It's a hard movie, for some reason. It features a character that I should hate; a beautiful, tall, slender blonde woman who was the prom queen in high school, forever regressed to the point so that she can't let go of those glory days. She's a wound of a character; spewing her discontent at both herself and the world outward like bile. I read reviews of people who said there was a sort of vindictive pleasure in watching a character so much like the golden, cruel girls of their high school days suffer in such a way, but even though I suffered at the hands of my own incarnation of the golden cruel one, I couldn't hate Mavis.
She's a wound of a character, and I felt that wound. I watched her cling to her past and my heart ached. I watched her lash out with all the fury and grief of a woman abandoned and I knew that pain. She is a vastly difficult character to sympathize with, but I did. Maybe we are alike, and not only in our chosen profession as a writer. Or 'author', as Mavis coldly corrects someone who dared get it wrong.
I'm not an easy person. I have few friends because I can be cold and arrogant and bitter. I'm fiercely judgmental, hard on everyone and everything, most of all myself. I'm don't cling to my past, like Mavis, but I do cling to my hurts. I wear them over my shoulders like spoils of war, forever proclaiming to the world that 'this is me. this is what I've suffered. this is what i've survived.'
Or maybe I'm nothing like this. As I've grown older, I've realized that where once I thought I saw myself so clearly, now I realize I don't. Not at all. The mirror in which I view myself is a messy, garbled thing. Less a vehicle of pure, objective reflection, and more a cubist apparatus; forever boxing and cutting myself up into pieces until I no longer recognize myself.
I watched Mavis pour her struggles into her writing. It was an interesting juxtaposition, because she is a genre writer; more specifically, a ghostwriter for a failing YA series. As she schemes to win back her married high school sweetheart, she fumes in her writing about how others hate her for her specialness, her beauty and poise and confidence, when in reality Mavis is none of those things. Her own mirror in which she saw herself has shattered and now she clings to the pieces and memories of that pure, unbroken reflection she once loved.
But I realized I do the same. I've poured my crisis of identity and faith into a fantasy series (ha! fantasy! what a delightful spin!) My characters struggle with their purpose in life and beyond just as I do. And through them, I find a measure of acceptance and peace.
I can't get Mavis the character out of my head. I watched her shuffle through the movie; all adolescent sullenness and hurt and spite, watching the world from behind wounded eyes. She was stuck, and the realization was so harrowing that after the movie ended, I turned to Fernando and asked him 'Am I stuck?"
He laughed at me (not unkindly). The idea was ludicrous to him. He told me that I'd given up my old home, my old beliefs, my old career choice, my old ways and ran to embrace my new ways head on. I'd been unhappy and changed my course with my own hands. He actually had to remind me of this, because for a moment, I had forgotten I was Jillian, the woman who set her busted ways on fire behind her. I believed I was Mavis for a moment, clinging to better days, stuck in what I felt I deserved.
I'm not that. It may be a struggle to see myself in that shifting cubist mirror, but if there is one thing I know, it's that I don't avoid the hard look; I'll stare for hours if only to catch a glimpse of what is true. I'll continue to pour myself into my characters but not as a means of regression. I'll use them to sharpen my view on the world, to push myself forward, to see in new ways.
I'm not stuck, and I never will be again.
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