Thelma and Louise and Me

After the whirlwind week between Christmas Eve and today, I found myself with the first free moments last night.  The girls were passed out in my bed, tucked in after having had their first up-'til-midnight celebration of the new year's arrival and the following day's parties and good wishes tour through the neighborhood.  Flicking through channels, sitting snuggled up on my couch with a blanket and a glass of wine, the quiet of the house brought the present upon me.  I was no longer in my head planning for the next day, reflecting about those passed and things missed or not done, I was right there.  And my birthday was coming in a few hours.  I got to Thelma and Louise just as they were coming upon J.D., the young, handsome, brand new Brad Pitt, but I knew the story like I know myself.  Thelma and Louise, like The Color Purple and Terms of Endearment and The English Patient, is a spot on my timeline, a moment of clarity and insight that I take pleasure in revisiting, no matter the tears and splatter that are sure to come. 

And on the eve of my 45th, I looked with new eyes on my story.  Every time, every single time, I love the charm, naiveté of Thelma.  Her hope, her wonder, her journey (with massive shock and disappointment sure), her young soul charm and adorability.  I beg her to see what I see before she gets into trouble, does something stupid, thwarts their chances and every time she does not.  She is so cute, so sweet, so shiny.  Oh, Thelma.

But I am Louise.  Cautious, well-prepared, ordered, organized, playing the cards close to the vest.  The thrill I get as this woman tidies her house before going away for what she expects will be a long weekend cannot be understated.  The way she keeps herself in check, always on high alert, even when she is having fun is familiar.  Her composure, her comportment, her trembling under that reserve is mine.  I can be zany and funny and irreverent.  I bet Louise was once a long time ago. Sometimes.  Before Texas.  Which she wants to avoid at all costs, does not want to revisit.  It's the past and threatens to tear her wide open again. 

Thelma and Louise takes us all on this journey across the gorgeous landscape of this country, showing us the beauty, the majesty, and the shifting contrasts and shadows made from that luminous glow.  As these women let their masks fall, revealing themselves, their internal struggles and realizations and their skin, their human skin that they live in every day without make up, naked, we see the terrain change shape, see danger in the shadows, feel the ominous pull of life's magic and mystery as they sort out the mess of their circumstances.  I have put myself in their shoes, lived vicariously through them every time.  But this time I wondered, what if indeed one of these women were actually me.  What if instead of two beautiful white women who find themselves with snowballing legal and emotional problems, Thelma and Louise or Thelma or Louise was a black woman.  Was me.  Would anyone be willing to take the journey with me? Would anyone want to come to my rescue?  Would my choices be seen as heroic or tragic?  Could I make that drive through the country, through the Midwest and Southwest of the United States as I tried to figure out how to right the wrongs, the mistakes and the impulses that got me into hot water?  Would I go over the canyon or be knocked off long before my soul made that arc, reveled in its evolution and transcendence? 

And then the tears fell harder even than usual when I realized that though the archetype, the Everyman (woman) journey, is indeed for everyone, I doubted that most would want to come along on the ride with me.  It's where we find ourselves today or at least where I find myself.  Deep in my heart, though I love with everything I can, I wonder if my love is reciprocated truly.  In our "post-racial" America, I now wonder who wants to hear my story, any of our stories, to really listen to them without trying to place it in a specific genre, a special place, an "other" category.  Does anyone believe that though our stories can be and are similar in so many ways, that we'd still like to see ourselves, be seen ourselves as part of the larger tale?  That ours are not peripheral, supporting parts but starring roles too?  I don't ask the questions to receive knee-jerk, fumbling reassurances.  I ask because of how much it hurts me to even have to.  Because the doubt has crept in and made me feel that whatever it was I thought I was leaving to my daughters has been eroded and that they will have to fight to be seen too. 

I ended the year struggling to be open and available to people who were more than comfortable telling me how I feel, how people of color are/feel/act/think/behave or who told me they didn't see what I was showing them, telling them, expressing, shouting about, crying about, and were quick to walk away or shut down the dialogue with all sorts of "proof" and "post-racial" mumbo-jumbo.  I lost people, let some go and allowed others to let me go when I took off my makeup, my mask, and showed my skin, my human skin, and it was real and pained and flawed, and could not be tidied.  When I realized that even I, a friend or a colleague or acquaintance, could not make a convincing argument for recognition or compassion or even dialogue. 

After years of trying not to "drive through Texas," not to go back to some painful truths, to reveal the scars I'd covered with my tidy, poised, secretive composure and protective stance, the circumstances had changed.  I couldn't get out of this.  Though I'd take many roads to try, they all still seem to end at the canyon.  So here we are.  I am hoping in the new year that we can talk to each other.  That the seekers of the shiny and new, the naïve and the fresh can take the hands of the weary and the wary and the jaded and the wounded and forge a direction together.  I hope that we are able to step back to think about and consider what each other says rather than react and attack.  I hope that I am not met with theorems and postulates in place of real stories and truth and connection.  I hope that we can find some kind of common group so that my story is as interesting, as worthy, as real, as true, as archetypal as any other.  I want us to see ourselves in each other, longing more for what is similar, rather that foreign or strange.  I want us to journey in all senses of the word--physically, emotionally, spiritually. 

I love Thelma and Louise and wouldn't want to change their story.  I road with them through their map, followed the lines that lead them to themselves and to their realizations and truths.  I will again. Their journey has informed mine and they have inspired me to seek out hands to hold, to revisit old places and find undiscovered territory, maybe even some truth.  Out there in that wildly powerful and spiritually haunting landscape, we all discover the essence of who we are.  If we let ourselves.


(c) Copyright 2015.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.