I often am surprised what I learn about myself when I can finally figure out what it is that's speaking to me through the story. So: The Vow. Initially, I only half-liked the movie. Lately, I gravitate toward escapist stories, happy endings, easy fixes. The Vow had too much struggle, too much pain, too much left up to 'maybe' for me to get my 'life is great' fix. I went to bed wishing we'd rented something that was more of an upper.
But I keep thinking about it. Wanting to rent it again. I didn't even LOVE it the first time. It took me a bit to realize that if I owned said movie, I'd be realizing a movie-obsession right now, signalling a need to listen to my heart a bit more. So, I did.
Rachel McAdams plays a girl whose head injury shortly after several big life changes (namely quitting law school, moving to Chicago, getting married, and cutting ties with her wealthy family) leaves her amnestic to most of her current life. She suddenly wakes up in the midst of a life entirely different than the one she remembers wanting: one where she is an artist, not a lawyer. Married to a fledgling record studio owner, not engaged to a successful business man. Now, instead of acrylic-nailed sorority fashionistas, her friends are warm but quirky.
She wants her old life back. She can't imagine what sort of crazy she must have become to jump ship on her great career path, hot fiance, and fabulously rich family in exchange for the life she wakes up in. And though she tries to grin and bear it, in the end, she divorces the husband she can't remember marrying, re-enrolls in law school, and throws herself at the business man she'd broken up with.
Here's the key, though. In the end, she finds herself doodling in class and eventually drops out of law school...again. She discovers the family secrets that caused her to leave home...again. Although her ex wants her back, she quickly starts to feel trapped, and when given the opportunity, decides not to rekindle their relationship. Instead, months later, she rents a small apartment by herself in the city, and enrolls in art school again. Again, again, again.
In the end, she would do it all over again.
And, really, I think that's where I'm at. Amnestic to the parts of my soul that were driving me way way back in college when I was making the long-term decisions that brought me to where I am today. I find myself at the end of a decade of auto-pilot, looking back and wondering how exactly I got here, and if this was what I really wanted. Should I have tackled such a huge career? Taken on so much educational debt? Should I have pursued a career that would allow me to stay home and raise kids? Should I have moved to this city, so far from the places I've loved the most? I don't know, sometimes. I wonder. I fear. I hope.
What I hope most, what I am trying to believe, is that I would do it all over again. That the choices I made back then were right, and that I'm just too burned out to remember the why of it all. I guess we
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