The
last year of my life has been one of the most challenging and hardest. The last year of your twenties must be terrifying for most though, right? Even if only
subconsciously, as your mind starts to prepare you for the symbolic death of your
youth.
I
don’t think being in your thirties is old- “old” is a construct, anyways. And there are also numerous studies that
show that our age has little to do with our happiness, so the idea of getting
older as "scary" is mired more in our beliefs than in an actual relationship to reality.
I
think what is scariest for people as we age into adulthood is the goals we have
set for ourselves to reach by certain ages; often these approaching milestones
are cruel reminders of our failure to reach what we were “supposed” to, as if
life exists on the same linear trajectory for each person. In America, at
least, there seems to be more emphasis on the relationship between women and
age; the pressure on men to get married and have children by a certain age
pales in comparison to that experienced by women. I remember my ex telling me
during a discussion on having children that “he could wait as long as he
wanted, but I had a certain time period where I needed to have children.” On a
recent dinner with an old male schoolmate, the discussion of children came up:
“Maybe when I’m 50.”
50?????????????
Have
you EVER heard a woman nonchalantly say she would maybe think about having children when she was 50? Let me answer for you: no way in HELL have you EVER heard
that. No, because everyone knows the links between age and fertility in women. And
if you want to have kids, those facts are stressful as hell! It’s partly
why I left my Masters program to try and salvage a broken relationship so I
could have children and get married.
I’m
not remotely ashamed to admit that’s one of the most important things I want in
my life. Almost every study on happiness indicates love is literally one of the
only things that will foster a happy life, and while love exists in different
realms, there must be nothing quite like the love you have for your husband and
children.
So
this year, as I am readily creeping into a new number decade where my body,
society, and science expects me to have my shit together at the same time when
most people don’t even know what the word compassion means, my life has been,
well- a trainwreck.
So
I was pretty excited to see Amy Schumer’s movie of the same name which was
supposed to be about a character loosely based on her around the same age as
me, struggling with low self-esteem, deep seeded self-hate, binge drinking, and
an insidious inability to connect with the opposite sex in a meaningful, loving
relationship. Plus, she is funny as hell and shatters so many taboos society
says women shouldn’t talk about:
“I will speak and share and
fuck and love and I will never apologize to the frightened millions who resent
that they never had it in them to do it. I stand here and I am amazing, for
you. Not because of you. I am not who I sleep with. I am not my weight. I am
not my mother. I am myself. And I am all of you, and I thank you.”
Back
to my hell of a year though because this is all about me. I started grad school last August. I dated one guy
who disappeared and then came back to pull some really immature shitty shit,
which led me to another relationship with the guy I thought I was gonna marry.
At the same time I started grad school I moved in with an old best friend from
middle school. We used to go on family vacations together, and when she
reconnected with me to move in together, I thought it was perfect. Rent in
Atlanta, as it expands thanks mostly to the movie industry moving here bringing
in more money, is now like $15,000 a month for a one bedroom, so a roommate was
my only option after my beautiful PERFECT one bedroom in VA
highlands/Morningside was sold. (I know, it’s the classic sob story of a
gentrifying white becoming gentrified by even richer whites, boo hoo.)
It
turns out, the little girl I was best friends with turned into a pill popping
alcoholic pathological liar who allowed people to steal from me, sleep in my
room, violate me in almost every possible way, not pay bills, almost get us
evicted on a consistent basis, and resulted in me having to move out while
still paying rent. The police have been called, report and complaints have been
filled, but as long as the checks are coming, the renting office really could
care less. I have one more check to pay but I just recently found out on Friday
currently the apartment is being inhabited by random junkies and the power is cut
off in the apartment. I have no idea what is going to happen in the last month.
My
boyfriend who I was living with my dumped me because I was “too depressed” even
though I was willing to quit school and get a job to help support us and start
a family. He told me I didn’t have “real” problems and I was ungrateful for
“all he had done for me.” He also didn’t like for me to go out with my friends,
and when I tried to leave him he freaked out and told me we could work through
it so I believed him. Then when things got rough for me, and I was trying to
finish my first year of my master’s program, do video interviews in the middle
of my power being cut off to get a “real” job, quit smoking as a coping
mechanism, eat right, regularly exercise, perform my actual job as a teaching
assistant and part time saleswoman, I was “too depressed” so he left. Then he
spent the next two months saying he wanted to get back together but needed
time, so he drug me along as I quit school and tried to hope for the best. The
best did not happen.
I
left school partly because I was so sick of consistently being belittled for my
field of study. I’m a smart girl and I wasn’t wasting my time in school. I could have
done some cool work. I’m still not sure how I feel about leaving. It was very
hard to always be broke though, and that was something I was sick of. My ex said I was
in most of my shitty situations because I didn’t have any money. It is true
that money can help, so now here I am, selling uniforms. I make decent money but
the stress for someone who has had a life long struggle with anxiety is
overwhelming. I have to sell a certain amount in the next month or I am out of
a job. I do NOT respond well to pressure by the way. My boyfriend pressured me
to be someone he needed and I crumbled. My job is pressuring me to be a certain
employee and I am crumbling. I made my first sale on Friday and finally, things
were looking up. “Look” I told myself. “All you practice in positive
thinking, Buddhist conversion, refusal to give in has lead you to this
success.” I was ecstatic. Finally, I had achieved something meaningful through
perseverance. I received a call this morning from that sale, telling me they
needed to cancel their order.
So when I
saw Trainwreck last night and didn't encounter any actual train wreck, it kinda upset me. Amy says of her character: “There’s a lot of
me in this movie. I’m not embarrassed to say that. It’s me like ten years ago
when I was a sophomore in college. I was in a lot of pain and I was spreading
myself too thin, I was drinking a lot…and then I just realized how destructive
it was.”
She
has a great job (OK, a shallow magazine editorial job, but I’m sorry at 24 I
was not working at a huge magazine which when they fired me allowed me to WALK
INTO VANITY FUCKING FAIR AND SUBMIT MY WRITING, I was working at a place called
GOOGIE BURGER where I had to wear Orange, sell burgers in a park, and ask
customers how I could ‘googie up their day’), and she parties, sleeps with
guys, drinks, and smokes pot. Wow, trainwreck. (Side eye). So, having intimacy issues does not make you a trainwreck; it makes you human. Ok, problems are
relative and I am the biggest advocate of this, but to me there was little
depth into Amy’s character being destructive aside from watching her drink and
sleep around, which inherently are actually not bad things, if we’re going to
come at this from a feminist perspective which I went into it thinking that was
Schumer’s angle.
We
slowly start to learn all this is to cover up the shame she feels about
herself, and that her “destructive” behavior is her being scared to open up for
fear of rejection. She finally meets a guy who really likes her, has a good
job, is cute and nice and they begin to date after her dealing with some major
reservations. He immediately wants to get in a relationship after ONE night which by the way, IS A HUGE RED FLAG.(Shout out to myself from a year ago: if he is ready to be in a relationship after one date, it's not a good sign because you just REPRESENT something he wants, you aren't what he wants.) (Love does not come first, like this commercial keeps repeating.)
As
real life sets in post honey moon period, Bill Hader’s character realizes that
Amy has major issues with self-esteem and anytime they fight Amy immediately
wants to leave and assumes their relationship is over. This is exactly what I
did. Anytime my boyfriend and I got into a fight, it scared me and I thought he
would leave me, so I would start to leave before he could.
This
reminds me of the most authentic scene in Trainwreck. It was gut-wrenching and
I almost couldn’t watch it because it resonated so deeply. Bill Hader’s character is fed up with Amy’s
neuroses after not being able to complete an important surgery because he was
up all night listening to Amy open up to him after a fight. This level of
vulnerability was of course very difficult for her, so when he came home and showed
his apparent weariness at the relationship immediately after her opening up, it triggered her exact fear of abandonment and her defenses shot up assuming things
would end, and ultimately Hader left.
This
scene dug into me like an eagle’s talons sticking themselves deeply into my heart, ripping it from my chest and
tearing it into little shreds, scattering them across the sticky floor of an Atlanta movie theater. I wasn’t ready to see that. It’s been three months since my
break up and 2 months since we talked, but I texted him a few days ago because
I miss him, because I believe in deep connections lasting for life even if they
aren’t romantic anymore, and he wouldn’t even respond. Everything is still
fresh. Even though maybe there were problems and he wasn’t right for me, I
opened up to him. He told me things no one has ever told me before and made me
feel things were possible I never thought were, especially with my previous
boyfriends. He did make me feel loved in ways no one else has. And when we had
problems I got scared and my defenses arose, we fought, and eventually we
broke up.
This
is the main part where I have a problem with the movie. I expected more from
Amy than a cliché at the end and I acknowledge I am coming at this from my own
heartbroken perspective. My ex and I experienced something very
similar to Amy and Bill’s fight in the movie; I thought about it and I was
determined to show him I could acknowledge the issues I had, show more appreciation
for others and him, and try and solve my problems and be happier. I was willing
to work on myself. He was not. He emphatically told me in fact, there was
nothing about him he was going to change.
In real life, there is no Lebron
James to sit the misguided self-righteous guy down for an “intervention” and explain to the guy that YOU HAVE ISSUES, TOO; that maybe YOU aren’t the easiest person to be in a relationship with either, and to stop pinning all your issues on someone else. That scene pissed
me off because it was absurd. No guys’s friends would ever do that, ever.
Against the advice of all the breakups blogs and self-help articles, I thought I should make the “huge romantic gesture” to show my ex how I loved him because I believe things you love are worth fighting for. It was in the form of a letter, but needless to say, we didn’t get back together.
Because
in real life, the guy doesn’t have an intervention with Lebron James
encouraging him to examine his own neuroses and open up to such a romantic
gesture. And in real life, the girl doesn’t dress up and dance to make a fool
of herself to “get the guy” and then they both decide they “wanna work it out”
and live happily ever after.
In the above interview, Amy gives the male interviewer shit for calling her character's choice of short skirts skanky, which shout out to her for that!! But he actually (*gulps*) brings up a good point about the movie (which is hard to admit cause of what a bonehead he appears to be). Everyone
applauded Amy here as an OH NO SHE DIDN’T feminist who shot down the evil male
interviewer (who had some really dumb shit to say, YES) but I think she also
avoided some points that were prevalent too.
Interviewer: “Being
with a guy eclipses everything else. The reason you’re a trainwreck is that
drinking and cheap sex is pretty much what drives you until you realize the
importance of life, isn’t that a fair summation?”
Amy: “The
point is she realizes she’s hurting herself and the people around her.”
Ok….kind
of. I would support this more if the ending of the movie wasn’t Amy’s character
writing an Vanity Fair article about how WONDERFUL Bill Hader’s character is,
then planning and choreographing an entire cheerleading routine to symbolize
her coming to meet him halfway and work on herself and admit she isn’t perfect
and makes mistakes but can change. Yes, she has a brief heart to heart with her
sister too, but it feels very secondary to the overall theme that Amy’s
character wins by getting the guy. Yes, she gets the guy through self-enlightenment, but the self-enlightenment isn't complete until she "GETS THE GUY." Bill Hader, even with his “intervention”
doesn’t have to change at all. Even though he admits that he lied to her; that
while he claimed to accept Amy for who she was at their relationship’s
beginning admitted he pretty much didn’t like a lot of things about her. Basically, Amy has to make these grand changes to be acceptable; Bill Hader’s
character literally has to do NOTHING.
That’s
not how true relationships work and I still think at the end of the day a real
feminist ending could have been different. I think everyone wants a
relationship because it is a basic part of our human needs, so I don’t fault
anyone for wanting that. But this movie’ s ending really translated for me that
the girl has to make all the efforts to change her ways to be with a guy and
then she will stop hurting.The guy is straight though, he's good. No change necessary. I guess my ex really was perfect.
In
real life, this relationship probably doesn’t work out. I have learned a lot
from my breakup, a lot that is similar to Amy’s character. I have hurt myself
and the people around me and I want to change that. That came through constant
working on myself over the years with and without relationships. It definitely
didn’t end with my current relationship (in which I finally opened myself up) working out. The guy doesn’t stick around for the grand gesture. And I’m just
kind of pissed because this could have been a movie where Amy could have had the
relationship and the realization, but it felt like all that was important was
the relationship.
After
my ex and I broke up I was determined to change. I went back to therapy, I got
a new job, I sought out a spiritual advisor, and I began attending and later
converting to Nichiren Buddhism. It’s only been three months and I’m still
trying to become a whole person on my own. You don’t recover from being a
trainwreck in three months, let alone two weeks after throwing on a
cheerleading costume and then getting back with your boyfriend after making some vague apologies.
Did
her character quit drinking and pot? Did she go to therapy? How did she stop
hurting? What did she do to help others? Literally none of that was relevant
as the camera slowly panned out from Amy's character lying underneath Bill Hader kissing her. Really? How fucking boring. Look, I have two close friends that have had relationships where they have had periods of separation and then gotten back w/ their significant other and they are both now happily in love. But major shit happened for both of them to come back together and have a healthy relationship. That wasn't encompassed in this movie. Where is the hard work, commitment to change, and pain that accompanies that on BOTH sides?
I
was scared to write this. “We have so few female led movies, Jessie, we need to
celebrate all of them.” “You aren’t writing editorials about male led movies.”
I guess I’m not because male led movies are not solely about relationships. That's the patriarchal luxury. (It feels so good to right patriarchy!!! My ex accused me of being divisive whenever I talked about sexism. Lemme soak this in.) When they
are about some fucked up dude they are nuanced and dark and introspective and
their relatonships are SECONDARY.
At one point in the movie, Bll Hader claims
Amy’s character got “really dark really quickly.” She was literally just venting to him and that was “really dark.” That pissed me off too. There are a lot of people,
young women, young trans men and women, young gay men, young lesbians, young men
and women who suffer from clinical illness, who have some dark shit they deal
with. I have suicidal ideation and my boyfriend
broke up with me because of it. It’s literally just a symptom of an
illness I have no control over, but it’s real and it’s there. And I was left because of it. That’s fucking dark. Or all the women who struggle with body image issues and starve
themselves and shit, that shit’s dark. Amy’s character got into none of that
dark shit. It was maybe very subtly implied, but that’s it. It was an insult to
use the word dark. She was spoiled. I’m writing that as another upper
middle class spoiled white female.
Also,
there have been other recent female led mediums that have been able to involve a
coming of age story with a relationship without the relationship eclipsing everything
else, which I’m sorry, it TOTALLY did in this movie. Bridesmaids, Bachelorette,
The Mindy Show, Melancholia, any Melissa McCarthy led movie, probably a shit
ton more. I want us to teach girls that self love is not contingent on who we
are dating. We don’t wake up, fall in love with ourselves, and then go out and
find a boyfriend. That should be the beginning of the movie quite
frankly to see how to navigate a relationship after that.
I
knowingly write this as someone who feels a bit of a train wreck right now. I left school, got
dumped, am not succeeding at my new job, and am trying very hard to cultivate
self-love before I attempt to love another again. The power is cut off in my
apartment with random junkies living there, the first sale I made which made everyone
proud of me just canceled on me this morning and I am feeling embarrassed, I
texted my ex this week and he didn’t respond, I can’t seem to find self-love no
matter how much I try, not matter how much I try to turn my suffering into
success I fail. I feel at war with my depression. I self harmed today for the first
time in years. I am scared but I am honest and that is the only freedom I have
ever had. Someone told me tonite “I put all my eggs in one basket.” I guess
that’s what I do when I am being really honest but it's all I know. I hope I can resonate with someone to
know I am not alone, without alienating most other people.
What can I say. I’m a trainwreck.
What can I say. I’m a trainwreck.
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