The Crossover

I’m passive. I was born into mediation, due to my birth order – the middle of five girls. I’m a Pisces – like my mother. My world is never black and white. It is a misty, foggy grey. It’s thick with indecision with tendrils of guilt that confuse my passage through even the easiest of decisions.

There are always two sides to everything. I seek understanding through stories and human motivation. I counsel friends and sisters. I direct theater. I write.

I’m wishy-washy. I CONSTANTLY second guess EVERY decision I make. It takes me forever to figure out what to wear. I’m forgetful since I’m usually engaged in a back and forth conversation with myself.

I consider myself “lucky” for any accomplishment I achieve because my inherent passiveness doesn’t translate to action. Success startles the passive person.

I’m more of a watcher than a doer. I’m not an activist.

I remember sitting in the movie theater in 1991, sobbing in my seat at the end of “Thelma and Louise.” I had never been so personally affected by a movie. Layers upon layers of emotions battled within me. I watched it again. And again. I bought the videotape and then traded it in for the DVD years later. Plus, it had been partially filmed in New Mexico, my home state, and it filled me with homesickness for the colors of youth.

I insisted that my older sister watch it with me during a visit. Drunk and sobbing, we mended the rifts in our relationship and talked openly and honestly into the night. She would die a week later at the wheel of her car.

It took a while for me to watch it again. I pull it out when I need a good cry; that, or “Billy Elliot.”

It’s been on my mind a lot lately. I haven’t watched it. Thanks to this election cycle it is ONE of the many things in my life that have been soured or ruined for good. (“Louise” in my opinion, is a bit bat-shit crazy and I grew weary of seeing her face on my feed.)

But, Thelma’s line towards the end of the film, “…but, umm, I don’t know, you know, something’s, like, crossed over in me and I can’t go back, I mean I just couldn’t live” keeps haunting me.

It’s stuck in a mind-groove.

I have to admit Thelma’s character resonated with me more than Louise. I always wanted to think I was a Louise, but if I’m honest, I’m a Thelma. We’re both emotionally driven and somewhat naïve to manipulation. But, we have keen insight to others. We trust the world and its people. We let others take care of us. And we both way over-pack.

I’m choking on last week. I’m sitting by the pool in a ridiculous bikini with skinned knees and dried blood on my face with a bag packed but no idea where to go. Waiting for someone else to tell me what to do. Headphones on, drowning out the news that keeps telling me to run. RUN!

Mornings now begin with short and snippy conversations with my best friend, my wife, over breakfast that we swallow with our fear and wash our dreams down with cold coffee. Our evenings end with too much wine, and Harry Potter films. (By the way, did NO ONE pay attention to the storyline?)

But that line. Crossed over. That happened to me last week. Something has crossed over and I can’t go back. I won’t go back.

My passiveness has taken a back seat. I know each day it will get easier and each word I type makes a difference.

So, move the fuck over. I’m driving.

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