14 Jan 2021 - Weaning Off Facebook, Day 3 (Sylvan Esso and Marriage Story)

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My theme song (Frequency by Sylvan Esso) pops into my head particularly when I’m looking forward to being around someone I don't regularly see (I’m co-accommodating with a friend at the beach next week). I fell in love with Sylvan Esso when I first heard Coffee, the hit from their debut album. Since then, I haven’t heard a song I don’t like, and many speak to my soul in the most happy way. It helps that most of their songs can be played in the presence of toddlers. And they’re based in Durham! (I behaved like a teenage groupie when I saw Amelia Meath waiting in line at Monuts last year.) 

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Now for my not-on-Facebook post:

I’d like to withdraw from Facebook completely; but, because of my helplessness in the face of its ubiquity, I’m still posting links to my blog articles on my public Facebook page and checking comments there. Here’s a comment left in response to my last post: 

“You are doing a good job of making healthy changes. I went on Zoloft in 1998 for similar reasons and it saved my life and my marriage! I’m also wondering about hormonal changes— has your Doctor done any testing?”

My response:

“Yeah, we've done some tests. I'm sure that menopause has been throwing me for a loop - 3 months and still free (despite my daughter coming home from college for Xmas in the interim). But there were some serious issues with my emotional environment as well. The marriage truly is the center of the family; if there are problems there, there are problems everywhere. And they can be subtle problems that we, ourselves, willingly facilitate along the way.”

This made me think (again) about the addictive nature of social media and how easy it is to withdraw into a screen when you are feeling insecure and hard done by (if not Facebook, then email, or Netflix, or YouTube, or Plants Versus Zombies). I’d been doing this increasingly over the last few years (the Reality-TV atmosphere of our country hasn’t helped), and it's only exacerbated the stress in my marriage and home.

But here’s the thing. Despite my shame in choosing the screen over life, I’ve no doubt that same screen is helping me through this midlife crisis. Here’s why.

For weeks, every evening I scrolled for something I actually felt may be worth my time and continually found myself avoiding watching My Happy Family because 1) I didn’t want to go there and 2) I thought it would be boring. It’s filmed in Georgia and is spoken in Georgian; so it has subtitles, which means an added level of complexity. Because my heritage is 50% Polish and 50% Lithuanian, I knew I had to see it; but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Then, one morning, I retreated to the upstairs bathroom with my iPad in hand, ran a hot bath, hit the play button, and was enthralled. What the leading actress showed on screen is exactly what I was feeling. I told my husband about it, and we even watched the first twenty minutes together; but, as it was clear he didn’t want to watch any further, I let him off the hook. (In his defense, I later watched it with my 100% Polish mother and, though she hung in there, it was obvious I should have let her off the hook as well.)

Weeks later and in a similar fashion, I finally hit play on The Squid and the Whale. It’s set in America and faster paced than My Happy Family, plus it has a couple of big-name stars whose past roles I’ve admired. Again, I experienced the much-needed feeling that I was not alone. At the very least, I was reminded that “it takes two to pull” (the wise words of my lifelong riding instructor, Mrs. Wiseman (seriously)). The movie ended abruptly, something I really can’t stand; but now that I'm over it, I'd watch it again.

Then, a couple weeks ago, I watched Marriage Story. I’d put off watching this one since before My Happy Family, opting to watch happy SNL clips on YouTube instead. But Marriage Story came at the right time as well. Last week, I put it on in the family room in the middle of the day, to watch as I finished the calendars I give various family members each Christmas (it was January 8, mind you). It doesn’t have violence – doesn’t even have sex – and I’ve never worried a whole lot about curse words around the kids. I ended up putting the calendars aside and watching the movie straight through, rewinding it several times to get the dialogue straight in my head. This one, I determined, my husband would watch until the end.

When I tried to entice him with the names of the famous actors in the film, he told me he didn’t like Adam Driver as Kylo Ren in Star Wars (my husband is a Scorpio). I knew the first 30 minutes would scream Chick Flick, that he was going to think it was too long, yada, yada, yada. But I told him it was important to me, and he acquiesced with no visible irritation (which hasn’t always been easy for him when he’s asked to do something he doesn’t want to do). So last Saturday, though we had to stay up until midnight to do it, my husband and I watched Marriage Story together.

He clearly didn’t enjoy it. But he didn’t make any comments during the movie, and afterwards he even discussed its merits with me. 

“It doesn’t tell a unique story,” he said.

“That’s the whole point,” I said.

We agreed, as we always do, that scenes should have been cut to shorten the movie; but then we agree that nearly all movies are too long these days. We also agreed that the acting was great.

More importantly, we had meaningful discussion about the main characters, whom we both obviously identified with. Mike felt the story was clearly sympathetic to the husband; whereas, the first time I watched the movie, I felt it was sympathetic to the wife. Having watched it a second time with my husband, I now feel the husband’s side more than the wife’s. This makes me want to watch it a third time, perhaps with my teenage son (though I am sure my husband will sit that one out).

Anyway... By connecting with the characters and discussing them, even for just 10 or 15 minutes, these movies enabled me to communicate and connect with my husband over things that have been separating us for years.  

So I guess I truly cannot get away from the screen. That's the thought that permeates my brain today: that, no matter how we try to make it so, nothing in this life is all or none.