After a very much needed marathon of My So Called Life (it had been years since I saw the show) I got to thinking about perspective and how they change as one grows up. I remember watching this show in the mid 90’s and falling absolutely in love with Jordan Catalano. Watching the show now, however, as a woman in my late 20’s, I realize that Jordan Catalano was a douche bag. It is so characteristic of youth (a.k.a me once upon a time) to overlook important character flaws of the opposite sex in the name of love. I remember rationalizing the grossest of behavioral traits and always wanting to see the good in my unrequited beloveds. I remember my first Jordan Catalano experience. We went to middle school and high school together. The first time I saw him (in 6th grade homeroom) my knees went weak. He was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. I quickly fell in love with the idea of him. That is what Jordan Catalano is…an idea. The reality is much less interesting. It is only through life experience, trial and error and wisdom that people eventually realize this. As I finished the first and only season of My So Called Life I found myself being disgusted by Catalano and wanting Angela to fall in love with the dorky much more stable boy next door (Brian).
I remember the feeling when my Jordan Catalano finally asked me out (years later and when I was approx 40 pounds lighter…hmm I wonder if that was a coincidence). I would practically run to his house in excitement to see him and every moment we spent together was not long enough. Three months into my love haze, he sat me down at some bullshit diner and broke up with me while he ate a Caesar salad. He said I was taking away from his time with..wait for it…the Lord. Yup folks, I was dumped for Jesus Christ. I mean that’s cool and all but years later I found out that he slept with some girl the night he broke up with me...hmmm what happened to Jesus…
My point is I was in love with an idea. While devastating, I still had to cope with issues of rejection and inadequacy while he stood on a falsely pious platform. I think it’s important to not fall in love with a myth but instead fall in love with the man (or woman…whatever your preference ;)
I'm contributing a poem I read in the New Yorker that seems quite relevant to your point! It's called "The Imagined" by Stephen Dunn.
ReplyDeleteCheck it out by clicking on the link or reading it below. Found this poem to be very honest as it plays into the whole "the grass is greener..." argument which inevitably we all succumb to and our only hope is that we recover from it someday and are satisfied with what is right underneath our own noses.
http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2011-03-14#folio=070
The Imagined
If the imagined woman makes the real woman
seem bare-boned, hardly existent, lacking in
gracefulness and intellect and pulchritude,
and if you come to realize the imagined woman
can only satisfy your imagination, whereas
the real woman with all her limitations
can often make you feel good, how, in spite
of knowing this, does the imagined woman
keep getting into your bedroom, and joining you
at dinner, why is it that you always bring her along
on vacations when the real woman is shopping,
or figuring the best way to the museum?
And if the real woman
has an imagined man, as she must, someone
probably with her at this very moment, in fact
doing and saying everything she's ever wanted,
would you want to know that he slips in
to her life every day from a secret doorway
she's made for him, and that he's present even when
you're eating your omelette at breakfast,
or do you prefer how she goes about the house
as she does, as if there were just the two of you?
Isn't her silence, finally, loving? And yours
not entirely self-serving? Hasn't the time come,
once again, not to talk about it?
- Stephen Dunn
I like how this poem explores the misconceptions of attraction and infatuation vs love and reality. thank you very much for this contribution. It's beautiful!
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