I was startled by the feeling. Just this week, I was busy typing out an ode to my love for him and days later if he had been in my reach I would’ve done physical harm to him and not thought twice about it.
It occurs to me that I have never had a romantic relationship that wasn’t complicated. There are always things left unspoken, an elephant in the room so to speak. I have been angry with every partner. Mostly because, contrary to popular belief, none of my relationships have come easy. Every one of my boyfriends has had some doubts about relationships. I can’t say whether the doubt surrounds their relationship with me specifically (though I obviously am the common denominator here) or whether they all have had an aversion to monogamy, which for all of them has turned out to be true on some level. The thing that I do know is that I’ve nearly had to convince each guy that I’ve dated seriously that I was worth dating. And then after we’d been together and gone through the motions to cement our “love” for one another, they would do something to let me know that they had not believed that I was worth it after all. Maybe they had cheated. Maybe they had done something to disrespect me. Maybe they just seemed INDIFFERENT to me at the moment. Whatever the case, something inside me would snap, I’d see red and in that split second my love for them would quickly mushroom into a cloud of hate. And, no matter where we were or what we were doing, I’d stare indignantly at his face, or at the receiver (if we had been speaking by telephone), or in MBF’s case study his words on a computer screen, and be thinking as my uncle would say, “Dude, fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”
The anger wouldn’t necessarily result from what had just been said right then, nor by the perception that I had of the way that the guy was behaving toward me in the moment. No, the anger would result from a lot of little things that built up over the time that we had been involved. Sort of a “straw that broke the camel’s back” situation. Of course I would feel some hostility and resentment. This was a person that I had spent time trying to convince that I was really worth his time, energy, and exclusivity, and after tireless effort on my part, he would have shown me that he didn’t believe me. And then, logically, I would hate him.
I was startled when it happened with MBF. Shocked, really. I had expected it with boyfriends – it had become a familiar turning point in my relationships… and, yes, I am aware that this is not healthy – but MBF is not a boyfriend, although I probably feel more strongly for him than I’ve felt for any of the boyfriends I’ve had up to this date. At any rate, I wasn’t sure what to do with the feelings that I had. MBF said something that cut me to the core. I’m sure that he didn’t mean for the words to harm me, but I was hurt. So, I made a stupid threatening statement to him in the moment that I hated him. And when he didn’t react – he didn’t even seem surprised at what I had said out of desperation – I became bold and defiant and took my words even further. Dug even deeper in an attempt to hurt him the way that he had just hurt me. Did he even know that what he had said had confirmed what I already knew – that he doesn’t think I’m “worth it”? Again, I spoke out of desperation and almost sounded a bit crazy for saying something so outrageous, ludicrous, and untrue. He paused, laughed, and told me that he forgave me, even before I apologized. And, just like that. Snap! The hatred dissolved and he was my friend again. He had literally fought my hatred with love and, as I always suspected, love won that battle.
It’s sort of crazy how you don’t even know what you are capable of doing until you’re backed into a corner. When you feel forced to act to save face, you will do what it takes to protect your interests. I did that so many times with Mr. Ex, it wasn’t even funny. I had said that I would never again maintain fond feelings toward a man who caused me to act out of my character. With Mr. Ex, I didn’t even recognize myself and that scared me shitless. Numerous times, during our interactions, I’d feel hatred bubble up inside me and settle on my chest like a 25-lbs weight.
Who was this person who wanted to destroy things, who wanted to cause physical harm to other people, who shouted and screamed and made idle threats? Surely, it wasn’t this Lovely Brown Girl. Nothing about who I was with Mr. Ex was “lovely”. It was all ugly and it made me unsure of myself, all the while trying to convince him and everyone else that I was sure of both who I was and what I was worth. But is that exactly why I was so angry all the time? Because how can you successfully convince someone that you’re worth it if you don’t even believe it yourself? That’s what I started to recognize after nearly two years of conflicting emotions, of a daily split between intense love and passionate hate. At the end, I was exhausted. I was tired of trying to convince someone of something they were never going to believe and sick of doubting myself about something I knew to be true from the beginning. Of course I was worth it! I knew it, he didn’t. I was trying to persuade him to believe that I was good enough, when everyone else around me (including, on some level, me) knew that I was in fact TOO good for him. He didn’t deserve me. So I left. End of story.
And now, there is no more hatred of Mr. Ex. That’s how I know I don’t love him. The other day, someone asked me if I knew what he was up to, what he’d been doing since we broke up. My reply: “I don’t know where he is, what he’s doing, who he’s doing it with, when he’s doing it, why he’s doing it, or how he’s doing it. And I don’t care to know.” For the first time, I realized that this was actually true. I don’t wonder about him. When I think about it, I wish no harm to befall him. In fact, I don’t wish anything for him, good or bad.
Mr. Ex has called several times in the last couple of weeks, but I’ve ignored his calls and have not been motivated to call him back. He doesn’t leave messages and the last text that I received from him was on my birthday when he had signed it “A guy you used to know”. I liked that he used the past tense. When I got the message, I read it and smiled and forgot about it until a friend who was there with me when I received it reminded me of it days later. This is indifference. The opposite of love. Golly, it’s great to be here.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Unrequited love SUCKS/A Tribute to MBF
Say what?? Two posts in two days?! I'm on a roll... watch out now!
By all accounts, Julia Roberts is a pretty decent actress. Everyone has at least one favorite “ro/co” (romantic comedy) where she plays the sprightly heroine with the contagious laugh and wide grin. Most of my friends are particularly fond of “Pretty Woman”, which became an instant classic when it was released so many years ago. But, my personal favorite Julia Roberts film is “My Best Friend’s Wedding”. Today, it is a Sunday afternoon, and it is raining, and I just finished watching “My Best Friend’s Wedding” for probably the 100th time. And, as always, I had the same reaction when the first intense scene came on.
Julia Roberts played “Julianne” who had made a pact with her best friend, Michael, that if they were still single by the ripe old age of 28 (ha!), they would marry each other. When Michael calls Julianne a few months before her 28th birthday, she panics, thinking that he is calling to remind her of their promise to each other. But, in fact, Michael is calling to tell her that he has met Kimmy, a 20-year old blonde bubbly rich girl, and that they are getting married in four days. It is at that moment that Julianne realizes that she has been in love with Michael for their entire 9-year friendship, but has been too afraid of commitment to act on it. Now that she runs the risk of losing him, she feels she must act quickly and take drastic measures to stop his impending nuptials. She travels to Chicago and agrees to serve as the maid of honor at the wedding in the hopes that keeping Kimmy, her new enemy, close, she’ll be able to put a stop to the wedding. Unfortunately, things go awry (and hilarity ensues along the way), and Julianne ends up at the wedding alone, watching her best friend run off to his honeymoon while she sits at a table crying in her cake at the reception. Of course, there is more to the story than what I just laid out, but that’s the plot in a nutshell.
At any rate, when the movie was first released back in 1997, I was a senior in high school. I was watching the film with someone in the theater (I can’t remember who) and, at one of the most intense scenes, I burst into tears. Now, I am not the type that cries easily. In fact, back in 1997, the last time I had cried at a movie was probably when Ricky got shot i in “Boyz in the Hood”. So, nobody was more surprised than I was when my body was racked with sobs as I watched Julia Roberts grapple with her emotions as she realized that she was about to lose the man of her dreams and there was nothing that could be done about it. At the time, I didn’t even have a male best friend, so it wasn’t that I understood the implications of what it meant to deal with foreign emotions about someone who had been closest to you. It wasn’t as though I understood the risk that Julianne was taking when she came clean about her emotions. But there was something that I related to in the movie. It made me sit up and take notice. And, I can say that there probably isn’t another movie (except maybe “Love Jones” and then later “Brown Sugar”) that has had such a profound influence on the way that I view romantic relationships.
Little did I know that, one day down the line, I would be placed in a similar predicament with my own male best friend. For our purposes, we will refer to my male best friend as “MBF”. MBF has been all manner of things to me in the last year that we’ve been friends. Like Michael and Julianne, we had a pretty hot month or so of dating under our belts before we decided to just be friends. And, I should probably mention that the being “friends” thing was not my idea – it was more a unilateral decision on MBF’s part. But, I took a real inventory of my feelings and decided that it was much more important for me to have him in my life in just some way – ANY way – than to have him be in my life the way I WANTED him to be there. Maybe that sounds weird and extreme, but I have a connection to him that I just can’t explain. Something about him is special and endearing and just… just something that I couldn’t immediately make a clean break from. And, so, we became “just friends”. And after confiding everything in each other, including hopes, dreams, and fears, we became BEST friends. It just happened so naturally that I almost didn’t realize that it was happening. But it did. The only problem was that, after a few months of best-friendship, I realized that my romantic feelings for him became even more intense than they had been before. I knew all parts of him – the good and the bad – and that just made me love him more.
My personal philosophy is that men and women can’t be “just friends” if even one is attracted to the other (if both of you are attracted to each other, your “friendship” is doomed from the start). In friendships, your guard is let down, you are comfortable with being vulnerable, you are your real self. So often, you don’t get to see that truthfulness and honesty in another person until very far down the line. And, when you see that in a friend of the opposite sex, whom you also find very attractive, it logically follows that you will begin to feel a sort of affection for them that transcends friendship. Well, see, that’s what happened to me and MBF. But, rather than risking our friendship, I decided that I would sit on my feelings and never voice the way that I was feeling until I was certain that he felt the same way. I mean, I was never really sure if maybe I wasn't just confusing the intensity of the affection I felt for him in friendship with feelings of romantic love. Come to think of it, I think that might be easy to confuse. Always wanting to be with someone, feeling your best when they are around you, needing their approval and their attention... those are all feelings that you could have about a best friend of the same sex without actually being in love with them. But, then, there was also intense jealously and a desire to be physical... two feelings that I had never experienced with friends of the same sex and it would be quite awkward if I did feel those things toward, say, Bestie. That would also open a whole new can of worms and cause me to spiral into an identity crisis!
Now, there were times when I sensed that the feelings that I had for MBF were mutual - if not the romantic feelings, then at lest there was a mutual attraction. But, they were never expressed. And, so, I never expressed mine. In the meantime, MBF dated other people and I knew about it. And, although it pained me that it was happening, I still kept quiet for the sake of the friendship. But, then, something happened that made it so I couldn’t avoid saying something.
MBF met a girl. We’ll call her Gwen. Gwen ended up being someone that MBF liked very much. In fact, he liked her so much that he told me about her. MBF had mentioned people to me in passing before but he was always careful not to make too big a deal out of any of them. And then Gwen came along and MBF told me that he really liked her and because he felt that she might become a part of his life, he just thought that I should know. (See, this is how I fell for MBF in the first place… because he does considerate things like this.) I appreciated his honesty, but when he said it, my stomach hit my shoes. Literally, my heart dropped and I felt like I had been slapped. I mean, OF COURSE, MBF would meet someone eventually. It wouldn’t just be the two of us like ’08 Bonnie and Clyde for the rest of our lives. I was stupid and naïve to have thought otherwise. But as MBF moved forward with his feelings for Gwen, it almost felt as if a little part of me was dying. And I thought that if I could just let him know how I felt then he would possibly forget all about Gwen and tell me that he felt the same way about me that I felt about him and we’d live happily ever after. I tell you, unrequited love SUCKS y’all. And it makes you crazy… (but that’s a different story)
It’s like when Julianne from “My Best Friend’s Wedding” asks her new best friend, George, what he thinks Michael will do when she finally comes clean and tells Michael that she is in love with him. George says that Michael will choose Kimmy, Julianne will stand beside Kimmy at the wedding, kiss Michael goodbye, and go on with her life. Julianne obviously knows that this is how things will turn out between her and Michael, but she also feels a deep longing, an irrepressible hopefulness, that makes her go through with her plan to foil the wedding. There is something prodding her along, telling her that maybe Michael will change his mind. But, naturally, he doesn’t. He, in fact, chooses Kimmy, Julianne stands next to her at the wedding, and in the end she kisses Michael goodbye, and then moves on with her life. In an interesting turn of events, she even puts Michael’s feelings before hers and, even though her heart had been broken, she worked hard to mend the relationship between Michael and Kimmy, and was integral to making sure the wedding went off without a hitch. And, in the end, Julianne is emotionally rescued by the unconditional love of her gay best friend (a necessity for a single woman these days), George, and ends up dancing the night away with George at the reception as Michael and Kimmy depart for their honeymoon. She does not hide under a rock and die afterall, which is exactly what I would do if faced with this outcome in a similar situation.
But, I digress.
Even after seeing that movie one million times, my head told me that MBF would not reciprocate my feelings, but my heart hoped for a different chain of events. And so I told him how I felt. He was flattered, naturally, but did not choose to cross the line of friendship, which had been clearly drawn in the sand for the last 8 or 9 months. When the decision that we would remain “just friends” had been made – for the second time (!), I did not hide under a rock and die there (Huh. Go figure.) and the awkwardness that I had been fearing never materialized. We carried on exactly as we had before I told him the way that I felt. But, I was relieved to have gotten it off my chest. What a weight that was lifted off my shoulders! I just needed him to know, and now that he did, it was up to him where things went and he could never claim that he didn’t know about my feelings. In fact, a few weeks after I revealed my feelings to MBF, Gwen did something very immature that exasperated MBF and he said to me, “If you are still single when you’re 35, we should get married.” My mind immediately went to Michael and Julianne and that pact that they made before the start of the movie. Would MBF and I end up just like the characters in the movie? Me wanting MBF, MBF wanting whoever will be the object of his affection, and me being wanted by no one? How utterly sad and depressing.
At any rate, like I said, I should’ve known that things wouldn’t end with us holding hands and walking off into the sunset to face another day together. It didn’t even end that way in the movie! Instead, the movie ended with the Julianne dusting herself off and moving on with her life. Maybe I should’ve recognized that, one day, I too, would be in a similar situation to Julianne. Surely, there was a reason why I identified with her character so strongly. And, even though pessimism is probably my strongest personality trait, I am a closet romantic who loves the idea of love and what that little four-letter word could mean for me. When I was younger, I would sit and fantasize about who would love me, and when, and how. And, in the end, I was always under whelmed by what love turned out to really be, as well as disappointed by who was doing the loving. Let’s face it, I haven’t had the best romantic relationships, that’s for sure.
I often wonder what happened to Julianne, Michael, and Kimmy. You know… what went down after the credits finished rolling? Let’s imagine that the story continued. Did Julianne get her happy ending with someone else? Did Michael realize that he made a horrible mistake by choosing Kimmy and leaving his best friend behind? Will Michael and Julianne end up together afterall? Does Julianne turn into a spinster who’s great joy in life is being the Godmother to the Chinese baby that George and his partner adopt several years down the line? I know it’s just a movie, but I really do ponder these scenarios every time I watch. And this time when I watched it, I thought of the absolute horror I would feel if MBF told me that he was marrying someone else. How could I keep on a happy face? How would I find the strength to mask my disappointment? But I’d have to deal. I mean, how totally unfair would it be for me to ask him to sacrifice his chance at love to be “just friends” with me for the rest of our lives? Realistically speaking, I have learned in my days that just because you love someone, that doesn’t make them love you back. So, in the end, my heart will probably be broken (unless I meet “the One” and marry first… dear God, please let me be first!), but at least I’ll always have my MBF.
Things didn’t work out with MBF and Gwen (although she is still trying to weasel her way into his life). But, there’ll be another Gwen. And, another. And, another. Where will that leave me? I mean, hopefully, I’ll find someone of my own who doesn’t want to be “just friends” with me and who I will love with the same fervent emotions (or emotions that far surpass even those feelings) that I feel for MBF. But, nobody will replace him in my life and I hope that nobody will replace me in his.
I just hope that, by the time I have to endure my own “Male Best Friend’s Wedding”, I will have my emotions in check enough to be that friend that he really needs me to be on that day. My gut feeling is that it will take all that is within me not to stand up in the ceremony and holler “I object!” at the top of my lungs.*** But, I sincerely pray that at that moment, I will have enough restraint and dignity to put his feelings first and let the day progress as he would see fit.
But we’ll just have to wait and see…
*** MBF reads this blog, so he will get a kick out of this since he always jokes that, despite the fact that I am his best friend, he will not be inviting me to his wedding… at least I THINK he’s joking…
By all accounts, Julia Roberts is a pretty decent actress. Everyone has at least one favorite “ro/co” (romantic comedy) where she plays the sprightly heroine with the contagious laugh and wide grin. Most of my friends are particularly fond of “Pretty Woman”, which became an instant classic when it was released so many years ago. But, my personal favorite Julia Roberts film is “My Best Friend’s Wedding”. Today, it is a Sunday afternoon, and it is raining, and I just finished watching “My Best Friend’s Wedding” for probably the 100th time. And, as always, I had the same reaction when the first intense scene came on.
Julia Roberts played “Julianne” who had made a pact with her best friend, Michael, that if they were still single by the ripe old age of 28 (ha!), they would marry each other. When Michael calls Julianne a few months before her 28th birthday, she panics, thinking that he is calling to remind her of their promise to each other. But, in fact, Michael is calling to tell her that he has met Kimmy, a 20-year old blonde bubbly rich girl, and that they are getting married in four days. It is at that moment that Julianne realizes that she has been in love with Michael for their entire 9-year friendship, but has been too afraid of commitment to act on it. Now that she runs the risk of losing him, she feels she must act quickly and take drastic measures to stop his impending nuptials. She travels to Chicago and agrees to serve as the maid of honor at the wedding in the hopes that keeping Kimmy, her new enemy, close, she’ll be able to put a stop to the wedding. Unfortunately, things go awry (and hilarity ensues along the way), and Julianne ends up at the wedding alone, watching her best friend run off to his honeymoon while she sits at a table crying in her cake at the reception. Of course, there is more to the story than what I just laid out, but that’s the plot in a nutshell.
At any rate, when the movie was first released back in 1997, I was a senior in high school. I was watching the film with someone in the theater (I can’t remember who) and, at one of the most intense scenes, I burst into tears. Now, I am not the type that cries easily. In fact, back in 1997, the last time I had cried at a movie was probably when Ricky got shot i in “Boyz in the Hood”. So, nobody was more surprised than I was when my body was racked with sobs as I watched Julia Roberts grapple with her emotions as she realized that she was about to lose the man of her dreams and there was nothing that could be done about it. At the time, I didn’t even have a male best friend, so it wasn’t that I understood the implications of what it meant to deal with foreign emotions about someone who had been closest to you. It wasn’t as though I understood the risk that Julianne was taking when she came clean about her emotions. But there was something that I related to in the movie. It made me sit up and take notice. And, I can say that there probably isn’t another movie (except maybe “Love Jones” and then later “Brown Sugar”) that has had such a profound influence on the way that I view romantic relationships.
Little did I know that, one day down the line, I would be placed in a similar predicament with my own male best friend. For our purposes, we will refer to my male best friend as “MBF”. MBF has been all manner of things to me in the last year that we’ve been friends. Like Michael and Julianne, we had a pretty hot month or so of dating under our belts before we decided to just be friends. And, I should probably mention that the being “friends” thing was not my idea – it was more a unilateral decision on MBF’s part. But, I took a real inventory of my feelings and decided that it was much more important for me to have him in my life in just some way – ANY way – than to have him be in my life the way I WANTED him to be there. Maybe that sounds weird and extreme, but I have a connection to him that I just can’t explain. Something about him is special and endearing and just… just something that I couldn’t immediately make a clean break from. And, so, we became “just friends”. And after confiding everything in each other, including hopes, dreams, and fears, we became BEST friends. It just happened so naturally that I almost didn’t realize that it was happening. But it did. The only problem was that, after a few months of best-friendship, I realized that my romantic feelings for him became even more intense than they had been before. I knew all parts of him – the good and the bad – and that just made me love him more.
My personal philosophy is that men and women can’t be “just friends” if even one is attracted to the other (if both of you are attracted to each other, your “friendship” is doomed from the start). In friendships, your guard is let down, you are comfortable with being vulnerable, you are your real self. So often, you don’t get to see that truthfulness and honesty in another person until very far down the line. And, when you see that in a friend of the opposite sex, whom you also find very attractive, it logically follows that you will begin to feel a sort of affection for them that transcends friendship. Well, see, that’s what happened to me and MBF. But, rather than risking our friendship, I decided that I would sit on my feelings and never voice the way that I was feeling until I was certain that he felt the same way. I mean, I was never really sure if maybe I wasn't just confusing the intensity of the affection I felt for him in friendship with feelings of romantic love. Come to think of it, I think that might be easy to confuse. Always wanting to be with someone, feeling your best when they are around you, needing their approval and their attention... those are all feelings that you could have about a best friend of the same sex without actually being in love with them. But, then, there was also intense jealously and a desire to be physical... two feelings that I had never experienced with friends of the same sex and it would be quite awkward if I did feel those things toward, say, Bestie. That would also open a whole new can of worms and cause me to spiral into an identity crisis!
Now, there were times when I sensed that the feelings that I had for MBF were mutual - if not the romantic feelings, then at lest there was a mutual attraction. But, they were never expressed. And, so, I never expressed mine. In the meantime, MBF dated other people and I knew about it. And, although it pained me that it was happening, I still kept quiet for the sake of the friendship. But, then, something happened that made it so I couldn’t avoid saying something.
MBF met a girl. We’ll call her Gwen. Gwen ended up being someone that MBF liked very much. In fact, he liked her so much that he told me about her. MBF had mentioned people to me in passing before but he was always careful not to make too big a deal out of any of them. And then Gwen came along and MBF told me that he really liked her and because he felt that she might become a part of his life, he just thought that I should know. (See, this is how I fell for MBF in the first place… because he does considerate things like this.) I appreciated his honesty, but when he said it, my stomach hit my shoes. Literally, my heart dropped and I felt like I had been slapped. I mean, OF COURSE, MBF would meet someone eventually. It wouldn’t just be the two of us like ’08 Bonnie and Clyde for the rest of our lives. I was stupid and naïve to have thought otherwise. But as MBF moved forward with his feelings for Gwen, it almost felt as if a little part of me was dying. And I thought that if I could just let him know how I felt then he would possibly forget all about Gwen and tell me that he felt the same way about me that I felt about him and we’d live happily ever after. I tell you, unrequited love SUCKS y’all. And it makes you crazy… (but that’s a different story)
It’s like when Julianne from “My Best Friend’s Wedding” asks her new best friend, George, what he thinks Michael will do when she finally comes clean and tells Michael that she is in love with him. George says that Michael will choose Kimmy, Julianne will stand beside Kimmy at the wedding, kiss Michael goodbye, and go on with her life. Julianne obviously knows that this is how things will turn out between her and Michael, but she also feels a deep longing, an irrepressible hopefulness, that makes her go through with her plan to foil the wedding. There is something prodding her along, telling her that maybe Michael will change his mind. But, naturally, he doesn’t. He, in fact, chooses Kimmy, Julianne stands next to her at the wedding, and in the end she kisses Michael goodbye, and then moves on with her life. In an interesting turn of events, she even puts Michael’s feelings before hers and, even though her heart had been broken, she worked hard to mend the relationship between Michael and Kimmy, and was integral to making sure the wedding went off without a hitch. And, in the end, Julianne is emotionally rescued by the unconditional love of her gay best friend (a necessity for a single woman these days), George, and ends up dancing the night away with George at the reception as Michael and Kimmy depart for their honeymoon. She does not hide under a rock and die afterall, which is exactly what I would do if faced with this outcome in a similar situation.
But, I digress.
Even after seeing that movie one million times, my head told me that MBF would not reciprocate my feelings, but my heart hoped for a different chain of events. And so I told him how I felt. He was flattered, naturally, but did not choose to cross the line of friendship, which had been clearly drawn in the sand for the last 8 or 9 months. When the decision that we would remain “just friends” had been made – for the second time (!), I did not hide under a rock and die there (Huh. Go figure.) and the awkwardness that I had been fearing never materialized. We carried on exactly as we had before I told him the way that I felt. But, I was relieved to have gotten it off my chest. What a weight that was lifted off my shoulders! I just needed him to know, and now that he did, it was up to him where things went and he could never claim that he didn’t know about my feelings. In fact, a few weeks after I revealed my feelings to MBF, Gwen did something very immature that exasperated MBF and he said to me, “If you are still single when you’re 35, we should get married.” My mind immediately went to Michael and Julianne and that pact that they made before the start of the movie. Would MBF and I end up just like the characters in the movie? Me wanting MBF, MBF wanting whoever will be the object of his affection, and me being wanted by no one? How utterly sad and depressing.
At any rate, like I said, I should’ve known that things wouldn’t end with us holding hands and walking off into the sunset to face another day together. It didn’t even end that way in the movie! Instead, the movie ended with the Julianne dusting herself off and moving on with her life. Maybe I should’ve recognized that, one day, I too, would be in a similar situation to Julianne. Surely, there was a reason why I identified with her character so strongly. And, even though pessimism is probably my strongest personality trait, I am a closet romantic who loves the idea of love and what that little four-letter word could mean for me. When I was younger, I would sit and fantasize about who would love me, and when, and how. And, in the end, I was always under whelmed by what love turned out to really be, as well as disappointed by who was doing the loving. Let’s face it, I haven’t had the best romantic relationships, that’s for sure.
I often wonder what happened to Julianne, Michael, and Kimmy. You know… what went down after the credits finished rolling? Let’s imagine that the story continued. Did Julianne get her happy ending with someone else? Did Michael realize that he made a horrible mistake by choosing Kimmy and leaving his best friend behind? Will Michael and Julianne end up together afterall? Does Julianne turn into a spinster who’s great joy in life is being the Godmother to the Chinese baby that George and his partner adopt several years down the line? I know it’s just a movie, but I really do ponder these scenarios every time I watch. And this time when I watched it, I thought of the absolute horror I would feel if MBF told me that he was marrying someone else. How could I keep on a happy face? How would I find the strength to mask my disappointment? But I’d have to deal. I mean, how totally unfair would it be for me to ask him to sacrifice his chance at love to be “just friends” with me for the rest of our lives? Realistically speaking, I have learned in my days that just because you love someone, that doesn’t make them love you back. So, in the end, my heart will probably be broken (unless I meet “the One” and marry first… dear God, please let me be first!), but at least I’ll always have my MBF.
Things didn’t work out with MBF and Gwen (although she is still trying to weasel her way into his life). But, there’ll be another Gwen. And, another. And, another. Where will that leave me? I mean, hopefully, I’ll find someone of my own who doesn’t want to be “just friends” with me and who I will love with the same fervent emotions (or emotions that far surpass even those feelings) that I feel for MBF. But, nobody will replace him in my life and I hope that nobody will replace me in his.
I just hope that, by the time I have to endure my own “Male Best Friend’s Wedding”, I will have my emotions in check enough to be that friend that he really needs me to be on that day. My gut feeling is that it will take all that is within me not to stand up in the ceremony and holler “I object!” at the top of my lungs.*** But, I sincerely pray that at that moment, I will have enough restraint and dignity to put his feelings first and let the day progress as he would see fit.
But we’ll just have to wait and see…
*** MBF reads this blog, so he will get a kick out of this since he always jokes that, despite the fact that I am his best friend, he will not be inviting me to his wedding… at least I THINK he’s joking…
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