Time

So, there aren’t many ways in which I am a girlie girl. But one of the few ways in which I am a typical lady, I happily embrace: The Sex and the City franchise…yup, I’m in. Can’t get enough. The writing is funny and smart. The situations are real(ish) and the relationships, especially between those four leading ladies, are inspiring and spot-on. You got me. Hook. Line. Sinker. All of it.

Because I was without a television for about five years (1998- 2003ish) I missed out on the show the first time around in *real* time. But as a 29^th birthday gift one of my best friends purchased for me Season One on DVD (not able to believe that I hadn’t actually already seen it myself) and since then I haven’t looked back. I rented (old school, Blockbuster, go-to-the-video-store style) each season in turn, and like every other women in American between the ages of say, 20 and 35 did long about 2004 when the show actually ended, I cried my ever-loving-face off as I completed the last DVD and for me the series finally drew to a close.

When the first of the movies came out two years ago, I was over-the-moon excited about the story continuing…catching up with my girlfriends that I had missed oh-so-much since that fateful night I popped the last DVD out of the player, tears streaming down my face, feeling quite justified in my hatred of all things Parisian. These women had become almost like real friends. You learned their lives and their quirks; their hopes and their dreams. You were really pulling for them all to get their lives together and be happy. You could identify with parts of all of them (I’m soo Miranda). Somehow, you found yourself actually caring. And when that was over, you missed them and wondered where they were and what they were doing- like friends from summer camp you promised you’d write to, but never did. (p.s. it is for this very SAME reason that I have not watched the final season of The West Wing. Missed it in real time. Purchased all 7 seasons after the fact. And have watched Seasons 1-4 until the DVDs are almost worn out (if that’s even possible.) Season 5 is watched…Season 6, almost complete. But I just can’t make myself even take the wrapping off the box for Season 7, because that would be acknowledging that it was over. And I’m not ready to say goodbye to that White House. Not yet. [Denial is a highly effective coping technique.]

It was two year ago when that first Sex and the City movie came out. And at the time, I was a personal disaster. The man I had been dating for over two years and I had just split in spectacular fashion. J and I, while still close friends and beginning to really talk in a “hey, this could be a relationship” sort of way, hadn’t begun (officially) our whirlwind romance. And I was in a dark place. The break-up place. The place where you sleep too much, eat too little, cry too often and just generally feel like someone is punching you in the gut…repeatedly. You parcel out your friends. You split the stuff. You cross landmarks and restaurants off the list of places you can ever go again because they were *your* places. You have to find new routines and different paths and just generally start all over from scratch. The weeks directly after the epic breakup suck, even if said breakup was the best possible thing you could ever do for you and for him (and for the good of all humanity, as it turns out).

That was Sex and the City, 2008. And in classic girlfriend form, my ladies all turned out to see the show with me. All of them. Literally, I saw the movie three times in the three opening days with three different sets of people who all wanted to get me out of the house and help to raise my spirits.

For those of you who have seen the movie, I can identify that there is one scene, or actually about a 5 minute sequence of scenes that does a better job than any other medium has ever done for me to encapsulate the aftermath feelings of the epic breakup. Carrie is taken on her pre-paid honeymoon by her best girlfriends. She is not talking. She walks into the lady’s room and takes off her sunglasses to assess herself in the mirror. And she looks devastated. She has dark circles and bags under her eyes. She looks completely exhausted and just so sad. It is clear she has not had a good night’s sleep in a long long time. There is no makeup. There is no care. And as she goes to splash water on her face, she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror looking back with an utterly blank stare.

Oh that stare.

I started crying uncontrollably at that stare. Because it so accurately summed up exactly my feelings in that moment. Complete and utter nothing, wondering who that woman was staring back from the mirror. Was that me? Numbness and sadness. (And embarrassment?) And dread. And not enough will to even put one foot in front of the other at that exact moment in time. She is, in fact, a mere shell of her former self. To say that I needed to see that movie…or maybe even just that one movie moment at that particular time in my life is a gross understatement. Somebody got it: someone truly understood what that kind of sadness and loss felt like. It was like the big screen was my mirror- I was finally able to see what I looked like from the outside. And it wasn’t pretty.

Tonight, I went to a pre-screening party for the movie Sex and the City 2. The theme of the movie was basically this: what a difference two years can make in a person’s life and in the life of a relationship. Another important and timely message I needed to hear.

Two years ago, I was in epic breakup land fearing I would never get out. Today, I don’t know what that guy is up to, but I know he doesn’t really cause me pause anymore. I grew. I changed. Time moved on.

Two years ago, I was just beginning to see glimpses of my dear friend J as someone who could be oh-so-much-more to me. Today, I am happier than I ever thought I could possibly be, in love with my best friend. Time has been our friend, too.

Two years ago, I was just truly getting into the meat of writing a dissertation. Today I have a PhD and an academic career. Two years of hard time well spent.

Two years ago, I had just met the crazy woman K who had an office next to mine at our summer job. And tonight, she now stands proudly as one of my closest girlfriends—the kind of girlfriend like from the movie- who shares her ups and downs, her laughs, her drinks, and her tickets to advanced screenings of sold out movies, just because she knows that I’ll love it. Time has cultivated that relationship as well.

There are so many other changes that have happened to me and my friends over the course of the last two years. Marriages. Engagements. Babies. Degrees earned. Moves made. Jobs acquired. Dreams fulfilled. And what the movie did for me tonight was make me look back to what a dark place I was in two years ago, and look at my progress, and be so grateful. I am not the girl I was two years ago. But what it also made me realize is that all my current craziness, two years from now, will be just another blip on life’s radar screen. Two years from now, I’ll be married to J and we’ll be beginning our beautiful lives together. It doesn’t seem possible. An eternity from now…and right around the corner. Time, it is a funny thing.

As we’ve already established, I have a soundtrack running through my head pretty much all the time. This evening, as I go to sleep, it’s not a song from the movie that’s stuck in my head, it’s the first verse of a song by Andrew Lloyd Weber from his show “Aspects of Love.”

Love, love changes everything:
Hands and faces, Earth and sky,
Love, Love changes everything:
How you live and how you die
Love can make the summer fly,
Or a night seem like a lifetime.
Yes love, love changes everything,
Now I tremble at your name.
Nothing in the world will ever be the same.

Whether it’s getting rid of bad love or finding new love; whether its having the love of a good man, or the love of your dearest friends; whether it’s that time has been excruciating to you, or that it has been your dear friend (like it has been for me these last two years), I fall asleep tonight comforted by the fact that time and love do in fact have the power to change everything.