Straight to video regrets

Lights. Camera. Actions speak much louder than his words.  Backdrop is perfect, props are in place, but he hasn’t memorized the lines I’ve written for us.  This relationship isn’t the love story that the big screen envisions, nor is the sick and twisted angst that the writer intended.  We are boring versions of our television ready selves.  My hair is messed up, my makeup is never right and his intentions are dull, but still darkening.  The fairytale becomes the horror story we all knew it would.  If he could see the skeletons in my closet he would probably be amused with my naivety, and I shudder to think of what dirty little secrets he’s hiding behind those closed doors (and his even more stubbornly bolted heart).  We are perfectly imperfect, but too star struck to care.

Cue the violin, or maybe the tambourine is more appropriate, almost comical and taken just about as seriously as we were in our best moments.  Strip away the fantasy and you are left with two awkward twenty-something broken souls pleading for a more promising start.

We’re begging for a rewrite and selling our souls for a second chance, but drowning in the lack of responses on our behalf.  No one believes in us even half as much as we believed in ourselves in the beginning, and even now we don’t believe in ourselves enough to keep afloat.  Cut. Print. Straight to video.

And we become the dollar rental sitting dusty on the shelf, waiting to mean something to some daring movie lover.  Someone like us.  Someone that’s hair is a little messed up, or makeup isn’t quite right, or has holes in the wrong places in his jeans.  That’s the kind of person that will rent us, maybe find meaning, and then probably lose us within the trunk of their 90’s beater, and forget that we even existed.  But maybe, just maybe he’ll think of us later, maybe he’ll even become a writer, or even a filmmaker, and one day maybe our story will be told right.

Until then, here’s to the bad acting, the terrifying soundtrack, and the straight to video version of ourselves that might just drown in hate mail before we ever make it big.