i am a star... Happy-Go-Lucky

so the movie starts...
5 seconds of watching the main character and everyone has a smile on their lips...
10 seconds in and everyone is having a chuckle...
15 seconds and we all openly laugh...

20 second... I stop laughing, everyone else laughs harder...
25 seconds... I begin to frown slightly, the guy behind me slaps his knee with laughter, and my friend S. is sinking into her seat.

30 seconds... I turn to S. and whisper fiercely 'S.! this girl is like me! that's me!'

S. turns to me, still laughing, then sees the expression on my face and begins to laugh harder... 'Oh my god Bee, you're right, it's you!'

hilarious... not.

the experience of sitting down watching a fictional character do things that you, a real human being, would do, and getting it right with every second that passes was insane. I was distressed as i knew that there would be things in the movie i hated about myself, but at the same time it was interesting... like 'what would I do?' and tell the character in my head what to do before she did it. and getting it right.

it wasn't the obvious stuff, mind you, like the art or the kids or the being single, although that stuff was all on the ball too.

it was the getting sucked in. i am a sucker. i am an intelligent person... i was always a strait A student, i got my degree without dedicating more than 20 hours over the years for study, i have never had to read anything twice... for goodness' sake my IQ is enough to get into bloody mensa. and yet the rational part of me can never manage to override the emotional.

i am the person who starts random conversations with the bookstore owner.

i am the person who, if they don't engage with me, i try even harder, to the point of being even more of a dickhead.

i am the person who, if someone steals something of mine i think 'well, they must have stolen it for a reason, they obviously needed it much more than i did.'

i am most certainly the person who begins conversations with random homeless people, even when they have clearly had a stroke in Broca's area and the conversation goes nowhere.

and i am the person, who, even after i get completely screwed over, i try to fix the person who did the wrong thing by me because i feel sorry for them.

but what made me upset about this movie was the ending. the whole movie i kept on saying her answers to myself before she said them, and then at the very end she was confronted with a terrible situation, the kind i am always dealing with. when someone asks you something and you should say no but you feel sorry for them and say yes.

well, i whispered in my head to her 'yes!'.

and she thought and thought and thought about her answer... and said, 'umm, no.'

and that was the end of the film. and it was closure for her because she has managed to work out when to say no and be firm. and now i'm freaking out because i've realised that i clearly still don't know how on earth to say no. i can't even tell the fictional Bee to say no.

i have to work out a way to be able to say no and feel no guilt.