There’s a scene from the movie Dead Again that’s haunted me since I was a teenager.
Robin Williams plays the disgraced psychiatrist who now works in a supermarket, and Kenneth Branagh is in love with a woman who turns out to be his reincarnated lover. (Awful cliche, long story.)
Anyway, Kenneth is holding his pen like a cigarette, obviously fighting the urge for a smoke. Robin William offers a cigarette and he declines, saying he’s “trying to quit.”
The psychiatrist’s response:
“Someone’s either a smoker or a nonsmoker, there’s no in-between. The trick is to find out which one you are and be that. Don’t tell me you’re trying. People who say that are pussies who cannot commit. Find out which one you are. Be that. That’s it.”
I’m thinking about that now and wondering…
What’s my addiction? What am I fooling myself that “I’m over?”
It takes me a minute to identify because I’m disgustingly free of “normal” vices. I inhale sharply as it comes to me.
I am addicted to longing.
It’s been with me so long that I’ve become attached. I can trace it back to age five when my father left, the sadness of watching him drive away every time our visitation was over.
It morphed into crushes on boys I’d never have. I fell in love with unattainable characters in movies and books. I’d revel in melancholy songs and tragic love stories.
I’ve been reliving that longing over and over because it’s what I thought love was supposed to be like.
I tell myself I’m over that bittersweet longing, but it’s not done with me.
It doesn’t serve me to deny where I am. It doesn’t do me any good to beat myself up with reminders that I should be over this by now.
I can’t really fool myself, anyway. I still want to–maybe even need to–feel this.
Until I don’t.
One day I’ll know that I’m not the girl who’s lost in longing any more.
I’ll be free, not because I’m “trying,” but simply because I am.
