past lives ruined my life

this isn't a funny post

i just watched Past Lives and it ruined my life. no one should ever watch this movie and it should have never been made. my soul is being pinched and pulled and wrung entirely dry.

i instinctively started writing, like grasping for water after you eat something spicy, even though water makes it worse, and writing makes you face the feelings you’re running away from.

Love & Pain, Edvard Munch (1895)

i don’t have much to say, because writing about love and heartbreak cheapens it. one of my favorite books is “a new earth” by eckhart tolle. in it, he cautions against jumping to name or describe something for that limits it to the constraints of language, which for centuries have failed to articulate god.

“So when you are alert and contemplate a flower, crystal, or bird without naming it mentally, it becomes a window for you into the formless. There is an inner opening, however slight, into the realm of spirit”

-Eckhart Tolle

in other words (the irony), sometimes you have to let feelings wash over you, get baptized in your own discomfort. even describing them as “feelings” feels incorrect. feelings are personal, selfish. love is, in its truest form (in my opinion), almost communal. like you’re a part of something other people have written and sang about and died over for centuries. like jumping in a river full of villagers bathing in the afternoon sun.

the last scene in the movie (spoiler) showcases two ill-fated soulmates going their separate ways. one back inside to her husband, the other in the backseat of an Uber driving across Brooklyn bridge. their last exchange offers a fleeting promise of a future life together. saying nothing of it, she weeps in the arms of her husband. of regret? of exhalation? of impatience for the next life to come? either way, he doesn’t ask. and either way, the lovers take inaction in their joint fate.

maybe the point i’m making (maybe, i really don’t know) is that we live in a culture that values and encourages “processing.” you can’t heal unless you process. write it down. talk about it. get to the bottom of the feeling by describing it and analyzing it and doing something about it.

i think for a lot of us, in the midst of our hardest moments, where love feels lost and we suspect we’re not above being human after all, it’s ok to just let it all wash over you. to not engage with the pressure of putting one foot in front of the other. to let an uber driver decide which turns to make while we sit motionless and take in the view, unsure of our destination but enraptured by the bridges we find ourselves on.

if you’re reading this, i’ll meet you on that bridge.

(not in a jumpy way oh god).

(this wasn’t a funny post. i hope that’s ok x)