I can always tell when I’m feeling better. First sign is a manic frenzy to get my life “back on track”. I play catch-up and start to think about the future. That instantly brings on depression, anxiety and panic, so I try to balance it out by watching romcoms. I like romantic comedies. A LOT. The smarter and funnier the better, but I’ll settle for a cheesy Hallmark Channel movie, too.
I’ve yet to see one where the chronically ill hero finds the love of their life. That’s a plot that could go wrong in so many ways. Meeting another chronically ill partner? Oh, great, two sick people shlubbing along together, finding happiness in spite of barely living. Or one person “saves” the other, making life worth living. Yechhh. Or maybe the sick one keeps their illness a secret, but when it finally comes out, the healthy one finds they love the person no matter what. Right. That’s a totally true story, happens all the time.
The problem with all these scenarios is the chronic illness. Like a third wheel, it’s there, along for the ride whether you want it or not. I don’t know what the dynamics are for stable couples when one finds out they have a chronic illness. I’m sure it’s the same as everything else: some partners bail, others rise to the occasion, but most probably grope along blindly, trying to figure out what to do as problems arise. I don’t have that right now. I have Katie and Dad, of course, but they are family, so far from a romantic partner that it’s no comparison.
Well-meaning people in my life worry that I’m not happy being single. Well, I’m not always happy, but that doesn’t have anything to do with not having a relationship. Maybe they can’t imagine being alone in their own lives, so they project their own fears of being alone onto single people, . In many ways, most ways, in fact, I’m much happier alone. For some people this is simply impossible to understand, especially people who know that I love men and flirting. It’s true, though. How much of this is due to Lyme and how much is due to personal evolution is difficult to discern.
Romcoms often bring up lots of emotions for me after the high from the always happy ending, most of them cynical. I mean, at the heart of every romcom, regardless of how the writers frame the story, lies the fantasy that there is true love for everyone. That’s not true, it’s never been true. Is it a modern promise that can’t help but make most of us disappointed? Or is the modern standard so high that romcoms have to exist to keep the fantasy alive? Or maybe they exist in the same territory of fairy tales and romance novels; they satisfy our yearnings to be loved.
That’s the thing people pity single people for, isn’t it? “I just want you to be happy” is code for “I want someone to love you”. “I don’t want you to be alone” really means “I want someone to want to be with you”. It doesn’t matter how fulfilled your life is in every other area, the message is loud and clear: you can’t be satisfied until you have that person. In the most primitive terms, it’s biology at work, making sure we procreate and continue having little humans to populate the earth. I’m certainly long past that stage. I’m in the stage where I’m supposed to be enjoying my grandkids (I’m not sure I care about that, either. Katie has never wanted kids), and romantic love is now either a comforting memory or would be a real stroke of luck.
I think I like romcoms because they always have happy endings. They often start with one or both protagonists going through the worst time of their lives, followed by the soul-cleansing moral journey of discovering what is important in life, and finishing with the satisfying message that if you make the right choices and get your karma straight, you’ll be rewarded with true love. Just writing it down makes me realize how ridiculous the whole premise is. And yet I still come back for more.
The pay-off is catharsis, a feel good moment that cost me nothing. Since my Lyme disease isn’t going anywhere soon, I need an escape that doesn’t involve alcohol, physical exertion, money, brain power, or too much effort. I tend to go through phases of feeling like I want someone, but not so badly that I’m willing to, as they say in romcom vernacular, “put myself out there.” In truth, I don’t have the time or energy to put into anybody else but myself and I am a-ok with that.
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