Carrie Bradshaw? Really?

Let me start with the fact that I am not a big fan of "Sex in the City". I watched it only because everyone talked about it and it runs at all hours of the night and day on cable, so it's basically something in the background while I'm doing other things. I don't think I ever really watched it during its original run, other than maybe occasionally catching it by accident.

The main reason I didn't really watch it was because I couldn't relate to any of the characters. I found them all to be so unrealistic. I mean, really, $500 for  pair of shoes? And she's a moderately successful columnist, alway crying broke. And don't get me started on the others. Cardboard cutouts of what women should be.

I did get kind of sucked into Carrie and Big's relationship, but only because it's so idealized. It's the fantasy. I never thought I'd have a relationship like that so I enjoyed the fantasy of it and moved on. I scoffed when other women started calling their boyfriends "Mr. Big" because they wanted that fantasy.

I did actually really love the first movie (the second one I'm going to pretend I never saw because it was everything I hated about the series originally). I loved that it dealt realistically (more or less) with Carrie and Big's fantasy life being broken and each of them trying to deal with the aftermath.

So why am I writing about women I don't like and a show that I never really cared about?

Because now, I get it.

When the show first aired, I was in the beginning of the end of my doomed marriage. I never had the Mr. Big fantasy about my ex and didn't get it. My relationship looked nothing like anything on screen so I just didn't get it.

Then I was single for a long time. I guess maybe I understood the appeal of the show a bit more then because suddenly, I was hearing bits and pieces that resonated with me about being single and trying to figure it out. Especially the early episodes.

But then I started seeing the Filmmaker. And suddenly, Carrie and Big made sense. I got the fantasy romance angle because, for the first time in my life, I was in that fantasy romance. I understood Carrie. I understood her struggle to figure out how to be with him. And I understood why she loved him. That fantasy is incredible. Someone who curls your toes and wraps you up in his arms and everything else just disappears. I got it.

And lately, that show seems to be determined to haunt me and mimic my own life. I've had it on the background a lot while I paint lately because I don't really have to pay attention to it and it's easy background noise. 

But the past few days, the episodes have been dealing with exactly what I'm dealing with. How do you reconnect with someone you've broken up with, especially someone who was so very special and yet so emotionally unavailable? And what do you do when you do reconnect? How do you handle that? And just every emotion and feeling I've been dealing with since we stopped seeing each other and I try to figure out how (or if) to fit him back into my life.

I never thought I would find wisdom in a fictional character with $500 shoes who smokes and who I don't always find particularly smart.

But I kept finding myself stopping and listening to what Carrie and her minions were saying because, suddenly, there was something worth listening to in there. Maybe they did have it figured out. Maybe the writers knew all the answers since they seemed to know all the questions.

And the cutesy questions Carrie often asks in her columns. Even those seemed to leap out to me, screaming, "Hey, Susan! Pay attention! This is exactly what you've been thinking about!"

So I listened.

And what conclusion have I come to?

I'm not Carrie Bradshaw, although I guess a little of her lives in each woman. Otherwise, the show would not have been the huge success it was.

And the questions I have/had are universal. I just didn't have them previously because my marriage was not normal and not something you would write about in a sitcom. But once I was in something with someone "normal" who had normal issues about commitment and emotional availability, the questions all made sense.

And there is comfort in the fantasy that someone like Carrie could finally end up with the love of her life. Someone who would find her in Paris and bring her home. Someone who, no matter how many times they walked away from each other, kept coming back. Someone who wasn't perfect but who was perfect for her.

And now, as I move through this phase of dealing with the end of my time with the Filmmaker and as I try to decide whether it's better to just let him fade away so I won't get hurt by having him in my life, or if it's better to risk being hurt, I find weird comfort in the fictional advice of Carrie and friends. And maybe a little bit of misguided hope. If she and Big could figure it out...

And that kind of pisses me off. Cuz I'm not supposed to like them.

But maybe, beyond the shoes and the hair and the clothes, there is a spark of truth and a smidgeon of reality that lives there. And maybe there's nothing wrong with that.