Let me tell you about my day. First of all, it's about 150 degrees. I'm home with Ellie all day, which is fine, but for whatever reason when it's just her and I she's extra clingy. Like for example she could be happy la-la-la in daddy's arms and if I peek around the corner she's all like "meh! bleh! weh!" (I don't know what that's all about.) So I fended off the whines and cries all day and gave her lots of solid attention. Then nap time rolled around and I got on my HANDS AND KNEES baby and cleaned those dang floors. I took out some serious carpeting. I cleaned the house with some hard manual labor. Then my super awesome nanny gave me a break and I got my butt SPANKED (this is metaphorical) at my new neighborhood gym. Came home, carted around the child even though my arms are NOODLES. Daddy's home so dinner, cleaning, playing, yaddy yaddy yaddy.
Ok big deal right? Like you needed a play by play of my day. But the POINT
is that now I'm here, on my COUCH. House is clean, child is sweetly breathing in the monitor, daddy went to his softball game, and I am ALONE. Factor in to that one klondike bar (low fat I swear), contact lenses out and geeky glasses ON, and one cheesy, ooey, gooey CHICK FLICK.
Don't even TRY to burst my bubble.
But this leads me to my next, more substantial point: Chick flicks are NOT healthy. A truly good chick flick is like slipping into some sort of portal to some OTHER person's life. You get to feel your heart go pitter patter as you become privy to the protagonists' inevitable hot sex and firey chemistry. In the case of the Nicholas Sparks movie I just watched in which of course the hot guy DIES, then you finally get to pull the plug on the big ol wellspring of tears that ooo boy it feels good to release. I mean it's the PASSION that keeps you hanging on. That beautiful, envious, hot damn PASSION.
And then it's over. Credits are rolling and you pick up your popsicle wrapper and clean up your geeky glasses from all the tears. You head to bed with a longing, a sort of heavy je ne c'est quoi.
THEY'RE NOT HEALTHY.
Because at the end of the day, after a LONGGGGG day, after a run-of-the-mill EVERY day, that PASSION is just not there. Sure, there's love. But it's safe, secure, every day love, like your favorite blankey kind of love. Not oh-my-God-the-child's-asleep-now-get-OVER-here-bad-boy love. Of course I can only speak for myself but I ASSUME I'm speaking for others too here (if not then let's talk. I want your secrets). The point is, chick flicks are not true indicators for real life. If they were then they would involve (ok speaking for me again here) old Hanes Her Ways, popsicle wrappers, talks about money, and maybe an accidental fart or two.
Ooo the PASSION!
HOWEVER!!!! For the record, I love my kind of love. Chick flick love is not reality love. Or maybe it was but the chick flick fails to move on past the honeymoon phase. (And honeys, I LOVED me some honeymoon phase.) But then honeymoon phase morphs into something else. Something very safe. Something very comfortable, something routine. A lover becomes your very best friend. Passion becomes intimacy. And I like that. For me, that's actually a pretty bad ass place to be.
1 comments:
There is something so comfortable about being 8(!) years into a marriage. Definitely a favorite, tattered and worn blanket kind of love (I wonder what it will look like after 40 years!). Is it steamy? Um, no...
It seems like it's impossible to regain that initial steaminess with that same person...in theory, it would be ideal to have some occasional hot stranger passion. But society's norms, jealousy, blah blah would then destroy that nice comfy blanket...and I don't know what I would do without it.
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