There are characters in fiction that break my heart. They stay with me long past the movie or book is over.
Sometimes, I can’t even finish because it is just too much.
These are characters that often remind me most of my life–not necessarily myself, but people who I have met that stay with you.
Like that old woman at the bus stop who tells you her life story and you’re no longer able to watch Forest Gump. Her story was so much better.
Today, Jasmine weighs heavily on my chest. Jasmine, with Blue eyes and a lost life, who had everything in order to get away only to loose it all. Oh, Jasmine, who has lost touch with reality around her.
Jasmine, who can’t put things behind her so easily.
She reminds me of so many women I’ve known and met in my life, whose identity is wrapped tightly around their men. Who unravel when they leave and thus begins the incessant ramblings about a life they once had to an audience that no longer listens. Blue Jasmine still is a cautionary tale for women across the modern ages: don’t trust men & don’t live in a fantasy for nothing good ever lasts. Not even love.
It is also the tip of a deep fear, the kind that lives so far under the sea, that even the mention of it sends you for the shores.
The fear that says even when happiness is in front of you, you’ll continue the same path of self destruction.
Who are you without a partner, anyways, little girl?