As soon as most of you saw the title of this section you knew what movie I was referencing. Mean Girls. I reference that line a lot. Probably a weird amount and it’s ALWAYS A HIT. Either people are humoring me or it’s a pretty well-known movie line. Either way, every time I reference it I wonder why it is so popular and why people remember it so well.
A few days ago (likely years by the time this gets published) I was laying in my yard and this line came to mind. It clicked. I finally understood why this line is so relatable and heavily quoted. I think that most of us have this secret feeling that we are going to get found out. That someone is going to come in and call us on our B.S.
So at one flip of the coin we all want intimacy and love but at the same time, we don’t want to be found out. I don’t know much but I do know that intimacy is about exposure so by deductive reasoning you can’t have your safety and comfort AND have love and intimacy at the same time.
I think that makes some of us, or maybe just me, in love with the idea of love. We tell ourselves that we really actually want it but at the first sights of having to be uncomfortable or feeling weird, we jump ship. Sometimes that comes in the forms of finding justifiable, “deal breakers” in the other person and calling it off completely. To others, it comes in the form of closing yourself off and giving your partner the cold shoulder in efforts to make them break up with you.
Maybe I’m the only one who has ever self-sabotage themselves in a relationship but I doubt it. When it doesn’t line up with the fairy tale, an unrealistic dream that we’ve had time to cultivate and grow in our mind, we dip. I’ve done this so many times it’s scary. And just as a side note, I’m not going to do it again. I’ve recognized this in myself and I’m stopping it right now. I hope all of you out there who can relate to this will join me in ending the cycle.
All I know is that real love the kind that you actually get in life, and not on the movie screens doesn’t look like your fantasies and daydreams. It probably looks less like being helicoptered off to some private island every day and living with a girl that has a perfect, cellulite-free body and who doesn’t poop for the rest of your life and more like dying to yourself and preferring the other person. I’m sure it will be magical in its own kind of way, but it will likely look more like watching Netflix on the couch together, hearing someone fart and laughing about it, and getting into fights about stupid crap.
Being in love with the idea of love is a slippery slope. And maybe being “found out” isn’t as scary as we think it will be.
ELLIE LACEY 