Reconciling Saints

So, ok… I can talk about this now.

… this, of course, being Juno.

When I first saw it I was on a plane and Da5id was asleep and there was no one to talk to.

I dunno how you felt about it… but it really struck me and there was so much I wanted to say about it. Yet, I felt like I couldn’t say anything about it, was sorter glad that I was on a plane because I was able to role it around in my mouth and really get the taste of it.

Tonight I watched Juno again. It came out on DVD today and my mom and I watched it. It was… a little difficult to watch with my mom. I think she saw what I saw in it in that she started talking about how I was in high school and she started talking about Brian.

For those of you new to the show, Brian was my first love. He was the boy who sat behind me in religion class (for the record, I went to a catholic high school) and drew me funny pictures and passed notes to me. He was the first person that made me realize that love can leave you breathless and dazed, that it could make the stars shine as bright as when you’re looking at them through tears.

I was like Juno before. Not half as witty, I don’t think, nor by any means as forward with my parents. I lived in secret, was me in secret… but I thought like she did, as I’m sure any girl whom, at that age falls in love for the first time and learns that life can be heartbreaking for the first time.

It’s funny seeing it now that I’m older. It used to break my heart to think that all these things that life was showing me, the heartbreaking reality of it all, was actually reality. I fought against it! I shouted at the night against the unfairness of it all! If I knew then that I would be sitting here years later agreeing with these things, it would have broken my heart.

Life and love were wondrous things… and they were special and magical and … and anything could be overcome if you loved hard enough, fought hard enough and believed hard enough.

…

That partly makes me sad. It makes me sad that there’s something in that that I lost and that, I think I would have been a disappointment to myself…

… but that’s not what I wanted to focus on right now…

I wanted to focus on love… and heartbreak… and growing up before you know how.

The scene that got me was the one, and if you haven’t seen it stop here!

…

ok… the one where she’s dancing with Jason Bateman and he starts talking about leaving his wife. For him at… let’s say my age now… she’s a fresh face with ideals he once held and that still somehow resound strongly in there somewhere… and he remembers how to be… himself. Everyone talks about how icky it is, but at 16, girls, you’ve got to remember that you were pretty smart and just coming into your own and learning SO much. I had millions of conversations with my older cousins’ friends. I remember a friend of my cousin Carlos once telling me, “When you’re older, you’re going to be a knock out, you’re going to be something else.”

I know it sounds creepy, but it wasn’t. He just seemed impressed at our conversation and that was it. There was no… you know… weirdness… I think I just said thank you.

Again, my point…

So I think he just… you know, forgot who she was and her age and he remembered what it was like back when he was truly himself. When we lose ourselves, it’s all so very appealing to stay with what reminds us of who we were, who we are.

I can see the story here in 2 ways.

One is me at 16 where I agree with Juno… and I wonder about how fucked up things are… about how I want to believe that people can stay in love forever, or that one always knows what that is! I can see and feel the disappointment in everything I once thought... just… was.

The other is me now, seeing that I used to think like that. I could see from the point of view of all the adults in the movie. The realization that that’s what I thought until I had to experience it all, until I’d been through break ups, pregnancy scares, abortions, divorces, marriage…s…

heh…

One year later would find me starting to learn the lesson that Juno learns with the pregnancy, with the threat of divorce, and with figuring out how she feels herself.

Unlike Bleeker, Brian didn’t know how to handle the pregnancy. The boy who did things against his nature because they were things I loved, started folding back into himself. We did what we both thought was right because neither one of us wanted to tell our parents.

I had an abortion and it broke my heart. Brian… well maybe it broke his too… but he couldn’t look at me the same again, he didn’t open up to me the same again and… we broke up a month or so later. He couldn’t even hold my hand anymore.

My mom, in the middle of the movie, starts talking about how Lauren, Brian’s little sister who was a friend of my sister’s, used to tell Monica that she was afraid I was going to get pregnant. I think I froze right when she said that. I mean, she’s gotta know! If not… how did she hear this and wonder if I wasn’t having sex?

So here I am, 31, and still wondering, do I let her know now that it’s safe? Is it safe? I almost expected her to turn to me and tell me that she knew. She made it sound like she did… but she still seemed to end it with a question.

…

One of the first questions I think about is, how in the world is my world so different than hers? … That’s another story, though… and perhaps will be told another time, once I learn to tell it.

Mainly, I wonder about how we learn… and how heartbreak and joy shape who we are and allow us to grow up. How, we get into situations that are so above our heads and realize too late that the game we’re playing has higher stakes than we could have ever imagined.

…

and all we’re left to do… all we can do… is go through with them, and hope that in the end, we still come out whole…

…not old… just… wise… not, worried.

But definitely shaken… and never the same.