I was watching one of my favorite movies the other day, “Down to You” (Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Julia Stiles…get off me, it’s a good movie, if somewhat cheesy), and there’s a really interesting thing that happens. The main guy (FPJ), trying to prove to himself that he’s over his ex-girlfriend (JS), drunkenly decides to drink a bottle of her shampoo to see if he’s immune to it, to see if he doesn’t need it anymore. He ends up passing out and having to have his stomach pumped (lesson here: don’t consume products not approved for such by the FDA).
I thought this was an interesting idea. Forcing yourself to intake something that reminds you so strongly of someone that is no longer in your life to see if it still affects you, to see if it is sustenance or merely poison. Maybe it’s not shampoo for all of us, but something else. Happening to catch someone’s favorite movie on TV, catching a whiff of a familiar cologne while walking through the mall, or seeing someone driving the same type of car you used to make out in while parked in your parents’ driveway; sometimes you can’t help but think of that person.
For me, it’s music. Whether it’s been “official” or not, I’ve had a song with every person I’ve dated. I’m not totally absorbed by music like a lot of people, but I always find songs are the best way to express what I feel, even just to me. And whether the other person knows it or not, there was always an individual song that reminded me of him, that I would listen to when I wanted to think of him, that just made me smile insanely every time I heard it. Once a relationship ends, sometimes it can be torture to hear that song again. To remember the good times when that song meant so much to me. To relive the pain of no longer being with that person.
Today, I was listening to my iPod while I was at work. I just put it on a random shuffle, because I wasn’t feeling in one particular “music mood,” so I left it up to the fate of Apple as to what I would listen to next. About three-quarters of the way through mumbling a song to myself as it played (my computer faces away from the door to my office, and my biggest fear is that someone will come in to see me gyrating and belting out a song like a drunken sorority girl doing karaoke on Spring Break, because that’s usually what I feel like doing), I realized I was listening to one of those songs. It was one of the songs that I had appointed to represent the best part of a past relationship. And it hadn’t affected me at all today. I just thought of it as another song, something that I enjoyed enough to keep on my playlist. The first chords hadn’t sent me into an emotional tailspin. It was just another song.
So did that mean I was immune to that song? I thought I’d try another one. Even though this time I knew I was purposely picking out a song that had once meant so much to me and was listening to it with keen awareness…nothing. I kept skipping from song to song, going through a musical playlist of my past relationships. All of them…nothing.
Except one. There was one song that could still bring a smile to my face, with none of the pain. One that I just started playing over and over again, just so I could get that feeling again. That feeling that was renewed for me a few weeks ago at that wedding (see previous blog post). That’s still a good song in all manners of thought and feeling…
Sometimes a test of something that means so much to you in a relationship is what shows you who really matters. It shows you what song you should have been listening to all along…
And sometimes, dialogue from a movie like “Down to You” helps you understand the meaning of it all…
FPJ: How can this work?
JS: I don’t know, but we’ve come this far.
FPJ: I thought we met too young.
JS: But in starting over, we could get some place different.
FPJ: Some place we never imagined?
[Both smile]
End scene.
