Just A Small Town Girl…

Over the weekend, my sister and I were browsing through the million and one channels on our Sky box looking for a decent film to watch. Outside it was chucking it down with hailstones, plus we’d just unearthed a snuggly old plush blanket from the attic (big enough to cover four of us at one time) so of course there was nothing else to do but have a lazy day on the sofa! Anyway, eventually we stumbled upon a classic: Sleepless in Seattle starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, need I say more?

Now I must’ve seen this nineties Rom-Com a handful of times over the years, but this time I felt like the dialogue really spoke to me, specifically on two occasions.

The first was when Tom Hanks’ character describes how he plans on coping with the untimely death of his wife. He says, “Well, I’m gonna get out of bed every morning… breathe in and out all day long. Then, after a while I won’t have to remind myself to get out of bed every morning and breathe in and out. And, then after a while, I won’t have to think about how I had it great and perfect for a while.” And I thought to myself, wow, that’s so real.

There really is no quick fix for grief or loss. It doesn’t magically stop hurting after a set amount of time, it’s a gradual healing process and in all honesty is often something that one never fully recovers from. You just learn to live with the pain after a while, it becomes a part of you.

The other particularly poignant moment for me was when Meg Ryan’s character remarks, “Destiny is something we’ve invented because we can’t stand the fact that everything that happens is accidental.” Now as much as I love to stick my romanticised goggles on every now and then, when it comes down to it I am a realist through and through, and so this comment definitely struck a chord with me. The concept of destiny is essentially like a comfort blanket, we use it to shield ourselves from real life which (more often than not) is completely and utterly random!

It’s like when you’ve always been aware of something in the back of your mind, but then out of the blue someone else phrases said “thing” in such a simplistic yet eloquent way that stops you dead in your tracks and makes you exclaim, “Yes! That’s so true.” Basically I had one of those moments, so felt it was only right to share it with you!

😀 Happy Wednesday dear reader. #FoodforThought