Go on, ruin yourself

There's a scene in the movie "Circle of Friends," (which is not a great movie, but is kind of a nice movie to watch when you're feeling hopeless or nostalgic or something) where Bennie, the main character, sits at a table at a dance as she watches the boy she longingly pines for dance with all the other girls. Minnie Driver gained 30 pounds for this role, and Bennie is rather, well, jiggly (although certainly, it's difficult to make Minnie Driver unattractive). Certain in the knowledge that Jack, the fellow in question, will never ask her to the dance floor, she plunges into a pile of dessert and tells herself, "Go on, ruin yourself, Bennie." Of course, this being the movies, it is at this point that Jack comes over and asks her to dance, assuring her that he saved the best for last. There's a nice performance by Alan Cumming in this movie, by the way, if you're a fan of his.

Anyway, the line about ruining yourself ran through my head today as I woefully picked at a bad cheeseburger and cursed the fact that in real life, Bennie would just go on sitting there, eating every slice of cake in the room until it was time to sweep away the balloons and the crepe paper and go home. Obviously, I am feeling offensively sorry for myself, and it's not pretty. NOT PRETTY.

How are you supposed to react when someone tells you they asked someone to marry them and instead of thinking, "Well, naturally! That just makes sense. Congratulations!" you think, "Um. Holy shit? Please do not do this."? It would help if they themselves seemed a little more excited about it.

As for me, I'll just ruin myself. What a fool I can be when I let my imagination run wild. I shall now return to my policy of "not feeling" for an undetermined amount of time.