I watched the movie "The Holiday" the other day.  Parts of it were unbearably predictable and far from believable, yet there were a few memorable lines.  The one that most stuck out to me was when an older gentlemen, who Kate Winslet's character, Iris, has befriended explains to her that there are two kinds of women characters in cinema.  There is the best friend and the Leading Lady.  He goes on to tell her that, in his eyes, she is most definitely meant to be a Leading Lady and then asks why she is acting like the best friend.  This is a big lightbulb moment for Iris, as it was for me, and she suddenly exclaims "For Godsake, you should be the Leading Lady in your own life!" or something to that effect. 

It just hit me...I have lived my entire life feeling deep inside that I am a "Leading Lady," "a woman to love," and all sorts of other great lines I have heard in movies that describe the sort of woman whos got guts, pinache, style, sass, balls, and so on.  The problem, then, is that I have also lived most of my life, since my Dad basically gave up really loving me  because my stepmother couldn't take it and my Mother gave up protecting me because she simply had nothing more to give, with this incredible, creeping, sneaking, haunting fear that maybe I just don't deserve to be a Leading Lady.  Even intellectually knowing this feeling to be false, has not stopped me from allowing it to paralyze me and break my heart time and time again.  And now I'm angry and sad and frustrated and I look around at my life and see that it is not at all what I think I am worthy of....or is it?? 

There is this little princess inside, who is slowly turning into a queen, whos voice gets louder and louder as every year passes.  She is screaming, "No! This is not enough for us!  Honor us, honor yourself!," and the more I ingore her, the more I feel I am being strangled from the inside.  I have, for many years, tried to drown out her voice by filling myself up with food or clothes or shoes, all the while feeling the void continue to grow. 

Tomorrow morning, I am going to wake up and honor every part of myself, even if it feels freakishly foreign.  I am going to look at my hands, my arms, my breasts, my legs, my feet, and say thank you for every part that I have so long abused and allowed others to abuse.  I am going to find the strength somewhere inside to learn to take a step back from everything in my life that does not support and honor the ME of me.  I am going to stop crying because others don't care for my soul and care for it MYSELF.  I am going to begin to learn to give myself every fucking thing that I feel others have denied me and open my eyes to the real truth; I have allowed myself to be denied.  I am going to begin a journey.  A journey to the place I have searched and hoped to find since I was a very little girl...a place where roses can grown without the need for protective thorns.  I am going to remember there is no more beautiful rose in my life than me and no rose who needs protection more by me than ME!  I also cannot deny that I still have hope to be met on my journey by the one I love.  I have hope that somehow, by showing him how to love me by example, that he will be willing, able, and even excited to do his best to mirror my example.  I have so much to give to someone else; I just have to learn to give it to myself first. 
I once promised myself not to expose myself completely in a blog entry.  Oh well.  Leading Ladys are allowed to change their minds, right?

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair

Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets

Bread does not nourish me,dawn disrupts me, all day

I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps

I hunger for your sleek laugh,

your hands the color of a savage harvest

Hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails

I want to eat your skin like a whole almond

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body

the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,

I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,

hunting for you, your hot heart

like a Puma in the barrens of Quitratue

Pablo Neruda....

I bet this poem is much better in its original spanish...i think it loses some of its value when translated into English, but I still like how raw it is.

My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases

at whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring,

whose palms are bulls in China, burs in linen,

and have no cunning with any soft thing

Except all ill at ease, fidgeting people:

the refugee uncertain at the door

you make at home; deftly you steady

the drunk clambering on his undulant floor

Unpredictable dear, the taxi drivers' terror,

shrinking from far headlights pale as a dime

yet leaping before red apoplectic street cars--

misfit in any space. And never on time

A wrench in clocks and the solar system. Only

with words and people and love you move at ease.

In traffic of wit expertly manoeuvre

and keep us, all devotion, at your knees

Forgetting your coffee spreading on our flannel,

your lipstick grinning on our coat,

so gayly in love's unbreakable heaven

our souls on glory of spilt bourbon float.

Be with me darling early and late-Smash glasses

i will study wry music for your sake

for should your hands drop white and empty

all the toys in the world would break.

Love Poem~ by John Frederick Nims

 

 

 

Your results:
You are Supergirl

Supergirl 85% Superman 80% Wonder Woman 80% The Flash 80% Green Lantern 75% Catwoman 75% Robin 70% Hulk 65% Batman 60% Spider-Man 55% Iron Man 45% Lean, muscular and feminine. Honest and a defender of the innocent. Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz

As Ray Porter watched his Mirabelle walk away....

....he feels a loss...

How is it possible.....-he thinks

....to miss a woman whom he kept at a distance...

....so that when she was gone....

....he would not miss her....

...Only then did he realize how wanting part of her....

...and not all of her....

...had hurt them both...

Everytime I read these lines, I could burst into tears on the spot.  Since I am a generally weepy person, I dont consider this to be all that noteworthy, except that I really do believe I'm crying for good reason this time.  I can relate very much to the way Mirabelle feels in this movie...-at one point, she asks Ray Porter "why dont you love me?" and that just broke my heart.  As I suspected, and he later admits, he did have feelings of love for her, but was so terrified by their power that he hid them away.  I feel overwhelmed with sadness when I think of how afraid to love many of us are, and even how afraid I am to love sometimes.  It feels so much easier to protect ourselves, to hold back, to be less unselfish, to push someone away.  Yet, when it comes down to it, what could possibly be more painful than being Ray Porter at the end of the movie, standing alone, watching the person you loved deeply and truly walk away into someone else's arms because you were too afraid?  I am going to force myself to focus on opening myself more, giving more of myself, giving more to myself, and allowing someone else to give to me, as well.  I am very hungry for a deeper, more passionate, more spiritual love to share with my partner (whom I love like no one else), but for many years, I have let my fear get in the way.....

Its late, I should sleep....You know its too late when you're pouring out your little heart to your blog, lol.

**somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
 any experience, your eyes have their silence;
in your most frail gesture are things that enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

**your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

**or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
Nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
The power of your intense fragility: whose texture
Compels me with the color of its countries,
Rendering death and forever with each breathing

 **(I do not know what it is about you that closes
And opens; only something in me understands
The voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
E. E. Cummings*** (my favorite)