It's been two months. And for some reason, I just felt I needed to finish watching Before Midnight today. I started watching it a few days back but didn't get past the scene where Jesse was watching the kids swim in the lake.

“If you want true love, then this is it,” Jesse says. “And if you can’t see it, then you’re blind.”

This was the first movie in the trilogy that I actually felt I was the guy. In Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, most of Celine's lines felt they were mine, as well as her sense of pride, feminism, and her struggles. But in Before Midnight, I could see myself in Jesse's shoes: his commitment to what they have, his 'boring' routine, and and his attempts in making Celine laugh.

I was that (I still am able to make my Celine laugh). But my Celine is blind. (Now that I think about it, he can be defined as such, literally).

I just wish that this Before Midnight's Celine chooses to see for the rest of her life.

 

"I would like to communicate with you about Difficult Things.
We have connected.

I would like to love you if that is how it is. I would like to honor our connection with mutual openness. Or, I would like to lose you if that is how it is. I would not like to dishonor our connection with a lack of communication about the confusing things.

I would not like to lose said connection: connection is a spark, it is rare, a cause for joy. I would not like to lose said spark because of my or your inability to communicate about my or your fear. I do not mind fear: I fear, you fear. I would like to honor our fear by tending to it, by giving it light and letting it relax. I have learned this: when I am gripped by confusion I do not shut down: rather, I talk it out. It is a clumsy, simple tactic that works every time: by giving voice to that which I do not understand or feel comfortable about, my confusion gains sanity instead of calcifying into fear of fear.

If you are afraid, come here and I will hold you into me. Or go away, go for a walk and hold yourself sweetly.

I would like to assure you: I will never resent your fear. Rather: I would like to admire you for acknowledging your hesitation and I trust there are good reasons for it that I can not yet know. And I would like to care if you will let me look beneath your folded wings.

If I truly care for you I must care more about you than about my feelings for you."

"And if you do not tell me, I will fold my wings closed against your heart and I would not like to be friends. For such cowardliness is for children, though children have an excuse: they are children.

...I have made friends with myself, so I do not fear loneliness. I am even fine with disrespect, for my capacity to cease to care is contextualized by my good friend’s repeated advice over the years: “If she does not communicate, she is a child: forget her, you deserve better.”

And so, I say, I would like to forget you."


(Excerpts from Things I would like to do with you when we are confused.)

I am having a difficult time.