My Life is Not a Movie
I know saying my life is not a movie seems rather obvious. Of course it’s not. However, that thought has been nearly all I can think of for the last week.
You see, I’ve always known I’ve had a flare for the dramatics. I’ve written before that I’m as emotional as Dawson Leery. And one time, I was asked to pick a song that described me perfectly. I picked Clark Gable by The Postal Service. The main chorus sings, “I want so badly to believe that there is truth and love is real. And I want life in every word to the extent that it’s absurd.” In the song, the man describes filming a perfect moment, faking the rain to make the shot more dramatic of the two lovers kissing “in a style Clark Gable would’ve admired.” I’ve always wanted passion and romance and big grand gestures.
But that is not real life.
One of my absolute favorite movies of all time is Imagine Me & You. Piper Perabo (Coyote Ugly) and Lena Heady (Game of Thrones) fall in love at first sight. It’s one of the few lesbian movies that has a happy ending. I’d watch this film so often, often to fall asleep, its affect calming and comforting. The story is pretty simplistic. The director wrote the story after his own love story. He fell in love at first sight with Thandie Newton. They are now happily married.
Not to spoil the film, but the complication of the plot is that Piper’s character has just gotten married to her long term partner, Matthew Goode. She falls for Lena’s character but breaks things off, saying she cannot hurt her husband and best friend. She eventually tells her husband that she’s fallen for someone else and cheated (well, they only kissed once). They stay together for a while until Matthew Goode finally tells her to leave. He can tell she’s fallen head over heels and refuses to stand in the way. Piper’s character then races to find Lena’s character before she gets to the airport to go on a post breakup holiday.
As many of you already know, I had top surgery this summer. A couple months before surgery, I decided that I wanted to try dating in covid to hopefully find someone to help give my boobs a proper send off. I matched with a gorgeous pediatrician from Oregon. She listed herself as a proud bisexual who was in an ethically non monogamous relationship with a male partner of 13 years. I honestly figured this was the best case scenario for my boob’s last hurrah. She lived far away and was already committed. I wouldn’t get too involved or invested.
Obviously, since I’m telling this story now, that didn’t happen. I fell and I fell hard. I can vividly remember that first week in June when we met at a winery in Hood River. I arrived first and was waiting in the sun outside. I saw her get out of her car and my breath caught in my chest. She was just so absurdly gorgeous. She was tall with long, glorious brown hair. She dressed endearingly dorky with brown pants that were slightly too short. She always loved earth tones.
She walked up to introduce herself and I just could not speak. I’ve only found myself shy and fumbling with my words with one other person: Sue Bird. I’ve interviewed tv stars and movie stars and the only time I ever got too nervous to speak was when I ran into Sue Bird at Seattle bars. I just get so starstruck and mesmerized by her beauty that I can’t function. The same thing happened that day in Hood River.
I eventually got over my shyness and her and I began to date. We saw each other once a month then every two weeks and then we started to do longer weekends away. She was there for me during my top surgery at the end of July and she drove up right after she heard my mom had a heart attack. We went through this heavy stuff blissfully together. We became “official” in October and exchanged I love you’s. She was only my third official girlfriend ever. It was a whirlwind romance full of passion and I don’t think I’ve ever been as attracted to another person before.
But of course, being long distance and in an ethical non monogamous relationship had its complications. In the beginning of December, she asked for “more” of me. She didn’t want to just see me every other weekend. It was exactly how I was feeling so I readily agreed. But then, nothing really changed. We were still talking weekends every two weeks or so. She came to spend New Year’s Eve with me and my friends and I asked about it. She said her male partner was having trouble with the idea and was still “processing.”
That made sense to me. I wasn’t even really sure what it meant and so I was in no rush. We also talked about when I was going to start dating again in Seattle. It seemed very clear then that she just wanted me to find a partner like she had in her partner.
But all that changed just a couple of days into the new year. Out of the blue, she told me she thought she might be gay. She called out sick from work for two whole weeks and started therapy. She asked me to come visit her in Oregon that first weekend. I spent three days down there and on the last night, we were just hanging out in my Airbnb and decided we wanted to watch a movie. We’d been through most of my lesbian films already, except for Imagine Me & You. I think I’d never put it on before because it’s my favorite and I was protective of it.
I turned it on and we didn’t make it more than ten minutes in before she made me turn it off. She said it hit too close to home. I left the next day and she told me she told her partner she might be gay. The next day she told me she told her parents.
Two weekends passed and it was about time for us to meet up again on our bi-weekly schedule. However, she was having a hard time and was still out of work and told me she was having a lot of trouble with self loathing and probably couldn’t see me. Then abruptly called me Thursday night and requested to come visit my place the day after.
She showed up that Friday and even more abruptly left Saturday. In fact, she barely spoke to me Saturday. She was clearly upset and freaking out and just refused to talk about it. She’d driven 5 hours to see me on Friday and she announced she was driving 5 hours home on Saturday.
Her rude behavior and abrupt departure crushed me. I realized then that when she, a proud bisexual, told me she thought she was gay, I got my hopes up. We were so ridiculously in love and were getting to the point that one of us would cry every time we had to part. I thought our love was an unstoppable force.
I finally told her that about a week later via the phone. She was upset and affronted that I could ever think that she would leave her partner. She told me she only thought she was gay. She reiterated that she had never taken two weeks off and had never consistently gone to therapy. She told me it was “really common” to struggle with sexuality and that’s all it was. She said she was just confused because she had never fallen in love with a queer person before.
A queer person.
Me.
That’s what I’d been distilled down to. I was the queer person who confused her primary, most important partnership.
I got upset, angry, and sad. She broke up with me telling me I expected more than she could give me.
So my life is not like a movie. I’m currently headed off to go on vacation. This is my post breakup holiday.
It’s been months since she ended things but part of me still was hoping she would show up. Maybe, like the film, her male partner would realize keeping us apart was making us both miserable and would send her back to me.
But it didn’t happen and it will never happen. She’s gone and that relationship is fully over. I left to the airport this morning to go relax and reset. The only way this story could ever turn out differently is if I make it into a movie. I could write myself a happier ending. And honestly, being single at 35, that might be the fastest way to get me my own happy ending. Coincidently, that’s what the man in the song ended up doing too.