11.18.2006

on the appeal, and threat, of the dramatic gesture

    When I began watching Grey's Anatomy, perhaps two-thirds of the way into the first season, I imagined a kinship with one of the main characters, Meredith. She is involved in a tempestuous relationship with the man who is often very right, but sometimes catastrophically wrong, for her, and she harbors an inner life that is described as "dark and twisty". Me, yes?
     The last week and a half hasn't been my favorite of all time. I've had some time to think (rarely a good thing), and to contemplate what I have and what I want.
     On Friday, I watched the most recent episode of Grey's Anatomy. I hadn't really seen the previous week's show, given that I was involved in the conversation that night. The last I'd seen, which was just a tiny bit of that last week's episode, Meredith and Derek (her on-again/off-again) were both finally out of their other relationships, and Derek had come to her to say that he had taken the time that he needed by himself and was ready to start again; he wanted to start again, with Meredith.
     Awww. I was melty, two weeks ago, to watch that. How could anyone not want that?!
     Well, stupid Meredith didn't want that. She said it was too late, that there's no going back, that Derek had his chance and he lost it. I'd only watched for 2 minutes and ended up being both angry (with a fictional character, at that!) and doubly sad.
    I want that dramatic gesture. I want that extreme show of vulnerability, the willingness on someone else's part to walk up to me in a bar (you know what I mean) and say, "We both fucked up the first time, but we want to be together, so if we're going to make this work, we have to start again. So let's start again, new. I'll be first; 'Hi, I'm Derek Shepard.'" I want to be swept off my feet, even for a little while. It's not the thing, the event, or even the words that matter--it's the intention. The feeling. The trying--that is what matters.
     There is danger in the dramatic gesture. Something can go terribly wrong between inception and performance, and the one who is doing it can end up hanging out to dry. Or the other can be caught unprepared, painfully straddling the line between reality and the fantasy life being proposed.
     Once upon a time, I knew a man who I'd thought had hung the moon. (For those who speak in concrete terms, that means I thought the world of him. He was all that and then some. I liked him a lot.) His feelings for me were more varied and a whole lot less clearly expressed. (!) We were friends, though, at least, and in that realm I felt that he would not let me down...until he did, in a painful and oddly blatant way. I was terribly hurt; I refused his calls and messages for quite a while. It came to me out of the blue, though, that by refusing contact with him, I was risking not only the continued problem with the friendship: there was a possibility, even a probability, that he would simply arrive at my door to apologize in person.
     I knew that he was capable of such a dramatic gesture. I knew that he cared about my feelings that much. He loved me, that much.
     And if he had made that gesture, to apologize or to prove how he felt or "to make me feel better", it would have set in motion no end of problems for both of us. It would have been too dramatic. Too obvious. It would have brought it all to a point, too quickly and in the wrong place.
     Hence the "threat" to which I referred, above.
     Maybe life isn't about standing up at the bar and making a show of Starting Over. Perhaps it isn't so great to self-identify as "dark and twisty." Maybe I'm really more like Callie, who is in love with George. They've been on-again/off-again, too. They've both made plenty of stupid mistakes and bad choices. (She's even slept with Sloane, which is just too beautiful.) Callie is gorgeous (and a little scary) and smart (and kind of intimidating) and way cooler than George, but she gets him. And during the last few minutes of this week's episode, she realized that she's not done with him--she's not ready to give up on them.
     I'm not saying I'm gorgeous and smart and way cool. I'm just...more like Callie than Meredith. If the only man in the world [to me] was standing in front of my face, making that dramatic gesture, you can be damned certain that I would not say, "You're too late."
     Too late, for that? Come on.

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