The Falling in Love Montage

I didn’t know how to stay angry and I didn’t know how to stop being angry and I wasn’t sure which one I wanted more. The energy it takes to keep hating someone that much is hard to sustain. But I never really forgave him. We eased into a fragile peace, but it was never the same.

“History is who we are,” I say finally. “The past shapes us. Even the parts you can’t remember.”

“See, I think love isn’t this fixed thing that can beat all the odds. It fades or changes and it can twist into something else. So, I’ve believed for a while now that there was no point in being in love. Not if it’s all going to go away and leave you kind of broken. I thought it wasn’t worth my time. Especially if for me, time might be shorter than everyone else’s.”

“How about life’s too short to be second-guessing yourself the whole way? You can only go with what you feel right now and if you feel like it might make you happy, even for a while, jump in with both feet, girl, and get wet.”

Do scenes like this happen so often in real life that they end up in the movies, or are the movies giving us a convenient script for inconvenient conversations?

Girls, I don’t often go around giving advice to wains because I think you have to make your own mistakes in life, but I’ll tell you one thing. I don’t believe there’s one right person for everyone, and I spent fifty-one years with the same woman. But I do believe there’s a right person for you at different times in your life. Whether that relationship lasts a week or fifty years is not what makes it special.

Well, I did Women’s Studies at university. Eons ago. In the States at an all-women’s college. I was particularly interested in how advertising can both create and drive patriarchal narratives. I wondered if there was a way to counteract that or to even harness that power for something positive

I do believe in wanting to get the shift. You know, maul, snog, lob the gob, feek, meet, wear... or as the French say, kiss. That doesn’t get its due as the beautiful phenomenon it is.