It’s not if you win or lose, it’s how you play the game!

We had a great time visiting with out friend Deven yesterday (home briefly from law school on his way to Banff for the summer), and Duncan had a blast showing off the additions to his video game collection since Deven’s last visit (which includes a whole new system and Zelda). I actually thought that I would be throwing a blanket over Deven since he looked intent to play Zelda straight through until it was finished… but eventually he relinquished the control in favour of admiring the “artwork” bouncing around in DOA Xtreme Beach Volley Ball.

I am blogging quickly this morning, both whilst making French Toast (mmMMMMmm) for breakfast, and in anticipation of the arrival of Cathy, who is spending the day with us…. (kids are home today so we have arranged a play date/coffee date).

The other night Duncan and I watched Lost and Delirious, again (I bought it because it touched me so much). The movie encompasses many issues encountered by people who try to forge relationships with other people; yet truly the movie is about the love shared between two best friends who met at boarding school and share a room. Two best girlfriends (Paulie and Tory) who love each other – who are in fact, in love with each other. For many reasons, I can relate to this expression of love in the movie, as I fell in love with my best friend…

Their love is a forbidden love as much as it is a true and gentle love; a love that poses risk to be enjoyed yet so is truly a love of the person rather than a love of benefit from said alliance. It is a passionate love that knows no boundaries, but it is a love hidden from those around them from fear of being caught, fear of the reprisals and the consequences of being caught. They are after all, in an all girl boarding school. But let’s not kid each other…. Two people in love may think they can hide it, but eventually it becomes obvious to all as the light of the new day. The story of the two girls becomes really a story about what happens when their love is denied.

It is a story of how people bend (and try to change) themselves because they think it is what other people want/need/expect, but how really, in denying their truth they are in essence denying themselves. How lives that seem perfect together can no longer function when denied for perceived social constructs (read status quo), and a love that seemed amazing once is now torturous – the abject pain associated with denial (of love and self) as pretending to be someone or something you are not becomes the mistake of living someone else’s dreams or plans for you. It is a story of betrayal, but the worst crime is denial of self.

“LIARS! Love is. It just is. And nothing you can say will make it go away!” screams Paulie in a classroom full of her peers who are trying to define love. It is Tory who has denied Paulie for fear of her parents finding out, and the story is really Paulie’s as she tries to make the transition that Tory has initiated, but finds her love of Tory is more then her love of life itself…. And she can’t bear how incomplete everything seems when they are apart.

The movie expresses love in a powerful and beautiful manner, and it refuses to express that love within the boundaries that some people try to entrap it. It’s difficult for those in the story who can not relate to understand, and another girl, trying to help Paulie sort out her feelings, tells Paulie that Tory "wants boys now...". Paulie, shocked, as if she had never considered it in that way, says

Paulie: “You think I am a lesbian?”
Mary: “You are a girl in love with a girl, aren’t you?”
Paulie: “NO! I am Paulie in love with Tory.”

Simple. True. Love is.