I'm a normal person.
normal people, modern relationships and the want to be heard.
Watching normal people is a gut punch. Hanging on the edge of your seat as Marianne and Connell orbit each other throughout their final year of secondary school and into their university years. Their constant push and pull as their dynamic shifts - Connell over Marianne to Marianne over Connell- and their horrid, horrid communication. Constantly wanting to jump through the screen and scream at them “JUST TALK TO EACHOTHER!” but they don’t.
They have nothing in common. Marianne, the loner, the ugly girl who is always on her own and has no friends. She is upper class. She lives with a mother who could care less and a brother who is abusive. Whereas, Connell, the rugby boy with so many friends he basically drowns in them. A single mother who loves him dearly, and they are working class. Their paths barely ever crossing before their tangled story starts, acquaintances at best.
Therefore, when their relationship starts, the secret. They end up creating their own bubble, believing they are at their greatest when they are with each other. At 18, they are both trying to make their own place in the world, separating and doing their own thing but then eventually zinging back together like the red and blue sides of a magnet.
This, personally, reminds me of the modern dating scene. No one wants to talk anymore. Well, to me. Every time I would suggest to my ex that his actions were upsetting me, I would be met with either.
I didn’t do that. (Even though I would have exact moments, quotes and even screenshots to prove him wrong)
You did that to me. (I would ask for a single example, he would never have one)
You’re crying to manipulate me. (My personal favourite. Like??????????)
Then it would end with me crying in his arms, his fingers stroking my back and a whisper of “You deserve better.” But nothing changes. He doesn’t listen. The cycle repeats over and over and over until I just couldn’t take it anymore. I told him, “I think you’re emotionally abusing me.”
He didn’t deny it.
I just wanted him to hear me, to understand the emotional torture he was subjecting me to daily, the mood swings, the insults and the icing out made me a pathetic shell of myself and I have truly never looked or felt worse. I used to tell people “I don’t cry” And I didn’t, not till him. Now me and the feeling of your eyes puffing and the stuffed nose are so well acquainted that they could get an invite to my wedding.
I was the clearest I’ve ever been and he still refused to hear me.
Watching normal people is a gut punch. But living it, is a hair pulling, self sabotaging, head splitting gut punch that makes you spill your dinner on your new boots and spit up blood.
Marianne and Connell’s best moments in the show are in those quiet, intimate moments. Where they are alone and they just itch to touch each other and can’t resist to reach out for each other and literally reconnect. They tiptoe around their co dependency, suffocating the other with the push and pull.
“I’m not a religious person, but sometimes I think God made you for me.” Is the pull, that confession of her being the only one for him. “Just the way you treated me and that I put up with it.” Is the push.
They can just never get it right. The kindest thing they do for the other is staying apart at the end of the show, promising to be there for each other but not actively seek each other out.
I think about the fact I can’t stay away from him. A week after I ended it, we went to the cinema. We watched back to the future. I didn’t look at him once during the film, eyes firmly planted on Marty and his weird ass incest plotline. I felt him looking at me, the way that men do in that blatant way. Eyes crawling over you and they desperately want you to look back.
After the film, we were outside of the cinema. It was cordial, friendly. Just friends. Then, before he left, he leant down and kissed my forehead. It ruined me. All of the progress I had made dissipated into the cold, dark air.
I cried in the bathroom.
We stay away for a while. Minimal contact, mainly sending the other Instagram reels instead of words. Then, we had phone sex. I spiralled for weeks after that, thinking he wanted me back for just a moment, maybe he wanted to start again and it would change.
“I miss your face.” He says. I bask in that high, wear his t-shirts and send him a selfie. He likes it.
I know deep down he doesn't mean it. He just wants sex and that’s ok, I just wish he wouldn’t have let me fall in love with him first. I know he has not changed, I know he’s still a dick, and I know if I were to fall back in I would end up the weeping girl I was a month ago.
Maybe the gift we give for Christmas will be to finally part and never ping back like the flick of an elastic. A new years resolution. We can start the new year without the other and learn to live apart. Like normal people.
love, lace.
thank you for reading, if you do. and if you do, i hope you hear me.
also i recently cut bangs so now i feel even more like marianne.
please like, comment and share!! im interested in your thoughts.