And then there were two

Last Monday, my favorite CW show moved from its 9pm slot to 8pm, thereby forcing me to decide between it and HOUSE on FOX. I was annoyed. In an unemployed world where life is dreary and friends' recent conversations failing to jolt my bored senses, these two television shows are the closest things resembling a form of a challenge to my masochistic brain. Yes, some people may say that I should start finding offscreen/real life/actual human forms of debate and interaction. I'll have you know that I am mildly successful in that department but one's opinion of insight towards an external subject ironically also tells a little too much about the internal workings of one's mind which can be easily twisted by well meaning but preconceiving friends. Sometimes it's nicer with a blank slate when you just want to try figure out an answer to a question instead of trying to manage expectations.

And so, when "Life Unexpected" opened up with a montage of Cate getting out of bed and spontaneously packing up reminders (loving photos and heart-shaped trinkets) of Ryan, the first thing that stuck me was...the big tin box in which everything was put in and then left in the closet. It wasn't just a simple brown cardboard box or a box that was originally used to pack plates. This box was unique, well kept and actually lying somewhere in the house, ready to be used someday. Like a crazy person, I asked her/my tv, "Where did that tin box come from?" Near the end of the episode, Ryan has an epiphany and asks Cate the next question I was planning to ask her/my tv, "The real question is, what the hell is wrong with you?" Now, let me just say that the closet feminist in me really DO NOT LIKE it when in tvland it seems that the female is always the one who screwed up (in this case, Cate cheated via drunk/tipsy sex with another consenting male who is the father of her possibly-one-night-stand-child and said male was unaware of the existence of her BF/fiancé aka Ryan) but this affliction, offscreen, is gender-blind. Ryan (or rather, the screenwriter) articulated it perfectly - "Don't bother trying to fix us Cate, just fix yourself."

People screw up. That's a given fact of life. No one is perfect and most of the time, no one really knows why they screwed up. Life is not an episode of HOUSE. People don't magically understand their own labyrinth of intentions, desires and fears perfectly. The lucky ones figure out why they screwed up. The smart ones learn from it, albeit after the fact. The well adjusted ones don't do it again. I wish I were all three about all my own screw ups. I believe that screwing up is just being human. But if one goes into something preparing oneself to screw up, preparing a big tin box somewhere in one's mind, that's when one needs some fixing.

So please, until you do or at least start to do, don't get into another relationship. Everyone has their own shit to deal with, making them deal with yours is unfair, cruel and selfish. Two had been hurt already, don't make it three.