Exhaling

Movies inspire me in ways I can't even begin to explain. Every now and then I'll catch myself watching something just because, or even just having the set on for background noise, and I'll happen to hear a line or two that knocks me off my feet.

Setting: The Units' house. I may not have a television, but my parents have a huge one.

Movie: Waiting to Exhale

I was channel surfing and settled here, right at the part where the viewers find out Bernie's husband has left her and their family for another woman. She walks into his closet, enraged, and goes on to destroy everything in it.

That got my attention pretty darn well, since I was doing that not long ago. I may not have stuffed Jess' belongings into a car and set it on fire, but the need to get rid of it all was borderline sickening. Even now I'll happen across something small and forgotten of his, or a picture of us, and my skin crawls.

I want it gone. Every trace of him, I want gone.

Jump to Bernie talking to Savannah, and me working on the family room couch. I was dragging and dropping something into my jump drive when I heard, I thought if I gave him everything, he would give me everything.

I snapped my head up so quickly there might as well have been danger of whiplash.

I thought if I gave him everything, he would give me everything.

Nothing like a breakthrough brought to you by the Movie Network. At least it's cheaper than therapy. And nothing like that breakthrough to stab you with several finely sharpened Henckels knives, straight in the gut.

I thought if I gave him everything, he would give me everything. I really did, too. That if I stuck by him and did what I could to get us through those storms of life – those fucking, neverending storms – he would do the same for me when the time came.

He gave me everything, alright. He gave me his absolute worst, day in and day out, then left me with nothing.

I was so stupid.

Bernie kept going: Never let a man take control of your life.

Ah, yes. Never let a man take control of your life, because it transforms you into a shell of a person you no longer recognize, and definitely a person you don't want to be.

I didn't know it then, but I know it now. Yesterday when I was with Raj, he said to me, “You know kookoo, you have no idea how miserable you were. It's so good to see you smiling again.”

Indeed. It's good to be smiling again, too.

There's just one little thing I want to correct Bernie on, though: Never let anyone take control of your life, other than yourself, that is. Or, never let go of the wheel.

May it be a lesson no one ever has to learn twice.

Me included.