Break-Ups: Using Hancock to Help Me Deal With It

NOTE: THIS ENTRY MENTIONS THE MOVIE HANCOCK AND CONTAINS SPOILERS. IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT OR DON'T KNOW THE SURPRISE ENDING, DON'T READ ON.

So, it looks like my boyfriend and I are breaking up. Not like it's coming as a shock; the handwriting was on the wall several months ago, really, and since we are now only coming upon our one-year anniversary, I guess that it all means that perhaps it just wasn't meant to be, eh?

However, I'm having a much tougher time with it than I had thought I would. I callously said to friends a few months ago that by...August, actually, we'd probably break up, because we would no longer have three things keeping us together: tickets to a cruise, tickets to see Joe Cocker and Steve Miller, and - most importantly - the fact that he was directing me in a play for his theatre company and he couldn't break up with the actress during the run or before the run, right? It would fuck up the show.

Well, it seems that my premonition was correct. Or was it simply a self-fulfilling prophecy? I used to accuse him of doing that: he talked about the end of our relationship on our first few dates - and I told him to stop or there would be no more dates. Then I ended up doing the same thing after we were already six months into the relationship. So now, it's August, we went on the cruise, we saw the show, and we did the play with success. Now, all we have left is a couple who loves each other very much but who has difficulty just being together. During the cruise and even during some moments after it, before it got stressful with the play, we had some really lovely moments together. I had started thinking maybe, just maybe, this might work out!!! And then, that hope died "like a blade of grass", coining a phrase that Anthony Hopkins says in the movie The World's Fastest Indian. The grass grew in spring, thrived in summer, it was beautiful while it lasted, but faded away in the end of fall.



Some friends of mine, a couple that have been together a while, and knew that I had been really happy about my boyfriend when the times where good - hell, that I was glad to have someone as wonderful as he had the potential to be in my life - asked me if I had seen the new movie Hancock, with Will Smith. I had seen it, and I really enjoyed it - my boyfriend and I went; although I was really bummed out at the end when I realized it was more of a love story about two people who couldn't be happy together than an action movie -- only because I was sitting next to the man that I loved but knew that in a month or so we would no longer be together. I had originally gone to get away from reality and just relax. Hell, the Chainsaw Massacre would have been relaxing.

But I digress.



So I told my friends, I said that yes, I had seen it and really loved it - despite what reviewers had said. The husband of the couple said this to me (and I'll paraphrase Rob's talk to me): that the movie showed you how two people who really loved each other so much...could still not be right for each other. At all. And no matter what you try to do, no matter how much that love consumes you - you can't be together because you don't bring out the best in each other, or you unintentionally hurt each other, or...well - you simply aren't meant to be together. And no amount of love you have for one another will every change that. And eventually, you'll just hurt each other...keep one another from their dreams/desires...or drive them mad. Or, as in the case of Hancock, get into such huge fights that you cause earth-shattering destruction.



So what does this mean for our hero, kids? Am I going to become a crime-fighting, booze-guzzling, wreck who can't get along with others? Some might say I'm halfway there (minus the crime-fighting), but that's another story...

No. I'm just really, really sad. This is the longest relationship I've had since my divorce...I almost feel like I'm getting divorced again. It hurts very much, but all of us have an inner strength that we try to find - and when we find it, we can move mountains. Hancock did. Why can't I?