Waiting for my movie montage
Break-ups and long renovations
I’ve recently gone through a break-up.
Present tense. Am still going through.
And as I struggle to pick up the pieces (even though the break-up was my doing) I’ve been reminded of the cruel lie Hollywood has conditioned me to believe since girlhood: From Baby and Johnny learning The Lift in a lake in Dirty Dancing after Baby gets mad; To Andie transforming an old dress into something new and fabulous when she’s been dumped before the prom in Pretty in Pink; to (another) Andy’s makeover scene in The Devil Wears Prada (let’s not talk about the choice of beautiful Anne Hathaway as a supposedly fat and dowdy character needing to be made over...)
Of course I’m talking about the everything’s going to be ok movie montage.
I’ve been waiting for mine to kick in. You know, upbeat music, quick cuts of me moving furniture, putting on lipstick, starting fresh. But as a friend reminded me, real life isn’t like that. If my current life were to be compared to a movie scene, it’d be a bit more like the opening in Bridget Jones’s diary, minus the cigarettes.
And while I’d love to be able to whisper soulfully/cheesily “I just wanna let them know they didn’t break me” like Andie says to her dad when she tells him she’s going to the prom alone, there is no “them” to prove anything to. Only me. And besides, I’m not there yet.
Real life recovery from heartbreak/grief/loss etc is much more incremental and can’t be captured in the length of a synth-heavy eighties tune, no matter how convenient that would be. Often it’s made up of such minuscule shifts that it’s only looking back that you can see things have changed for the better.
If I can segue into interiors here, renovations also don’t belong in a montage.
Despite the 15 second home makeover videos on Instagram and TikTok, the reality is often far from quick and is rarely set to music, unless you count swearing, crying and hammering as a soundtrack.
I couldn’t sleep the other night and was looking at photos on my phone when I stumbled on some photos of my house exactly a year ago. If you’ve followed along on Instagram you’ll know that my (ex) boyfriend and I bought a house two years ago and lived in it for most of the renovations. A well-edited montage would show you its seemingly smooth transformation from a run-down and outdated bungalow to an airy and characterful home. The reality is its been far from smooth and it’s only by looking at back at photos of the journey that I’m fully able to appreciate just how much has changed.
Trust the process
I recently joined a choir. For one hour a week, a large group of mainly women meet in a church hall and learn our individual parts of chunks of songs (Bjork, Annie Lennox, Sufjan Stevens, The Beach Boys, Paul Simon. A cool choir). It feels fragmented and unfinished, and at this stage impossible to see how it will all come together before our first concert next month. But those members who have been part of the group for longer keep on saying to trust the process. Somehow it all comes together, they say. Not that it ends up being perfect, but perfection isn’t the point.
It’s a phrase I’ve repeated to myself a lot lately. Trust the process. When you’re in the depths of despair it can feel like things will never get better. Every day I hope things will improve but at the time I can’t see any actual change. I spoke to my (younger and very much wiser) sister and she told me to try to see if there was a tiny bit of light that I could grasp onto every day. Find it and focus on that. Appreciate that bit.
And whatever you do, she said, don’t think too far ahead because overwhelm will get you. When I think of all the things I still have to do to the house to either live in it, rent it or sell it, a wave of panic takes over. And when I think that I have to afford it all on my own now, it paralyses me.
So I think in small chunks of time. Today I will steam off the wallpaper on one wall. Tomorrow I will sand the lumpy bits. Maybe the next day I will cut skirting boards. I will send one new client email. I will update my portfolio. And that’s as far as I go. And if I don’t achieve those goals (I haven’t) I try not to beat myself up. I try to trust the process and have faith that maybe tomorrow I’ll feel better. Or if not tomorrow, then maybe next week.
Of course a part of me wishes I could fast forward to a year from now when hopefully the hardest parts are in the past, both spiritually and physically. I do wish I could already be at the “she’s back!” movie montage edit of this part of my life, but in real life - annoyingly - we have to do the work.
My montage soundtrack? Well, let me show you how deeply uncool I can be.
Madonna’s music has soundtracked my life since I bought my first cassette, Like a Virgin, aged nine. So this seems appropriate, simply because it came on shuffle as I was walking on the beach in a moment of deep sadness, and while Madonna is no poet, it gave me the tiniest movie montage glimmer. Can you picture it?
Oh sweetheart, was it the pasta? I am so, so sorry...well, OK, not that sorry. You own a house, BY the sea and you can get to London and you have a very successful career which will keep you in work and $$ for his share of the mortgage and you have That Family and you look hot as hell and you have really good friends and you are funny and really, really smart and, lessee, oh right, Kimchee(!!!) and you are about to have GREAT Adventures. Because...of course you will. And you're in a choir...so, like, you can sing as well??!! You Go, Girl. You are about to have a whole lot of fun! XXOO, Susan
Your words resonate with all of us. Your vulnerability and honesty can help others, as you move forward. Thanks for sharing!