Thursday, April 16, 2020

7:14 PM | "You just have to let people love you."

1. “Sometimes, you just have to let people love you, Marilla.” This was the line in the last episode of the first season of Anne with an E, Netflix's adaptation of the beloved children’s classic Anne of Green Gables, that finally did me in: behold, waterworks. The Cuthberts in this episode are in dire financial straits, but Marilla refuses to let people help, which she sees as pity disguised as charity—until Anne spouts this line and changes Marilla’s outlook on things. It touched me. I’ve always had this great suspicion of people daring to love me, you see, perhaps coming from some great unexplored hurt, and ultimately rises within me as a kind of self-defense: “If no one loves me, I won't be hurt.” Which is pretty much why I am so independent in my ways, always skirting the herd, never asking for help. Renz knows this: me asking for help in anything is the last resort I take, arrived at after going through countless detours where I try to just make-do with what I can, on my own. It’s just me being headstrong and proud; it never makes things easier. And so when I finally do ask for help, from friends or family, and help is indeed extended, I am always astonished, like seeing the world in the light of generosity I never knew can exist. 

2. The new normal—the world in quarantine because of the coronavirus, with no end in sight—has had most of us reeling with melted hours and indistinguishable days. We sleep, we struggle with sleep, we fret with the news and from the unseen dangers of going outside our doors. We read, we watch movies, we have chilled with Netflix for so long it no longer means “sex.” In the second week of the quarantine, which now feels like ages ago, what got me through the doldrums was all three seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Now, in the fourth week of the quarantine, I’ve found Annie with an E. And I think its tenderheartedness and unabashed humanity is just what I need to get through the thickening uncertainty of these dark days. Perhaps I'll watch The Secret Garden next, and then A Little Princess. Who knew that the classics I read in childhood would come back to me to offer comfort? Maybe this is even regression, a fanciful escape to more innocent times—but I don’t mind much: whatever gets me through the day, and still believing in the best of humanity, I’ll take it.

Labels: books, coronavirus, life, psychology, television

[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich

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