When I was 13 years old I was OBSESSED with James Dean. I had a James Dean calendar, multiple "live fast, die young" decorative license plates, and a framed photo that sat on my dresser (funny story, I don't think I got rid of that until I married James...ha). At that point in life, my biggest dream was to finish high school, go to Fairmount Indiana and marry the winner of the James Dean lookalike contest. I dreamed BIG, I know.
A few years into high school I got over that dream. Instead I focused on the absolute perfect guy for me. He would be cool yet mysterious yet incredibly deep yet so romantic yet wealthy yet so handsome yet brooding yet had the best taste in music yet understood me completely. Oh ya and he would treat me incredibly but sometimes we would have passionate fights but they would all end in passionate kisses in the pouring rain so it was totally okay. I was hoping for a fantasy. I was hoping for the perfect guy. But I was setting myself up for a major loss because THIS GUY DID NOT EXIST.
The guy that I would fall in love with would be a person and nothing more than a person. He wouldn't fit into all those crazy categories I was aiming for, he would make mistakes, we would fight and it wouldn't always end in a passionate kiss but that would be ok because he was a person who was allowed to be a person, not some high school fantasy.
The other night I saw Paper Towns. I reaaaally enjoyed it and highly recommend it. There was a line at the end that stuck with me. As soon as I heard it, I wrote it down....
What a treacherous thing it is to believe
that a person is more than a person.
Oh man, that hit my core. It got me thinking and reminiscing of all the times when I believed a person to be more than a person. All those times when I idolized someone and then was crushed when they turned out to actually be a person. The main character did the same thing. He thought his crush was a miracle.
The fundamental mistake I had always made—and that she had, in fairness, always led me to make—was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.
I love that. She was not a miracle, not an adventure, not a fine and precious thing....she was a girl....a human being.
We're human beings, not fantasies....thank God for that.
XO,
s.s.♥︎.
