"Here I Go Again. My My"

Against the advice of wiser friends, I finally succumbed to a screening of Mamma Mia! No, I didn't go to the sing-along version. Why should I be the one singing after paying money for the ticket? Isn't that what the professionals are there for? Instead, I went to one of the second-run places and paid only about six dollars or so to watch what almost everyone else has already seen.

And now I'm feeling a bit depressed. It isn't that the film is bad (although it certainly isn't good). I mean, I do like the ABBA songs and all, and they seem to fit the storyline much more smoothly than I would have ever imagined. There are even some scenes that border on the truly exceptional, such as Meryl Streep's singing of "The Winner Takes It All." And I do love the musical performances after the ending of the narrative but before the full credits start to roll. If you go, you should stay to see them.

No, what's got me feeling down is seeing yet another Hollywood fantasy and realizing, yet again, how much of a gap exists between it and reality, at least in my case. Of course, movies shouldn't have as much of an impact on our emotions, but they do. We are heavily influenced by these ideas of romance, so much so that many people start to live their lives according to what the movies say about love and devotion and romance and reunions and such. If it's not like they see in the movies, then it must not be love, I suppose.

The plot of Mamma Mia! is simple enough. A young woman who's about to be married writes letters to three men who may be her father. Her mother had romantic evenings with each of them at about the same time, so any one of them could be the father. They all show up together, of course, and much confusion and singing and dancing and overacting occurs. The ending, naturally, has to be happy, and that's perhaps what gets to me the most.

I don't need a lot of sympathy here, and I hope you don't feel that's where I'm headed with this. But I've had dates cancelled on me the past two weekends by the same guy. Last weekend it was the day before we were supposed to meet for dinner. This weekend it was the day--the very day--that we had planned to meet. I do understand that crises arise, and he has been dealing with his mother's health issues of late. She's had to be hospitalized. I'm not so self-centered to think that he should be paying more attention to me than to his ailing mother, so please don't misunderstand. I would do the same thing if I were in his situation.

Here's my dilemma. This is the best I have going for me at the moment: a guy I can't even meet for dinner. There's nothing else on the horizon, and there hasn't been anything on the horizon for quite a long time, frankly. I haven't any old flames--particularly, not three of them--who are likely to show up any time soon. I have friends, sure, and I do love them, but they aren't quite the same as a romance. Maybe I just need to stay away from romantic movies or romantic comedies or lighthearted musicals for a while. I'm still, perhaps foolishly, waiting for a happy ending, and it seems like that's unlikely to occur at this rate.

A friend of mine told me this week that his company has decided to relocate its headquarters to Indianapolis. This is just after he bought a house near where he works. So he faces the prospects of having to sell his new home and relocate from southern California, which he loves, to the Midwest. He told me that he isn't unhappy about his job or his life, but he wishes he were happy about something. I know what he means. I've been feeling like I'm somewhere in the middle of late myself. I'm not unhappy, particularly, but I've known much happier times than this as well.

Yes, I realize that there's nothing wrong with living by yourself. Some of us have gotten used to it, perhaps too much so. However, there's also nothing wrong with finding someone to live life with you either. Another friend of mine suggested to me a few years ago that perhaps I was too anxious about finding someone, that maybe that was stifling my efforts. He said that I should just concentrate on other aspects of life, and the romance would happen when it's supposed to happen. I'm not sure that I agree. I just don't know how I'm supposed to forget that I'm single when even a mediocre film like Mamma Mia! can remind me of it so vividly.