In which I go on.

And on.

Have you seen The Young Victoria? I saw it last week and fell in love with it. The era and the history of the Royal Monarchy is beautifully depicted but, for me, the love story between Victoria and her prince was equally so. *Deep sigh.*

Okay, I love war epics, I love movies that are so horrifying I think I’m going to throw up, I love foreign films, I love movies that upset me and anger me, I love movies that I can watch once a week for the rest of my life (Dirty Dancing) and be happy, and … I love stories of love. 

I don’t want to give too much away because it’s still in theatres, but, The Young Victoria is a beautiful and touching love story. What’s really nice is if you read about their actual life together, its portrayal is nailed in the film. Apparently Victoria kept a diary through much of her life and her early writings after meeting and spending time with Albert demonstrated a brimming affection for him. For example:

“[Albert] is extremely handsome; his hair is about the same colour as mine; his eyes are large and blue, and he has a beautiful nose and a very sweet mouth with fine teeth; but the charm of his countenance is his expression, which is most delightful.”

It was her maternal uncle, Prince Leopold I of Belgium, who introduced them; and her other maternal uncle, Ernest (also Albert’s father (yes, Albert was Victoria’s first cousin)) who approved the match. 

To her uncle, Prince Leopold, Victoria once wrote in thanks:

“… for the prospect of great happiness you have contributed to give me, in the person of dear Albert … He possesses every quality that could be desired to render me perfectly happy.”

I’m not sure if I’m just screaming lonely, single girl here, which is fine, but this doesn’t have anything to do with loneliness. I will never deny myself the fact that this is what a relationship looks like to me. I don’t know many passionate, soulful women who would think otherwise. Men too for the sake of argument. It has been documented that Victoria and Albert unified for love which was uncommon for royals at that time. Albert had a deep love and respect for his Queen and brought to bear that title in more than just the obvious. He technically was her liege, but her husband as well. 

This is that constitutional desire we all have to be understood, accepted, and respected by the Alberts who come into our lives. I walked out of the theatre looking for Albert but he was nowhere to be found.

Which is okay because I’m not sure I ever will find him.

Also okay.

Therein lies the conundrum for someone like me. I can cry over this movie and wonder if one day I too will have a relationship where I am cherished, devoted to, loved, accepted, stimulated, challenged, protected, etc… find it in a thesaurus. I laugh at myself though when I realise that the reason this is so difficult for me is because I know I can be very perplexing to some men who are used to a certain kind of woman.

A man (we’ll call him Albert) could be staring me right in the face. He could tell me all the wonderful things that brought tears to my eyes in the movie. But, so help me God, I can be such a particular, picky moppet that I just may end up single until I leave this earth. 

Make sense of that? 

I barely can.

See, having an Albert is well and good – but for me to be satiated and contained by this Albert I’d need him to be a challenging, broken, sensitive, kind, distant, open, advisor, learner, loving, comforting, clairvoyant, intellectual, hilarious, video-game loving, bookworm who is patient, smart, soulful, clever, devoted, deep, demanding, spontaneous yet regimented, logical yet illogical… did I mention patient? On top of all this I would require an absurd chemical attraction toward him that offers a fine mix of the following adjectives: cheap, lusty, lascivious, surly, gentle, sweet, considerate, slow and steady. I like to be where I can melt.

On the bright side I am clearly not expecting perfection.

Can you imagine? 

Then there’s the whole other issue of the person I am and if the type of person I’m attracted to can actually tolerate someone like me.

If I were in a relationship with me I would not know what to do with myself sometimes. Although I suppose that’s the way in all relationships. Some just have the potential to go completely sideways in a very dramatic way – it’s just whether or not you can pick the same battles. Like Vicky and Albert did. 

I resign myself to the fact that this is highly unlikely that I find my perfect match and have considered the advice of some people who tell me I need to trim the list a little bit or become either a lesbian or a nun, but I’m a terrible human being when I’m settling for something or someone. Settling is like giving me 50 years without parole. That would bring me to roughly 83 years old and by that time everything on my body will be at least four inches lower than where they started and then what?

Make no mistake, I re-evaluate my options regularly, look at the pros and cons and have come to understand what missing characteristics I can acquiesce to and which ones are compulsory. It’s like that  job interview – there are always requirements, but most of the time a relevant amount of experience is considered an asset but you never want to settle for an employee who’s not the right fit.

It doesn’t sound that awful – just look at the relationship you’re in right now. Are you happy? Can you see yourself gladly purchasing Depends for this person years from now? When life’s up are you going to look back at its entirety and not feel like the biggest mistake you made was to spend a life in a relationship where you were essentially alone anyway? Mistakes should be about things like selling shares at the wrong time, wearing stirrups in the 80s, buying a Geo Metro, or being fired for photocopying your breasts. All recoverable. A lifetime of unhappiness is not and we’re all grown-ups here; we only get a shot at life once. 

Back to Victoria and Albert…

When Albert died of typhoid at the age of 42, Victoria entered a state of withdrawal, then perpetual mourning, and wore black every day for the rest of her life. I don’t find this necessarily healthy and I’ll leave that up to the psychologists but if you look at this from a more bittersweet perspective, that’s love. The pain comes from when the person’s gone and not from the ass when you’re together.

For now, I’ll purchase the movie and treat myself to its charm as I see fit. It’ll sit right between Dirty Dancing and The Notebook on my shelf. 

I will leave you with one of mine and Gee’s favourite moments from the movie as well as the Sunday Jammin’ song on a Wednesday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW3B-MK19_w

The Shins – New Slang

So ya … Kenny’s arriving tomorrow morning to hang with me for five days. Kenny is a) going to hate that the first sentence in this post involves his name and b) is my ex-fiance.

The moment I tell people I was engaged once, their immediate reaction is usually “Oh I’m sorry.” To which I respond, “No, don’t be, you’re happy.”

I do appreciate that it’s not normal for ex-fiances to continue any kind of correspondence let alone one that involves travel across the country to hang out, but that’s where I’m thankful we’re different.  We had a pretty solid relationship, Kenny and I. We never fought, had so much fun together, traveled, adventured, and loved. As a married couple, however, it just wasn’t meant to be. Not then, and most likely not even now, but the strength of our friendship allows us to look past that specific phase of our lives and continue to work with the bond we still have and enjoy it. I know we’re okay when I can take photos of myself in what was supposed to be my wedding dress, email them to him, and he can call me laughing and tell me how much of a nerd I am.

We were heading in completely different directions at a time when we should really have been meeting in the middle somewhere. All the while I was desperately trying to pull him to where I thought he should be, while he was fighting to pull me to where he was. It took a lot to be able to recognise this, finally address it, then put an end to the upcoming wedding just four months shy of it – but we did it and we’re better off for it.

This part of my life, to this day, still holds one of the top places for emotional growth, sadness, confusion, and redemption. There are not too many people I know who can identify with this, let alone ones who can actually find normalcy in the relationship we have now.

I get that though, I know that some people will initially see ulterior motives, mind games, avoidance, or just want nothing to do with it altogether – and that’s fine with me. Like I said, I know we’re weird in that sense. To me though, he’s my friend who I still care about deeply, husband or not.

Plus, the guy’s never been west of Ontario. Imagine?

“Unlike other coffees … we’re unlike other coffees”

This is the new Starbucks bus stop ad that makes me laugh because I
want to add one more little statement to the end that goes like this:

 … that actually taste good.

Okay, on to my post…

I realise and frequently try to ignore how bizarre I must become once certain types of people get to know me. I know I’m not alone, because I’ve met a handful of people  who mentally live in this strange limbo land where night time prayers go something like this: Dear so and so, please make tomorrow a relatively simple day. A good night’s sleep means waking up and feeling like the lights went out in your mind as soon as the bedroom lights did. A shitty sleep means an anxious one. A commute to work can go something like this: When I mentioned that to so and so two days ago his reaction to me seemed kind of surprised, and I noticed after that he got really quiet, I wonder if maybe I shouldn’t have gone into so much detail, but then again it’s probably because he’s too logical in thinking and this may have made me seem flighty and frivolous – but he just doesn’t really get who I am which may be attributed to the way he was raised, which isn’t really his fault because I know his parents came from some really tough times growing up too and his parents don’t seem to really like each other so I wonder how much of the way he is is nature and how much is nurture? I wonder how much of who I am today is nature and how much is nurture? Look at that woman across from me, her eyes look so tired this morning – I bet she ate something salty last night, oh, she has white paint on her thumb, she must have been staying up late painting. What smells like peanut butter? I wonder if anyone on the bus right now is allergic to peanuts? Would they get off the bus if they got a whiff? Statistically there should be one person on this bus who is, and how old would they be? Because when I was in elementary school there were no bans on nuts, I don’t think I knew one child who was deathly allergic. I wonder if fear releases chemicals in the host body that actually mimic that of a nut allergy and if you fixate and panic long enough over it I wonder if anaphylactic shock is really a secondary reaction to the the result of allergy by osmosis. Pretty soon you won’t be able to put Hazelnut syrup in your coffee at Starbucks because the night time janitor’s mother is visiting from out of town. Ug, I hate Starbucks coffee. 

This can play out in under 1 minute – and my transit time is roughly 24 so imagine how tired I feel before I even get to work…

I’ve concluded recently that to have a loud mind, or one that’s rarely still, you need to surround yourself with other noisy minds in order for both to cancel each other out and create the illusion of silence because you kind of just get each other and you don’t need to spend time figuring out someone because they’re just like you. So there’s this kind of commiseration factor at play. 

If I break down personalities into two intrinsic forms, I’d say there are the petals vs the potpourri; or the bean vs the minestrone; the tub vs the jacuzzi; the cowbell vs the orchestra, and so on and so forth.

In other words, incomplex vs intricate. The problem is the bean alone, for example, could never taste like the minestrone. So even if the minestrone says to the bean, “I taste like fresh campari tomatoes growing on the vine in Italy embraced by pungent cloves of soft garlic…” the bean will not be able to relate to, let alone really be cognizant of, what these flavours actually taste like so chances are their conversation won’t go any further than the bean taking the soup’s word for it, but never actually knowing exactly what it’s like to taste that way. Minestrone and pasta e fagioli, although melodically different, are more part and parcel.

I’m so hungry. brb…

Sunday: 11:51PM
I’ve had the best weekend.

I think what makes relationships so interesting is how there are infinite numbers of unique personalities, made up of an equal amount of personality traits and yet, somehow, things seem to work most of the time. There is a superficial rapport and we are mindful of the actuality of other human beings. There is a basic, carnal understanding that we all have to become aware of the personalities around us, and how we naturally alter, or augment our own personalities to coincide with someone else’s. Even intolerance proves that we recognise other people regardless of the fact that we are essentially existing in an extremely self-centered way. No one else feels our itches. Just us. Make sense?

Where it gets even more interesting is just how much importance a human being can place on their own existence … or ego, for example. Some people are selfless to the point of being a pushover, whereas on the opposite end of the spectrum, others can be selfish to the point of being impossible to want to have any kind of relationship with. In the middle are people who are balanced. They probably posses the potential to go either way, and yet they recognise the potential to become either, to any varying degree, then adapt depending on the situation or circumstance.

If you take two complex, or intricate people, you get the potential for a very passionate and profound, however often opinionated, stubborn, and fiery relationship. This is what I’ve been noticing anyway. So I’ve been overanalysing (as usual) reasons for why this is. I used to loosely think that logically, if you take two people who are so similar in thought, everything should always be relatively easy and substantiated by this concept of similarity. But, it’s not always the case, and this is where I find things to become so fun and spicy!

For me, there is nothing like a zealous discussion that borders on physical combat – especially if it has to do with heavy things. Maybe it’s the Italian in me, I don’t know. My one requirement though is Respect. The minute someone pulls out the castigation card I am not a nice person; and I’ll leave it at that. Antagonising fits in here as well. Je n’aime pas. But why do I sometimes enjoy this kind of hot-blooded interaction even if at the time I want to tear my eyes out and pour vinegar in the sockets? I think it’s because if conversation comes to this, it means I feel 100% comfortable being 100% exactly who I am. It’s more enjoyable to know that the person I’m engaged with is feeling the same. I get off on being challenged, stimulated, forced to think on my toes. I can be a little masochistic in that sense, I guess. I think it’s because it’s such an emotional adrenaline rush and a mental exercise in balance…

I can’t believe how long it’s taking me to get through this. I’m tired.