Yup, I got sucked into a teen drama also know as a millennial love story of the ages. Credit to Rolling Stone.
Normal People was sitting in My Stuff on Hulu for months. Don't know when I saved it. Don't even know why I saved it. Some review or something another. All lost in a year of isolation and a crisis counselor volunteer.
No review here since a review of the Hulu Series is like taking coals to New Castle. You can read reviews here and here. As if none of you haven’t seen this. I am the very last one. 😂
This post is my visceral grief imbibed cleansing of my emotional palate.
There is the art of Normal People. Each shot, the framing, the lighting, the music, the facial expressions of the actors/actresses, and so much more.
Then there is the story. Watching love over time in all its complexity, beauty, and pain. The story unfolds in rhythmic moments of captured images and dialogue. In conversations both profound and mundane. In time moving forward in fits and starts and a progression of deeper love albeit painful
Finally there is the overlay of myself. The self of today. The self of memories. The self of loss. The self of love known and unknown. The self of longing and pain.
I have not yet reached the end of the series. Yet there is a profound recognition that Normal People will remain part of me forever. The sense of love shared by two teens and later college students. We all know what love feels like, looks like, and the shape takes within us. Yet seeing it played out beautifully and peeling like the bells in an abby deep within you is another thing.
I watched love between Marianne and Connell unfold in small pin pricks on my skin. Marveling at its truth for me. Truth known. Truth hoped for. Truth of WTF.
I thought, oh how I wanted to feel that love again. The love in small silly conversations between the two. In deeply moving and painfully honest moments. Love is connection in ways small and large.
I had that. My loss made me long to find that again. Find it I am old. Feel it would be better said. Then with deep self doubt perhaps not. Perhaps I never had that which I so wanted to be in again. Then I wanted to be that anew. And then I realized the use by date of my life will not allow that to happen. Lost in my own row boat on the ocean without ores. Looking at a shoreline of hope.
All I can do is look. Lurk and embrace all the feels and emotions afforded by this amazing story of love. Wondering if it was a dream I had. A dream I wanted. Perhaps is was the do over I wanted with Donna. To be that I saw again or for the first time. Or just me being all jelly.
Rooney says it best. Of course she does she is a writer and I am a hack.
“Certainly something that I’m trying to accomplish in my work … is to try and situate love and romance in all its overwhelming power … in the difficult complexity of ordinary life.” — Sally Rooney (Hulu)