This post is about the movie Marriage Story. Directed by Noah Baumbach. Starring Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver.
Feeding Your Aliveness
You loved them, in many ways you still very much do. Your coming to be was unto the makings of nothing greater. Yet passage and ending, alack unto sorrows of nothing lesser. Quiet, steady, assertions of neglect that culminate too far than what you had hoped for, on track with what you reprieved. When did such wanting rear its afflictive head, to trample under the foot of personal aims and provision? What brings together that which desperately seeks to be pulled apart? How can such depths of loathing seep its cries to where you rest?
This is for today. This is a story of marriage.
Who Wants To Start?
“What I love about Charlie…What I love about Nicole…”
~ Nicole & Charlie
You love the way they swan at the passage of birds. You love only the humor that brings their smile. You love their reservation when there’s one too many voices; their loud petitions for your time alone. You love their gentle brush to tend your hand. You love their short lived frustrations when their heart gets the better of them. You love their stacking of waste on their driver side door. You love their bids for connection and sweets. You love their adoration for the gentle in spirit. You love their affect for life and hearted living. You love them now, you will love them then.
You don’t like what’s been written, you don’t like what you’ve become. Cross room postures speak volumes, a kindling that sits just below the surface; setting off at a moment’s notice, fused by years of what’s remained unsaid. Obvious they have not the attention, obvious you must make not to care. You indulge them. You walk away. Quietly you mourn, still it grieves you. It’s the tears you can’t fake.
A day to be lived, rejoice and be glad. One not to rest, a sadness to pass. Few solemn words speak louder than many, a seeing of you then plenty and plenty. They said “next time,” promises not kept. A seeing to new resolve, what’s to be the best? You’re here now, an interest of your own, an act of hope if even at all. An aggression to apprehend so you can be friends. Because it’s not as simple as being in love anymore — it’s a death.
Tell Your Story
“I realized I never really come alive for myself, I was just feeding his aliveness…”
~ Nicole
Allured by what you had never seen, a sight to living you had never known. No life to living, but something slightly more than alive — a coma. Engaging in measures unmeasured, a dwindling of being so much smaller from the small you had known. Bare minimums swanned as flattery; for the first time your ideas were worth trying, comments worth repeating. Somehow your private exchanges turn public conversations, and for then, that was enough.
In your child you hope that for the first time something can be yours, or at the least you two can share. Yet what is to be of hope when placed unto matters, beings, purposed for their own making? They don’t belong to you, and only a shame because you no longer belong to yourself. Noises amounting to nothing but only to the ear of the suitor. Suggestions put off and strange are your own preferences.
Own it, why can’t you? It’s not enough — what is? You are thrown a life line in resonance to your depths of hope. An adventure to traverse with the one who should care for you the most, but no greater is their care than only to the measure of their permissions. They don’t see you. You’re nothing more than something unto themselves. Plus the adultery — they cheated.
Dad You Go Away, Mommy You Stay
“You don’t want to be married, not really.”
“But I don’t want this.”
“What did you expect was going to happen?”
~ Nicole & Charlie
Your family scrambles, attempting to make their own sense of your senses. You pitch normal, normalizing as much as you can with the conviction you now have. It’s time to serve and it’s now a thing. Feelings of a dream, a disruption you never wanted. To avoid it again, it just can’t be, they want an entirely differently life. It is as it seems; the pie was just a pie; you better get going.
Agreements impossible to make right away. The narrative of your life needs much more context than what it is made out to be. You’re told what you want to hear. Whatever made for yourself, went back to yourself. And now everything is going to change, and you have to get used to it. Portrayed as what you are, and are not. There’s bad people at their best, and the best people at their worst. This kind of story, is something you can’t afford.
Be a Better Husband In Divorce
“I want you to know eventually this will all be over, and what you win or leave, I want you to know it’ll be the two of you having to figure this out together”
~ Bert
It’s all too hard, torture even. You don’t have what’s not needed, what you have is no time. Avoidance to the liking of what you would prefer deferred. It’s to cost everything you’ve known, to keep only some of what you’ve had. There’s no other way. A seat not connected, you’re disconnected, a dad too far. It’s a painful time you can only wish to graduate from, one you wish less terrible. The expense is impossible to keep down, and your response is one required right away. Everything to lose with only a portion of what you had to gain — how nice it can be to be treated as a human.
It’s the helping you out, it’s the unwanted suggestion of what you prefer. You’re not wanted there and who’s to blame? Sleeping but now you want to be awake, with there only but little clues of what you’re walking into. Deceit makes light of opinions, lies conflating two separate things, but are they all that different? Angry, self-absorbed — the guilt almost pointless. A game you play with yourself, a changing of your whole life.
Sittings and hearings make the clear the air. Is it promises unkept or happenings best passed? The desire of one to the let down of the other? A deal when you want but a discussion when the want is theirs? The soundings are mad, but you need to win. The measures of these battles are immeasurable. You, the criminal who committed no crime. With no other fronts, this is the thing. Silently you come to know what you’ve had, silently you come to know what will be missed.
Separated
“You’re so merged to your selfishness you don’t even identify it as selfishness anymore”
~ Nicole
You come out but he can’t stay, it’s your night but the gate won’t close. A quiet mourn for what you had, shadowed by how much there is to still be fought for. A street fight depiction of the life you’ve known — good people seen at their worst. You can’t afford distraction; consequently, very much distracted is your son. So much like you both, the very best and worst, making him all the better.
Things have gone too far, this thing is awful. Circumstances conflated from their beginnings, with efforts to bring it to an end. Professional fixations can be something of a blinder, with minimal allowance for considerations any different. And that’s the problem isn’t it? You have no grasp to a thought process of something different. With no knowing of desires other than your own, who is the blame when such is forced upon you?
Proclaiming it is what it is with — insularity assuredly subtle to the tongue. What is it that she wants? What is it that he wants? Assaults to character with no hearings to the heart. The outpour for rage, contention, bitterness, and hatred, maturated by “love.” One longingly married to ideations of pleasure, attainment, and vapid desire. One longing for a life to be shared. A making of something lost from its start. If only they can see, in all this you die. And so it is to say..I’m sorry.
Being Alive
“You have so many good reasons to not be with some, Robert, but haven’t got one good reason for being alone ”
~ Charlie
Willingly man profanes what they don’t understand, yet fortuitously remain at the whim of what is griped against. Left are you scrambling to assemble a making of your being to the likeness of whom? Culpability as much as it is capability. With a discourse that seems not to settle, even when you are to settle. The best of your efforts, that much can be seen. But you’re bleeding and lying in the weight of living.
A troubled person. A lovely person. Crazy even. It’s the makeup of who we are, and that’s okay. Against this you find what? You had some to hold you too close. You had someone to hurt you too deep. Someone to sit in your chair, to ruin your sleep. Someone to need you too much. Someone who knew you too well. Someone to pull you up short and put you through hell and give you support for being alive. They made you alive. They made you confused. They mocked you with praise. They varied your days.
Now alone, is alone, not alive. If only someone could crowd you with love. If only someone can force you to care. If only someone could make you come through, you’d always be there, as freighted as them, to help you both survive. You’ll never be a kid again. So want something. That’s being alive.
You are better now than you were then. You have to, and realize you want to be. A lated effort but at least you still arrived. It’s only good; you read that now. They’ll never stop loving you, even though it doesn’t make sense anymore. A time now that only ties to echoes of almost better days.
This is man’s story of marriage.
To The Believer
“Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom”
~ Song of Solomon 2:15
Woe of Heart
The nature of our being is palpable, though the witness of being keening. See it with your eyes and know in your heart — love is losing its meaning. More voices are there to speak, many of such, defeating. For they do not abide, wisdom whimsily subsides, as pride shadows beginning.
Fallings
What say you of these things? Surely you are to tell me you know? I will tell you this — there is a dissolution to that which is both sacred and graced. A falling persistent to all people of this age, to the likeness as proclaimed to man in our very beginning. Driven by dissipation, we dally ourselves so far the course of covenant we break up more than we bind to promise. As we are so far burdened with awareness, discernment has become the wound. Latching onto vain thoughts, bringing all further away from what remains still, to be known.
For all things are for its time under the sun. Too I contend to you that all things have their reason under the sun. Same as one labors and fortifies their vocation, we are with the making to be expressions of promise and vulnerability.
May I say so plainly so you may see and hear: Men, I have known myself the fallacy of unbacked ideations. Thinkings of self-regard to no avail and cynic to truth, unable to subside unwarranted contention and entertainment of false judgement. It was a culpable preservation of an unwillingness to surrender and do for her, that which I should seek to do — serve.
Assertions in Love
Examine yourself and know your ways. Admit the errors. See the departure of knowing good — our Father; by mass we have fallen all the more. Now you stand knowing quiet tensions, lesions of alienation, estrangement, sterility, and desolation. One day to the next, week to week, months in passing, and soon many years. How fair pained have you both become?
We are not to be alone. For in a marriage there is a flow many waters are unable to be fully quenched. This is known when love is covenantal: belonged, promised, sanctified, committed, protected. You expect hardship and still choose faithfulness. A passage enduring to ever lasting life.
I profess to you: Let your fountain be blessed. Rejoice in the love of your youth. Let their body fill you at all times with delight. Be intoxicated in their love. Be made alive. Be alive.
“Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it”
~ Hebrews 2:1
Credit: Script and select images used in this post are from Marriage Story (© Netflix). Included for reflective commentary and thematic analysis.
This site contains affiliate links, view the disclosure for more information.
This post was all about the movie Marriage Story.
