Cage

I watched Breakfast at Tiffany's last night. As cliché as it is for me - a 20-something female living in New York - to like that film, I still openly really, really like that film. I didn't much care for it the first time I saw it, but it's grown on me with each viewing. I've also read the short story, which I actually like even more - think better writing, no happy ending - but there's just something about the film that calms me down when I'm feeling restless and crazy and anxious. Something about watching Audrey Hepburn, so beautiful and graceful and classy, get drunk at a speakeasy and retrieve her phone from her suitcase and pull shoes out of her refrigerator; it somehow reassures me that maybe everyone goes through these crazy stages in their lives, where nothing seems to be in its proper place, and even all the glamour and parties and amazing New York experiences somehow seem to come up short.

At the end of the film, she and George Peppard are riding in a cab and he tells her he's in love with her and she says, "So what?" His response is so poignant and true and beautiful. And God I sound like such a cliche of myself but I don't care because it really spoke to me last night when I watched it. I'm pretty sure if a man ever said anything like this to me, I would marry him on the spot.

"You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, 'Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness.' You call yourself a free spirit, a 'wild thing,' and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself."

No matter where you run, you just send up running into yourself. If the past six months have taught me anything, it's that. So it's time for me to figure out who I am, and love that person, and find my own happiness.

Until next time.