Little Women & Me

I just saw a music video with scenes from the above film which was released back in the mid-1990s that stared Susan Sarandon, Winona Ryder and Christian Bale. It was based upon the Luisa May Alcott book by the same name: Little Women. I remember the story from my youth. I spent many years thinking I was a bit like the 3rd sister, Beth…the one who wanted everyone to be happy. So full of life, but in reality just not quite destined for this earth. Making piano music, but so unsure of a picture of what her story would be like. I remember awaking from dreams that I was going to die in high school but that through my death many others would find hope and life. This in some way seemed easier than trying to figure out the complexity of growing into adulthood and the ever increasing gray of uncertainty about the future.

Yet, this sister has never quite fit me; there was something deeper in me that was trying to break free (and I continued on living without signs of any sudden illness). So which sister am I? Not Amy. No, the youngest sister Amy has never quite worked for me because I have never been and never will be able to fit into her beauty. I will never be consumed by her self-absorption. I will always be more aware of the roots of my family and will hold with gratitude, not expectation, where I now am. I was me and there was something quite different that I possessed.

Neither was I the eldest sister whose heart would be content with matrimony and babies; I had too much fire in me. She was too sweet, too lovely, and far too concerned with propriety. No, indeed, the eldest sister would not fit me.

What option did that leave me? Joe. Her one true beauty was her hair but her one true greatness was her heart; her brilliance; her wit and spunk; her writing ( I suppose that is actually 5 things). While in some ways she doesn’t fit me, in some ways I fear that she does. Let me explain.

I always dreamed that life would look the way it did in the stories…I would be the brilliant woman characters I grew up adoring. I was Elizabeth Bennett in Pride & Prejudice or Jo from Little Women. I would take a stand and a step in the world that many of my fellow women had yet to be empowered to or dare to take. I would banter with a passionately dispassionate man who I would help rescue and bring to life… Therein may lie the problem and some of my confusion over life & relationship expectations.

What from my family system and the world I so carefully constructed from fiction stories is actual reality? Do Jo or Elizabeth Bennet…do they encapsulate me? Part of me wishes to answer yes with much fervor and passion, yet these story lines are too carefully constructed and make much more sense than experience has taught me from really living.

And so I have feared the Teddys of the world (back to Little Women). Feared them for anxiety of knowing I would and could well love them yet be left feeling unsure: 1) If they could love me back correctly in a way that would allow me to be fully me; 2) If I could love them deeply and passionately as I was sure I should; 3) If they would not, in the end, end up loving an Amy anyway and though they thought they desired my wit, the would, in fact, prefer her dependence or lack of intimidating stature of passion, intellect, etc.

So I aspired to love the professors types of Little Women or the rather conceited/needing fixing Mr. Darcy’s who didn’t or were unable to affirm me. And I am only recently discovering that what I was most attracted to may be nothing other than dysfunctionality. Mr. Darcy is rude and insufferable and men like him don’t clean up their acts if you just love them more. And Jo (the character that represents Luisa May Alcott)? Men like the professor only existed in her fantasy. She never married.

So I’m in this place where my life is a story, but a new one that I am writing. It is not nearly as clean or cut and dry as the stories I grew up loving and that scares me. It scares me that if I am honest with you I carry a bit of each sister from both of these stories in myself: A confidant, smart woman, who loves the arts and romance, desires to see the well occur for others, and is trying to find her way into moving into her full voice and humanity. That journey of contradiction and holding multiple facets of my true self in hand at one time can be scary and overwhelming. Yet I am trying to walk into that uncertainty of journey. And being with a wonderful Teddy? Well, he may be more complex as a character than the stories allowed him as well. So for now I am working on being more comfortable with love growing unexpectedly in the world of the grey, the surprise, and the beauty of this moments of this thing we call real life.