confessions of a recovering gladiator

hi.

my name is eulalia, and i am a recovering gladiator.

the new season of "scandal" starts tomorrow and i'm having difficulty getting excited about it. i will more than likely watch the premiere, but it won't be necessarily be appointment television with me glued to the couch for the whole hour and live-tweeting the whole thing. i'm sure there are a number of you who will be greatly relieved by this news, especially if you've followed me on twitter during previous seasons of "scandal" and have seen just how active my feed can be for that hour and some change each week.

i've been trying to figure out the rationale for my decline in devotion, aside from the shark jumpage (if you're a fan and you watched last season, especially the finale, then you're probably nodding your head in agreement right now), and it occurred to me that it's easier for me to let go of "scandal" now than it would have been when the show first started.

"scandal" premiered during my quasi-nanny days in deerfield. i would record each week's episode and then watch it friday morning, usually while the twins were napping. i'd live-tweet in the sense of posting my reactions as i was watching each episode the day after. twitter was a huge lifeline for me in those days because it was a great way to stay connected with people and it didn't require a huge amount of thought, which worked because, as a lot of you may remember, i had a lot of shit going on back then.

when i started moving closer, and finally returned to the city, my obsession with "scandal" continued. in hindsight, i think the show was/is a great escape route. it's soapy and cheesy and just provocative enough to keep gladiators like me tuned in every week. it really was appointment television for me. any number of y'all can attest to the fact that i would arrange my schedule to make sure i was in front of a tv with my laptop and/or, once i finally got a smartphone, my phone, ready to tweet along with the cast and my fellow gladiators.

this upcoming season, though? i don't know. enough has changed in my life, the return to full-time employment being a large part of it, that i'm not sure i need that weekly escapism as much. i'm on twitter as much as i ever was, i think, but it's not coming from a sense of "omfg my life is in shambles and tweeting with y'all is the only thing that makes any sense right now" as it was a few years ago. i'm still stressed out about any number of things, but knowing that i have a steady paycheck and am slowly saving enough to move back out on my own is so wonderfully fantastic. i can go out for drinks or a impromptu dinner (as i've done twice this week already) and not panic about where the money is coming from or how my phone bill's gonna get paid and will i have enough money to get back and forth to work. these are blessings and i am grateful for all of them.

the fact that this new chapter of my life, unfinished as it is, coincides with the return of "scandal" is really nothing more than that - a coincidence. i just think it's interesting how a show, and how i interacted with that show, kept me going for so long. i think it's great that i feel like i'm in a place where i don't need that crutch as much as i once did. i won't go so far as to say that "scandal" is now just another tv show for me, but i can say that for this coming season, i'm more interested in the plot twists in my own life than in the ones on screen for that hour on thursday nights. i'm sure wine and popcorn, or some sort of booze and snacks, will still be involved somehow.

grasping at and catching dreams

[TW: sexual abuse/assault/misconduct]

i went to the movies last friday night. this in and of itself is not that unusual - lots of people go to the movies on friday nights, right? right.

i saw a movie called "dreamcatcher." it knocked me for more of a loop than i expected. yes, i bought a ticket for this knowing that it would probably make me cry. and it did. what i didn't expect was to be transported back to the young girl i was, trying to make sense of things. i cried for the girls and women in the film, and i cried for myself, and i cried for so many other countless women and girls. it was actually kind of a combination cry, because i didn't completely lose my composure.

i sat there in the theater, seeing these women and girls in and around the city that i love (yes, we're talking about chicago), who'd gone through so much and still had so much to endure and i couldn't help but wonder about how the hell did i get so lucky? ok, maybe "lucky" isn't the best term, but let's go with it for now. bad things happened to me and, by most societal measures, i made it out ok. i graduated high school, picked up a degree or 3, i don't have any kids...all the check boxes are filled, y'know?

but what the fuck makes me so different from the women in the movie? how'd i make it through and they didn't or at least haven't made it yet? i couldn't piece it together. i'm still puzzling through it, to be honest. i may never figure it out and i'm trying to be ok with it. but, oh, i empathized with these women and girls, y'all. and when brenda, the subject of this documentary, admitted to having a few days during which she wasn't sure how to keep functioning and doing the work? that's a paraphrase, but damn if i didn't identify and start crying along with her and a couple other people in the theater.

i made a donation to the dreamcatcher foundation this week. that's how much the movie affected me. "dreamcatcher" is amazing, if a bit triggering, and if you're able to watch it if/when it comes to a theater near you, please do so. i'll pass you some kleenex. i was so keyed up after the movie that i didn't feel like i could go straight home, so i stopped at the bar and had a few drinks and caught up with a few friends. that's another post, though, about the whole not feeling like i can go home thing. 

i went to the movies again last night. i'd missed previous screenings of "amy" around the city so i made sure to put this on my calendar and buy a ticket. i'm so glad i did, even though i spent half the movie just saying "oh, amy" to myself over and over. so many people failed amy throughout her life, and i'm glad the movie didn't gloss over it. 

this is what i've been pondering since friday and again since last night. how is it that so many of us manage to grasp at and eventually catch our dreams, and so many more people are still trying to become mobile enough to even grasp at their dreams, let alone figure out how to catch at least one of them? it doesn't seem fair and yet i know this is how the world works, and so i am trying not to over-think it, but i guess that's part of this whole empath/caregiver thing - pondering the how/why of things are fucked up even while you're trying to do your best to make things even just a little bit better.

it's like i keep reminding myself - it's ok not to have all of the answers because i damn sure don't have all of the questions. just keep doing the work. keep pushing forward. it's not as easy as it sounds, trust me, but sometimes it's all we can do.