I went to see a movie today about living an honorable life. It was called "Funny People," and it was written and directed by Judd Apatow, and it had a lot of heart but I thought it was too long and not especially funny, all things considered. I went to see this movie with someone I used to know. We has gone to high school together and bonded over poetry in Creative Writing class. There was a time in my life when this person would come and sit with my friends and I during lunch and we would flirt obnoxiously; during this time I was also involved in a long-distance relationship with someone I loved. This all feels like way back when, but was really just a collection of months ago. Not even a developmental phase, or the time it takes between leap years. Note: everyone involved in this backstory (except some of the cast of "Funny People"... is still very young.
I usually hate "first dates" with a fiery passion, but I was at ease on this one. Maybe this was because it wasn't technically a date--but in any case, it was the first time I had been around this person outside of school, one on one. I thought there would be a lot of...something...in the air between us: worry or trepidation or chemistry or even a little bit of bitterness, maybe. I was probably being dramatical. We laughed when "Funny People" was funny, we talked easily during the previews. And then at the end, leaving to go home, we talked about high school and the way all of these people in our lives now are fading away. This is a paraphrasing of that conversation:
Boy: "I mean, it happens. Did you really think WE were going to get together? I mean honestly?"
Girl: "No, I guess not."
Boy: "And we'll probably never see each other again. Think about it."
Girl: "What? No!..."
Boy: "Think about it!" (Meaningful look).
People don't usually say things like this in my real life--at least not in common conversation. This is of course one of those brutally honest things that is pessimistic and not necessarily but probably true; as such, blind optimists like myself tend to be thrown off guard when they are spoken aloud, supposedly because this is what makes them become true. After he said this, I hugged my friend goodbye and I watched him walk away while I did the same, and suddenly it was like this emotional landslide just opened up in my chest: what had any of this (this being the worry, the excitement, the friendship itself, the 10 bucks-a-ticket), all of this, been for?
I am a neurotic actress. Lately, I am always having an existential crisis. But walking away from me now was a year and a half of guilty flirting, a maybe-reason for breaking up with a boyfriend, a perfectly good non-date, a friend, a summary of my boy mentality in high school--and it was called 'over.' People do not call things 'over' where I come from; they watch them fade and pretend to do something about it or pretend to care as it limps quietly away. And what scared me the most about this whole transaction was the actual feeling I was feeling as we said goodbye, which was not much of anything, really. I was reaching out for a sadness or a fondness or even a chuckle that wouldn't come--it was like that song in 'A Chorus Line.' I felt...nothing. And true to everything I was told this year as a freshman in acting school, this emptiness was actually worse than anything else I could have imagined thinking.
We are told all the time to seize the day, and live for the present, and that is what I suspect a lot of people think of when they lament their lost youth: seize the day. Toke up. Ravage your body with alcohol. Contract STDs. Stay out all night. Find love, break hearts, steal cars, make rock n' roll, study what you want to study, travel, do it all fast before a mortgage can get you. But being young isn't about any of those things on a moment-to-moment basis; at least not for me--the thrill of all the action is actually in that promise of having a very distant tomorrow. We take risks because we believe ourselves to be invincible, and we need to test the theory to keep things interesting. No teenager I've ever met has "lived for the moment" more than any bona-fide adult; they are simply living to make memories. We are living for the future, and when the future is limitless and seemingly unending, you can get as high as you want and there won't ever be a consequence. There's a reason it's not cool to be an old hippie or a Rolling Stone anymore--they're disproving our theory, invading our turf; this is how young people are supposed to act, we are supposed to "get it out of our system"--and our bodies are nubile and our minds fertile for just that purpose. Adam Sandler and the cast of "Funny People" seem to understand this truth more deeply than anyone else I can think of at the moment, as irritating as that movie was: in the film, Adam Sandler contracts a rare blood disease and is forced to figure out what he's living for before he dies. And there it is again, this phantom measurement for relationships: what are they FOR? And if something is not for anything, is it pointless? It not for love, not for sex, not for friendship, not for any visible end but only for the actual seconds of the now, the very day, the three and a half fucking hours of "Funny People", is it worth it? Is it worth anything?
I am young. I have not seen very much of life. The world has always felt so limitless to me that I'm not even, have never even been worried about the scant few hundred dollars I have in my savings account, or the fact that I'm a Drama major. I do worry about finding love and being crazy and L-I-V-I-N to make memories; I go about exhausting and testing my mortality as thoroughly and as gleefully as the next college freshman. I'm in that teenage girl limbo-land where I suffer from severe self-obsession via egomania but a conjunctive case of shit-low self esteem and image problems; I am hypersensitive to me, I am a paradox. And with this kiss, this relationship, this bad date I could have told all my friends about over cosmos that did NOT happen, I find myself at a loss: this is not a list, a meditation, adventure or experience, it was a moment, and it is over.
And you know what? I think I would much rather stay invincible. I do not like this new sensation that jumps out like a light being turned off in a crowded room or (v. cliche) a window being slammed shut when it's warm outside: I do not, as I had thought I would, like this feeling of getting older. I do not like it at all.
