Wookin' Po Nub...

OK Y’all,
So I was in a movie kind of mood the other night, and I couldn’t find anything on the cable movie channels, so I turned to my DVD collection. I picked a classic—Urban Cowboy. For those of you not familiar with this lil’ gem, it’s about a fella named Bud who moves from a small town in Texas to a medium small town in Texas and meets a gal named Sissy at Gilley’s, the local watering hole. They get married, move into a trailer, get in a fight over mechanical bullriding, cheat, and get back together after foiling a robbery, all in the span of about 6 weeks. It’s a fun movie to watch if you are in the mood for some redneck intrigue, and it certainly makes you wonder whatever happened to Mickey Gilley. As I was watching it, I got to thinking about the kind of people Bud and Sissy were—simple, blue collar, poorly educated, and viscerally driven. They have no concept of what life is like outside of their tiny little hamlet; they essentially don’t know any better and don’t want to. And you know what? On a very basic level, their lives indicate that ignorance is bliss. If you don’t know that there’s anything better, if you believe what people say at face value and allow your thoughts and feelings to stay simple and naïve, you can be happy. And I think that’s where I’ve got a problem: I’m too smart for my own good, or at least I’ve learned the hard way too much for my own good. It makes me sad in a way, because I can’t ever take anyone at their word—especially when it comes to dating, and that’s exactly where trust matters the most. When I was younger and just starting out on my dating journey, I believed my boyfriend/date/whatever when he said he hadn’t called because he was out late with friends/stuck at work/whatever. He loved me—how could I not believe him, and how could he not be honest with me at all times? It seemed easy enough. I was always honest with him. When you’re in love, you’re always above board! Boy, did reality come crashing down around me and quick. Blindsided doesn’t even begin to cover it. And that was just the beginning of my difficult and painful education about the inner workings of the human heart. Since then, it seems like I’ve seen it or heard it all, and quite frankly, it’s made me a wary and suspicious person. It’s made me into someone who can’t take a compliment without wondering what the complimentor is hiding or trying to butter me up for. It’s caused me to suspect less than honorable intentions and subterfuge in even the most innocuous of missed connections. And unfortunately, it’s proven me to be right in a HUGE majority of cases. It's disappointing and more than a little upsetting that I am too self-aware to be happy. I would love to be that small town girl with wide eyed optimism who doesn’t know any better and has the myopic vision of a simple heart. It makes me wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then. But I do, and the force is strong with this one. I am working on how to deal with it--until then, I guess I can blog about it.