Topix Questions 45: Which Movie Characters Inspire You? & 46: What is One of Your Earliest Memories?

 

Question 45/424:  Which movie characters inspired you?

I feel like to answer this question I first have to state my top three favorite movies that I always give everyone:  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Closer, and Candy. Of course there are others but those three have been my top since high school and I feel like they’re important to understanding my answer to this question.

Clementine in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind was an inspiration for a long time. I wanted nothing more than to be as artsy and honest and raw as she was in that movie and to be the “manic pixie dream girl” fantasy. When I recently watched that movie again as an adult, I view Clementine differently. I actually think she might be the perfect movie depiction of a person with borderline personality disorder, and I don’t know if I still view her as an inspiration as much anymore. But I do think there’s something powerful in the willingness to be authentically yourself – warts and all. One of my favorite lines of hers is,

“I’m just a fucked up girl who’s looking for her own peace of mind; don’t assign me yours.”

Alice or Jane from Closer is another huge character that shaped me in my teenage years. I think I just find so much beauty in a character who is broken but desired by others. Alice is another example of a character that wants to be as true to herself as she possibly can be. I always admired her speech about leaving people:

“And you left him, just like that?”
“It’s the only way to leave. ‘I don’t love you anymore. Goodbye.’”
“Supposing you do still love them?”
“You don’t leave.”

I just think that is such a powerful way to live and I have always hoped to be that person. Unfortunately, I think I have a bad habit of staying longer than I love a person, but I think maybe the two things are hand-in-hand because I stay long enough to ensure there is no love left between us, so I don’t regret the decision later. I also just fantasize about being able to get up and leave my entire life behind, go to a whole new place, start a new life, and when that life no longer serves me, I do it all over again. Maybe that’s a sad way to live, but I think it’s also sad to feel stuck in a life that does not make you happy anymore.

I wouldn’t necessarily say that the character of Candy from the film Candy inspires me, as that movie all about the co-dependency of people and drugs, however there is a very powerful scene between Candy and her mother that will always hit home with me.

“What happened to that beautiful little girl?”
“What happened? What happened?! Can’t you see? Don’t you understand? I have been clenching my fucking fists since I was six years old!”

While I don’t aim to be in a relationship and get addicted to hard drugs, I do think it’s beautiful to imagine being in a relationship that feels like a safe haven from the world that raised you and makes you feel safe and like you have found a refuge in this crazy world.

Another huge inspiration form me but who isn’t from a movie is Topanga from Boy Meets World. From her awkward hippie phase in the early seasons to her take-no-shit feminism in the high school seasons, to being the best friend and partner a person could ask for in the college seasons. I just always loved how eloquent she was, how unafraid she was to be herself, and how genuinely beautiful she was as well.

As I’m typing through this I’m noticing “authenticity” being a common thread which makes sense because I’ve always had some form of imposter syndrome and low self-esteem. So I glean inspiration from characters – especially female characters – that just are themselves unapologetically (and maybe a little poetically broken as well).

 

Question 46/424:  What is one of your earliest memories?

The earliest memory I have is from when my mom ran a daycare out of our house when I was a young kid and. I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but all the kids my mom took care of were boys aside from me. There was one pair of brothers in particular, Aaron and Nicholas; Aaron was my brother’s age and basically my brother’s best friend and Nicholas was older than all of us. I would often get jealous of Aaron and my brother because at that age all I wanted was to be around my brother 24/7, and when it was just he and I that would work out, but when Aaron was there for the day then my brother only wanted to hang out with him. Nicholas didn’t always come with Aaron, I don’t know if that’s because he was older, but despite how much I disliked Aaron because my brother liked him better than me, I had a huge crush on Nicholas. One day, the boys all got in trouble for something, I don’t remember exactly what it was but regardless all three boys had to sit on the couch with a cushion between them for time in timeout. I was not part of the situation where they got in trouble, but I saw an opportunity because the boys were not allowed to get off the couch until the timeout had ended. So, I sat on the cushion next to Nicholas. I’m pretty sure Nicholas knew I had a crush on him, but I was a little kid, and he was probably closer to 8 or 9 years old so obviously he just ignored it as much as he could. I started inching closer and closer to Nicholas, and he was trying his best to get away from me without breaking the rule about getting off the couch. Eventually it got close enough that I was right next to him, and he was leaning off the couch yelling for my mom because I was trying to kiss him. Nicholas was very tall, so I was not very successful. My mom came running into the room, assuming the boys were just bickering again, but instead saw me straining my neck trying to kiss Nicholas while he was all but falling off the couch trying to get away from me. So I wound up in time out too.

I have a few other memories of the daycare days, and especially with Aaron and Nicholas. A lot of the memories are probably more vivid to me because they’ve been told over and over through the years, but I do remember some of them. I remember always being jealous of Aaron and my mom having to install a dog gate in front of my brother’s bedroom door so I wouldn’t go in his room and mess with their game system or try to beat up Aaron. I remember jumping off the top bunk onto beanbags on the floor and my mom getting pissed at us. We also would sometimes get to go to Aaron and Nicholas’ house because they didn’t live far away, and our mom’s became friends through the daycare. My favorite thing about their house was that they had a Ferris Wheel in their backyard, and I had never seen anything so cool. I would always throw full blown tantrums anytime we had to leave because their house was just so much cooler than ours. There’s a story my mom has told that one day when I was probably between 1-2 and I was having a full-blown meltdown about leaving their house and my mom was over it. They lived on a dirt road off the main road, and she pulled off the side of the dirt road and pulled me out of the car – still strapped in my car seat – and said if I didn’t stop then she was going to leave me on the side of the road. Of course that didn’t help the upset, and my brother started screaming at my mom that she couldn’t leave me like that. When I just cried harder, my mom actually put my car seat on the side of the road and start driving away – just enough to make a point – and then put the car in reverse to come and get me. According to her it worked though, and I never threw a fit like that leaving Aaron and Nicholas’ house again. I don’t really remember that happening, but it’s been told to me so many times it feels like a memory.

There was also a kid named Bruce who was closer to my age and as close as I had to a best friend back in those days. Bruce was a really quiet and awkward kid, but because I was a really loud and obnoxious kid I hardly noticed. Bruce would be happy to just sit and watch Land Before Time on repeat in total silence while I wanted to run around and play. Once in a while though he would play with me if I pulled out my dinosaur toys, but he usually just wanted to watch movies and say “no” a lot. I also seem to recall that he would literally only eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches which drove my mother and I up the wall. At one point I was convinced that Bruce and I were going to get married – not sure why, I think that was just a little kid thought that because he was around me all the time at that time then that must mean we were meant to spend the rest of our lives together. He wasn’t a long-term daycare kid, though, and after he stopped coming to my mom’s house and I didn’t see him again for years, and when I finally did see him again I didn’t recognize him but he was still just as quiet and awkward as he ever had been and he didn’t seem to remember me all that much.