That Certain Look

If you are a militant feminist, you might not want to read this post. Actually, you might want to find a new blog altogether, now that I think about it, given that there’s at least one other post on here that I suspect will make you a little annoyed. (See “The Company of Men", October 22, 2004.)

In any case …

I lead a rather crazy life. This is not a plea for pity, or a call for attention. Heck, I don’t even know if anyone reads these things (except for Sharon, who assures me she does - *waves*). Anyway, that crazy life, combined with being some sort of emotional energy processing/storage unit, from myself and my environment, means that sometimes I can get a little … unhinged. For whatever reason, the last twenty days have been absolutely nuts, reaching a fever pitch in the last ten days. I think I’m finally coming out of it, but it has been a really horrific ride. I don’t know why I have been so ill-equipped to process it all the last three weeks – I’m just glad to be going back to normal.

Ah, says Gentle Reader, but what exactly does this have to do with the title of this post?

Well, here’s the thing. When all hell is breaking loose, when I’m completely off-centre, or I’ve screwed up, and I’m convinced I really am as worthless as my mother always said I was, and I really, really want to be invisible … that is when seeing That Certain Look from a man is the most powerful, most heartening thing in the entire world. And, frankly, at the same time that it floods me with a sense of being cared about, that I’m not utterly alone and a complete waste of space, that it’s safe to finally go to pieces, it also turns me to complete and total mush.

A week ago, during a Crescendo of Chaos, when I was panicking about yet another something or other going wrong, I was trying to hang up my coat. I had it on the hanger, but because of the number of coats in the cramped space, I was having a hard time actually getting the hanger to hook on the bar. I wound up knocking my jacket off the hanger and grabbing it before it hit the floor. I could feel the blood rushing to my face, and I could feel my heart pounding, and I remember thinking “Okay, Camel? Meet Straw!” I sighed sharply , glared down at the floor, and when I turned to leave and lifted my gaze, there it was: That Certain Look. My friend Mav was there with the most intense look of concern and compassion on his face. My gaze locked on his eyes, I felt the wind knocked out of me, and it took every bit of energy I had left to not collapse into a complete puddle at his feet. Sometimes, you just really needs someone to catch you as you’re falling into a pit. Sometimes (dare I say it?) I really need to be rescued.

In an effort to pull myself out of this neverending November funk, I watched Bridget Jones’s Diary yesterday (if I hadn’t already lost the feminists, I just heard the door slam). I have a list of “fun, fluffy movies” that I like to watch when I don’t want to think – when I want distraction, but not necessarily have to work for it. This is one of those movies for me. In any case, I was feeling badly for Bridget after her particularly disastrous booklaunch speech, and there it was on Mark Darcy’s face for half a second: That Certain Look.

Too bad Bridget didn’t see it – it might have saved her a lot of trouble with that cad Cleaver (but would have made for a short movie, I suppose). And, for what it’s worth, I think I am now smitten with the character of Mark Darcy and should probably go see the sequel this weekend. (I am very easily smitten, incidentally.)