Bad Moods- Reflections on the Detrimental Effects of Twilight

I am in a bad mood.

Not that I should be.

Not that I have any good reason to be.

Not that I need to advertise an emotion that will pass as briefly as my terse obsession with Sugar in the Raw. (I tried to substitute it for Splenda for about 2 days and, um, not gonna happen- it does NOT sweeten, which is the entire reason for its existence, and it becomes a gelatinous layer of brown goo on the bottom of my mug without fail).

So why blog about my bad mood?

So why admit, that amidst my quest for becoming a woman of God, I am struggling with some of the most basic twists of human defectiveness in the shape of envy, coveting, and discontentment?

Because as I was spending way too much time thinking about myself in this last 24 hour period, I have been trying to pinpoint my gray cloud. Where did it come from?

Last night I watched Twilight for the second time. I watched one my favorite stories of all time unfold before my eyes in the comfort of my own home with LC. I watched an explosion of a love story and I felt myself get sucked in through the breathless whispers of forever love, forever protection, and forever pursuit. I watched an ordinary girl get swept up by the most extraordinary man.

And I was jealous.

I still am.

Jealous over a fictitious character? Over a fable? Over a vampire love story? Give me a break!

My humanity drives me crazy sometimes.

But the root of the matter is grounded in our culture's obsession with creating our own personal Hollywood's within the walls of our ordinary lives. The truth is that we are all chained to an average, battered, disappointing, endless dirty counter topped, overflowing laundry piled, weight gained and coming of aged, broken world.

I know I can not be the only Twilight obsessed girl, that fell head over heels into a delicious stew of star crossed love. So I wonder if I am the only girl who compares Edward to her man? My Lord, this is so shallow, but it is striking a very dissonant chord in my heart, because I am wired for romance and for pursuit, but I think I have the characters in the story wrong.

I want to have someone head over heels in love with me, no matter how clumsy, forgetful, ridiculous, moody, and fantastical I am. I want unconditional attention and adoration. I want someone to worship me. Me, Me, I , I , want, want, NOW! I am like the little blueberry girl in Willy Wonka.

And aside from sounding preachy, because I will no matter what, that is a sin. I am in sin, I want to be a little god to someone.

This makes me feel so vacant. First of all, because this type of thinking just produces dissension between my adorable husabnd and I. And secondly, that kind of love will never exist for me in this lifetime. Two humans can't create supernatural love. It is impossible.

Last night, my unsuspecting husband came home from playing Frisbee. With the Twilight drug still swimming in my veins, I had images of him throwing the door open, walking across the room with a sense of urgency, pulling me out from my chair and kissing me with such tender need. He would stare into my face and say, "You are my life now."

Instead this is the way the evening unfolded: He walked into our house sweaty, red-faced, distracted and starving. Pulling a pizza out of the freezer, he slammed himself down on the couch, turned on ESPN, and began scrolling though his Blackberry. I sat at the table watching him. He munched away on the pizza, mouth open.

Does he not notice that his bride is sitting by herself at the kitchen table? Doesn't he see my ordinary sweat pants and disheveled hair through a love lens in which I am transformed into the most beautiful creature that ever walked the planet? Can't he see through the surface to the heart of me?"

And then he speaks, "This pizza is really good."

And then I stomp off into the bedroom. As I am dissecting all the things that are wrong with me, wrong with my simple life, and even shamefully wrong with the way I feel so comfortable with my husband. (best friends we are, obsessive-lust soaked lovers...we are not, well not everyday anyway), I wonder...what happened to us? What happened to when he was nervous to even call me, and would stumble over his words?

I will tell you what happened. Our love deepened. Our love became cemented in the real and not in the ethereal. We started a life together, and along with that came the destruction of those walls that keep the ordinary out.

When you date you can hide unshaven armpits, bathroom behavior, smelly breath, your forgetfulness, mask your temper, tame your tongue. When you marry, those are the things that you see and hear most of the time.

I am still a Twilight fan. Probably always will be. And Edward is an excellent character, but he is just an extension of the author's imaginary perfect man. And I often wonder if she created him to fill that vacancy in every woman's heart, as well as her own, in which we long for this prince charming to love us with all of our scars. Much like the final scene in Slumdog Millionaire, when he kissed the scar along her face with the sensitivity of a saint and with the passion of a man bound to endless pursuit.

So, my bad mood.

I think I have worked this one out. I can already feel it melting away from the edges of my tense jaw.

So how do we coalesce the desire we find stitched into our hearts for the endless pursuit with the reality of the roadblocks we find in life? The little things, like dirt under our fingernails, that will never be completely ridden. The open-mouth pizza chewing, and dirty socks behind the dryer?

Perhaps, let me get behind my pulpit, we will never find that kind of love in this life. I think there is a reason for that. Maybe God is saving such a culmination of unadulterated belonging for our first face to face. I imagine He is. Otherworldly love can only be found in some kind of heaven, perhaps the real one.

Yes I believe in heaven. Yes I believe in God's unconditional love for all of us. Some may call it blind ignorance, the type of which bliss is associated, but I just call it truth.

So instead of love being a glittered, golden, faultlessly proportionate corner of perfection driving a fancy car in designer clothes- I think that love is more like your favorite pair of jeans, the ones with a rip in the knee, soft and cottony, warm and familiar. The pair you would put on when riding a two-seater bike down a dirt road with a breeze in your face.

And for my final point, let's not forget that Edward is undead, which means that the heaven I believe in, he will never pass through this life into it. Aside from him being completely fictional, which means that he is caught in a story which is neither real nor fake, even his character is not alive.

I still believe that my ordinary life is going to lead me to an extraordinary love.

And that is not fiction, that is a matter of fact.