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    Sunday, April 13, 2008

    Sally Field Can Kiss My Butt

    I watched Steel Magnolias last night. Ugh. I haven't cried that much in months. No one should be able to strike such deep chords in my heart with a movie, so Sally*, bend over and smooch it.

    Because now that I'm getting old, that kind of shit really screws me up in the head. Everything like that I see gets internalized, personalized, and rips my guts out. I watch stuff like that, and then I get to picture not Shelby, but a grown-up brilliant, stunning, funny, witty Samantha laying there, dying as I hold her hand, and watch her take her last breath, knowing that her baby will "never know what his mother went through for him".

    OR I picture MY Jackson (yeah, them having the same name wasn't a twist of the knife), a strapping grown man, who has to sign papers that say "Yes, please let my wife die so I have to raise my child by myself and put up with my MIL thinking I can't do it on my own", or whatever those sick DNR forms say.

    Either way, the pain is almost incomprehensible to me, and I fail to understand how anyone endures burying their child and then continues to live with any measure of joy. Which again makes me think of William, and weep for his mommy and daddy and his sister, who have lived M'Lynn's and Drum's nightmare in full-blown reality, and then I weep for my own weakness at not having dealt with the movie version as well as they have dealt with the real one, for cripe's sake.

    Morbid, weird, sick, right? Not to mention "for fuck's sake it's just a movie, Cathy". Greg thinks I'm nuts that I even think about this stuff at all. I know, but it happens. I am the queen of the worst-case scenario. And for whatever reason, the bad things in my life that happen to me always seem to be the things I never considered could happen. So if I think about it, it'll never happen, right? God, I hope so.

    I was planning to watch Legends of the Fall after that, but dang, I'd have probably shot myself when THAT was over, so I watched Jeff Dunham instead. Nothing like a little Walter and Peanut to cheer you up on a Saturday night. This free Netflix viewer is the shit. Except when I watch Steel Magnolias and get screwed up in the head for the night, and then have to stay up till 1:00 watching a man play with dolls just to get calmed down enough to sleep.




    *Sally, if you're reading, I don't really want you to kiss my butt. I think you are a super-talented actress, and pretty hot for someone my mom's age. Hell, you're hot for someone MY age, and your talent has moved me to my core in so many films. The whole "kiss my butt" thing was just a catchy title. Nothin' but love, ma'am...

    4 comments:

    Cate said...

    umm.. were you watching that through my window? 'cause that is what I was watching too! I LOVE Jose the Jalepeno on a steek

    Jill said...

    I can't watch stuff like that anymore because it just makes me too sad. Lots of "what if" stuff is always running through my head.

    Deb said...

    Call me the princess of the worst-case scenario, then, and I'll just aspire to be as dire in my thoughts as you. I just cried while watching "Dirt" and seeing a Britney-type character accidentally lock her child in her vehicle, shortly after putting it in neutral. Yes, it started rolling downhill, and yes, I started crying, because "No mother should have to suffer like that, and she's just trying to get through life and that could be my son and and and and..." Our poor husbands.

    Anonymous said...

    I swear we share a brain. And apparently a heart too. I don't know how I function from day to day with all the "what if's..." and "please God don't let anything like that ever happen to me - because I'm not strong enough" thoughts that run thru my head.

    Kerry doesn't get it when I weep at movies, because they are after all...movies. But it's tear jerking because that stuff actually DOES happen to someone. And my pea brain doesn't want to and can't imagine being that someone.

    At least we can balance out our sociopathic husbands. :-)