the state of me

I figured it out last night.

I was channel flipping trying to find anything to watch and came upon TBS ("the SuperStation!") playing Sleepless in Seattle. Now I've seen this movie a lot. A lot a lot. But I haven't seen it in a long time so watching it last night refreshed my memory. Meg Ryan, in Baltimore, hears Tom Hanks in Seattle talking on the radio about his dead wife and how much he loved her and why and she, along with thousands of other women in America, fall in love with him. So Meg writes him a letter and Tom Hanks' son thinks its the best letter and he just knows this is the woman. And Meg, because she works for a magazine, can hire a private detective to take pictures of him, and she can fly to Seattle to try and meet him. And when Tom Hanks sees Meg Ryan in the airport he is struck by her, and she is struck by him when she sees him outside his house. And because Tom Hanks' son's best friend's parents run a travel agency, the son can get on a plane and go to New York to meet Meg Ryan and then Tom Hanks can follow him and finally meet Meg Ryan and they just know instantly that they are MFEO. Made for each other.

Then, after Sleepless in Seattle, TBS played an all-time fav of mine, When Harry Met Sally... I think this is the movie that not only shaped my idea of what a good romance is, and what makes a good romantic relationship. This is the one that made me believe it's the best thing to be friends with someone and then, it naturally, rolls right into romance. Why wouldn't you want to be best friends with your husband? Of course you would. So when my own personal male best friend relationship blows up in my face and has left me only with a hard-learned lesson about men to avoid, you can see why it would be particularly crushing. And the whole thing with Sleepless in Seattle is this. I expect my words to have the ability to make a man fall in love with me. I expect, I believe that I should be able to write a letter or two to someone and convey to that person how fabulous I am and that person should be so taken with me that that's just it.

But the real truth is that those are just two movies, both starring the cute and beautiful Meg Ryan and what man wouldn't fall in love with her? And now here I am, spending the latter part of my twenties living through the disappointment that all that, up there in the preceding paragraph, it's all lies. And I am having to realize that in real life, my real life at least, it's never going to happen.

posted by Alissa @ 7:47 PM