Hatas to the Left

Suddenly having everything that you want is startling. We don’t expect to get everything we want, and even so, we don’t choose wisely about what we think we need. Sadie has spent months thinking that all that she needs in life is to have Brett back; everything felt empty and without meaning, and Brett seemed like the solution to it all.

She longed for those nights that he would spend with her, with his arm around her in bed. She dreamed of those nights in where she would pick the movie and Brett would complain the obligatory amount about her selection, but always end up enjoying the movie anyway. Every movie that she saw since then would force her to wonder if he would have liked it, or how much he would have laughed at the jokes. Saturday mornings had never been the same since he had left; they used to eat breakfast at their favourite place and watch either Liverpool or Chelsea’s Premiership matches. She hated to admit it, but when they were together, she cheered for Chelsea just a little. But without Brett, Chelsea became a source of despondent anger and bile. She hated everything about Chelsea: their ugly blue kits that appeared to have built-in bras, their jerry curled striker Didier Drogba who represents everything that is wrong with the game (while playing it with annoying beauty) and the way that they inflate the market and ruin everything for all of the other teams. The two matches that Liverpool and Chelsea played against each other were, in Sadie’s mind, Brett vs. Sadie rounds two and three. To her, their relationship was played out in front of 50,000 screaming fans. Chelsea won the first tie with an ugly one-nil at Stamford Bridge, but vindication would be hers: Liverpool crushed Chelsea 3-1 at Anfield when it really mattered. She felt as if she had accomplished something, somehow. Sadie can’t hurt Brett, but football can. In her eyes, at least someone should do it.

In her memories, they always had the most interesting conversations. She loved watching football with him, and he could always match her wit, knowledge and passion when it came to the game. He always looked perfect and he always said the right thing. He was inhumanly good in bed. They never fought. They always agreed. He was on Team Pacey and Team Jacob and Team Bridge and Team Jennifer, just like she was. They were made for each other, in her memories, at least.

But now, when Sadie and Brett watch movies together, Sadie realizes that it wasn’t that he particularly liked her movie choices; there isn’t really anything that he dislikes. And unfortunately, what he seems to like is exclusively Will Ferrell movies. He seems to like them so much that he feels that it is appropriate to quote them all of the time, with very few original quotations or remarks. Does he have a personality, or is he a composite of Ron Burgundy, Ricky Bobby, Frank the Tank, and around the holidays, Buddy the Elf? Sadie would be hard-pressed to recall any of Brett’s original political commentary, since it mostly involves quoting Will Ferrell “George W. Bush” sketches. Asking if it is “a bear or a puma,” or saying “somebody call Dick Cheney” to the nearest person isn’t exactly astute, particularly since George Bush hadn’t been president for a year and a half, and it never made very much sense anyway. In addition to extremely poor taste, he can’t even offer a particularly interesting commentary, nor does he have any additional insights into the motivations of Joey Potter’s “blob of paint” disaster of a comment on Dawson’s Creek. But really, that one probably isn’t his fault. It was a calamity from start to finish.

Now that they’re back together, most of her Chelsea Football Club hate is gone, but not all of it. She always wonders to herself how Brett can like such a soulless team. She then concludes that he must see something in the team that he sees in himself. Unlike Sadie, who bleeds red (yes, I know, everyone bleeds red, but you get the point), Brett just doesn’t bleed Chelsea blue. He wouldn’t be there for his club if they weren’t in the Champions League owned by one of the richest men in the world who can afford to constantly break the bank to sign players, or if they weren’t constantly winning trophies. He is there for the glory and he is there because it is easy; like everything else, if being a Chelsea fan became difficult or not fun in any way, he would stop. Sadie also hopes (albeit in a more quiet way) that Chelsea will be relegated.

She is tired of accommodating him and taking in everything that he likes and making it something that she likes. She wants to hate his football team, his stupid taste in movies, and how he really isn’t how she remembers him at all.

But how could Brett have lived up to all of that? He is a real person, after all, and no one can stand up to the image that Sadie had built up. Can we really blame him for not being god-like? For not always looking airbrushed and for not always being witty and perfect and exactly how Sadie wants him to be?

This isn’t a problem with Brett; rather, this is Sadie’s advantage. When they were together she was so blinded by love that she could not see any of his faults. The time that she spent with Brett was so serene that nothing could bring her down. Loving Brett made her oblivious to everything that was dangerous about him, and this was her downfall. But not this time. She isn’t under some kind of spell; she isn’t falling for his illusions, or his carefully constructed perfection that he works so hard to maintain to the outside world.

Sadie can see him for what he truly is: beautiful on the outside, but entirely unremarkable on the inside. A hero to everyone around him, but scared and self-conscious when no one else is around. His swagger is based on nothing but other’s approval that he so desperately desires.

After Brett quotes Anchorman for what feels like the millionth time, Sadie can see it so clearly that it almost overwhelms her. She missed him, and denying this fact would be useless. But it wasn’t Brett specifically that she missed; it was her image of him. It was how he made her feel. It was what he represented to her. Christina Aguilera and Enrique Iglesias were so right when they said, "Nobody wants to be lonely." It was devastating for Sadie.

Why did she spend so many sleepless nights wishing that he would come back? How did she build him up to be so irreplaceable?

I can have another you by tomorrow, so don’t you ever for a second get to thinking you’re irreplaceable.

Hatas to the left. Know yo’ exits.