Shit Is Getting Real

I hate myself. It is 2 am and I failed to complete my daily word quota of 2,000 words. I only wrote 1,000, but I will try to make up for it tomorrow. We're almost done week two, folks! I'm at 19,051 wordskies.

Getting over a break-up is obviously not something that can be done all at once, nor is it always linear and moving forward. Most people would use a “two steps forward, one step back” analogy, whereby any progress is often followed by defeat. Or, one would compare break-ups to the range of emotions that one experiences during the course of a “Model Behavior” viewing: depression when you realize that the two main roles are played by the same girl who can’t act, ecstasy when Justin Timberlake makes his first appearance, horror when Kathy Lee Gifford is shown, and more depression when the movie is over. Finally there is a sad acceptance, when you accept that no sequel has ever been produced. Similarly, watching “The Covenant” produces similar results: one is upset, angry, and offended while watching the entire movie, except for a few moments when the main actors are wearing children’s Speedos.

At first, the pain of lost love is searing, acute and constant, never with any respite. But with time, the pain slowly becomes less and less. It becomes a dull pain, always below the surface but still there. Some days you feel okay, others you lay in bed and cry. There is no logical order to when these days will be. The crying days become further and further apart, while the okay days happen more and more. You start to feel like yourself again, when before you felt like nobody. The reality of why the break-up happened in the first place pushes aside the fantasies of getting back together. You get your life back.
Finding someone new may speed up the moving on process, but it does so in complicated ways. You may feel a little less lonely, but the ghosts of your old relationship still haunt you. Everything in your new relationship is endlessly compared to your old one.

With Brett, every part of their relationship happened because they thought that it should, rather than Brett specifically wanting it to be that way. It felt like it was time to start dating. It felt like it was time for Sadie to meet his parents. It felt like it was time to say “I love you.”

Sadie doesn’t know what it’s like to feel secure, or even sure of anything. Her sisters and her were always competing for attention in the family, making her position uncertain. The world certainly isn’t short on left-leaning political science majors who hope to one day go to law school; standing out and making herself into something that she can be proud of seems to have as much chance as anything being over before Axl Rose says its over. Case and point: the last two minutes of “Paradise City.” Since moving away from Toronto three years ago she can’t exactly consider it home, but Boston doesn’t feel like hers either. The place that she held in Brett’s life was always tentative, something that she knew she would lose if she started to take up too much space.

Paul makes room for her. He returns her calls and he texts her dirty inside jokes that make her laugh. When they talk, his mind is there. She doesn’t feel as if she has to win him over or convince him that she is worth something; for reasons that she still doesn’t understand because no one has ever felt this way about her, he has always wanted her. She had him at hello.
If this is ever made into a movie (and by if, I of course mean when) this is where a wonderful montage would be inserted. Potential songs for the montage include “Accidentally in Love” by Counting Crows and “I’m a Believer” (obviously by the Monkees), and “Take My Breath Away (I’m British)” by Berlin—but the clear winner is “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” from the "Dirty Dancing" soundtrack. Scenes in the montage would include biking together, sharing a milkshake, Sadie and Paul playing tic-tac-toe on a tic-tac-towel whilst laughing uproariously, Paul presenting Sadie with shell-covered pot earring and her delight in that she can now carry some spare change, maybe a lipstick or lip gloss, some id, whatever you need on a casual walk about town, Sadie teaching Paul how to eat oatmeal with a spoon, and that time that a strange man named Kiefer (who was even more strangely sans pants) warned them that a deadly gas had been released during an Aerosmith cover band performance at Jackie’s Place (it appears as someone did want to miss a thing) and Paul urinated on a sock for Sadie to cover her mouth with because it’s the polite and manly thing to do.

When peeing on socks comes into play, you know that shit is getting real.

Being with Paul feels good. Initially she had to force herself to give him a chance, but more and more she is giving in. He makes her laugh, he understands her, and he cares for her the way that she needs him to. He may not be able to buy her a house in Nantucket, or make her feel starved because she is so hungry for him, but he has one undeniable advantage over Brett: he is here. With Paul she knows where she stands; it’s solid and real.

Some people have sex to remember; others have sex to forget. Somehow, Sadie is doing both.

Brett is just a memory—a vague one—that is becoming more of a concept than anything else. He exists only in scenes in her memory, but they are vivid. But at a certain point, the memory of Brett stopped accompanying her wherever she went. He stayed behind, the way a city stays behind as a train pulls out of the station. It’s there, somewhere behind you, and you could go back to make sure of it. But why would you?

Wow, that was brilliant. And completely ripped off from "The Reader."