Romantic comedy

Sometimes, I wish I were more of a cynic. I think that it might ease my anxiety and lighten my days if I could convince myself to always expect the worse from the universe. Like many people, I tried cynicism on when I was in my late teens and 20s, but it never really took. My heroes have ended up being people like Mr. Rogers.

I don't expect the best, happy endings, good to triumph, love to conquer all. But I do still hope for it. And when life doesn't turn out that way, no matter how much I tell myself that I'll stay detached from it all, I end up feeling bruised. The truth is, I prefer it that way. I'm no masochist, but I like the fact that I can still be inspired and moved, that I'm still sentimental and even sappy.

I think of life as a kind of romantic comedy, a love story that will turn just when I least expect it. And when I say "romantic comedy," I have something very specific in mind. To me, a romantic comedy is a journey, a series of (mis)adventures in which some poor schlub--who generally takes him/herself too seriously--encounters another poor schlub who at first seems quite different. Through the experiences that follow, the two come to see what they have in common, and antagonism is transformed into respect, even love.

Of course, the schlub tends not to realize that he is one (which is one of the reasons he takes himself to seriously). He probably thinks he's a hero or a misunderstood genius or even a father whose children would have perfect lives if only they'd listen to him and stop being so defiant. If he's lucky, something unexpected happens, and he realizes his defiant children, far from being his opposite, are very much like him and that in fighting them he's been fighting against himself: his own stubbornness or anger or fear or insecurity, the things he sees in himself and doesn't like.

My life, like any good comedy, has turned on these sorts of surprising revelations. Just when I think I am one thing, I turn out to be another; just when I'm convinced that some aspect of myself is a liability that I have to get rid of, someone else helps me to realize that it's the very quality that makes me who I am.

Seeing life this way has helped saved me from cynicism. It's given me a kind of faith that dire judgments about who and what we are can't be taken to heart, even when circumstances say otherwise. It's always a good idea to wait until the final returns are in, and we never have a complete picture of ourselves until we get a glimpse of ourselves through the eyes of others.

That, of course, is the other lesson of romantic comedy. There are some parts of myself that I'll only see and appreciate and understand by connecting with other people. Everyone I know--whether friend, enemy, lover, family--can serve as a mirror for me if I know how to look and if I'm willing to recognize myself in them. And if, of course, I can give up being so serious all the time and learn to laugh.

I know that I'll often forget these lessons. I'm certain that before I know it, I'll be playing the serious schlub and complaining about how no one listens to what I'm trying to teach them. But then I also know I'll fall into the fun of romance--with those I love, with life and the universe and myself--all over again. Who can stay cynical in the face of that?

History

I know there's something wrong with me. Not most of the time. Most of the time, I am the man people see: calm, affable, able to get along with just about anyone. A friend once described me as the sanest person she knew.

But I know that I'm damaged. I can feel it under my skin. I can feel it in the way my brain races at certain moments; I feel it in that sense of rushing that takes over at times. Like this morning, when I see a big brother having a bad morning tries to coerce his younger brother "get out" of the room they share. When I think about it, I know it's probably pretty normal sibling behavior, but standing there, watching it, something in me rises to the surface. Stupidly, I enter the argument and pretty soon he's being banished to his mother's house.

Now, half a day later, I can see that something happened to me. It wasn't wrong to take some kind of action, but it was more than that. What I felt was physical, physiological: a flushed sensation, sweating, my heart and head pounding. Muscle memory. My body falling into the memory of violence.

A boy grows up in a house filled with books and ideas and arguments. A house of words. But sometimes--often--the words show their jagged edge. Stupid. Fag. Crybaby. Nicknames and taunting rhymes. Sometimes these words fly between father and mother. Sometimes the father comes home drunk and falls asleep and nearly starts a fire. Sometimes the father and mother fight, hitting each other, twisting arms, throwing whatever's handy. More than once, the military police come to take the father away, because these fights happen on a military base. The father is a soldier, a combat veteran of Korea and Vietnam. Often when the parents aren't fighting, the five boys are, hard and mean. When the mother catches them at it, or when she's having a bad day, she chases them down and whips them with a belt. The boy can remember running, cowering, feeling the stings. He remembers wondering, bewildered, where all the violence is coming from.

My body remembers all of this, and my mind flies to it when I find myself in the middle of conflict, when I see bigger threatening smaller. I see the boy again trapped in a swirl of chaos and emotion and helplessness, trying to figure out a way to make it stop. No, I don't see him or even feel him; I become him, and I feel compelled to do what he couldn't: make it end, however I have to do that.

But I see this reaction shaping me. I see the ways it has made me cautious, afraid, even far away from any actual threat of violence. I see the way I've learned to manage space both physical and emotional. I also see the ways it's made me hungry for silence and stillness and peace. Not quiet but peace. Hungry for the absolute necessity of each person's wholeness.

Because I see my father and mother and brothers and me as people shattered, always trying to scoop up enough bits and pieces to keep ourselves going for another day. I don't know what shattered us, many things I suspect. The violence my father saw and committed in war; the violence my mother felt as a Latin American woman in the colonized country she grew up in; the violence of children surrounded by threats and uncertainty.

I don't have some illusion that I can make myself somehow ideally whole. Maybe no one ever is; certainly I'm not. But I need something better. Violence, for me, is not abstract; it isn't about people dying in some distant place so my "interests" can be protected or advanced. It's a living thing that sits beside me and breathes on me and from time to time chews at my heart.

I have to learn to live with this part of myself. I have to find some way to heal it. Where is that way?