This Is Our Crazy…

Can we talk This Is Us?

A committed relationship with a few television shows is part of my life. Like The Real Housewives. I feel better knowing there are crazy bitches who cannot get it together despite money and privilege. I fully realize it says more about me than them. Sometimes the truth hurts.

It’s like a marriage. I am ever loyal, ever judgey and a sucker for a happy ending. I love when any medium reflects back that none amongst us is perfect and that, yes, women are sometimes lunatics. Makes me feel better.

No that men aren’t; they’re just more comfortable with it. Women are conditioned to think we must behave, be and act certain ways. We keep secret that we yell at our husbands and wonder what the hell we frittered away our lives on. That pregnancy was not fun–no matter the maternity wear. By the way, it’s bullshit that eight months pregnant you can wear heels. Your feet swell and bulge and grow around those heels rending you someone Shreck would reject.

The Norwegian more than once called this girl crazy. And paid the price as the crazy grew bigger and more emboldened. Along with the charge that he made me that way. He also, at various times in our marriage was the reason I was not on The Nightly News, skinny, and stretch mark free. That last one was in fear a younger, markless bimbo would convince him I was in fact crazy and take the life we’d built.

He, on the other hand, rolled with the punches, professed not to see stretch marks but was actually down with the crazy. And on it goes. That’s life. This is us.

It’s as if the front of your home is removed, doll house style, and millions watch. It’s every family with every crazy, angry, misunderstood, slighted, wilted, happy, joy filled, holiday-strifed, money-worried moment laid bare.

Kate allows us to peer into her obesity, to be amongst the “not seen” unable to wrestle demons. Randall gives a glimpse of being a black man in a white world, and yes, the world is white. At least on tv. And Kevin show us that having it all doesn’t necessarily fill the soul.

But the crux of fascination is the marriage of Rebecca and Jack. Their marriage is wonderful and sustaining and filled with moments so sweet we are swept away in a tide of tears. It is also ugly and messy and crazy and compromising and so sad we are swept away in that same tide.

Did you not hold your breath when Toby fell? Did you not weep with joy that not only was he alive but he’d “marry the hell” out of Kate? Can we not imagine the difficulty in discovery a parent is not just sexually active but bisexually so? Do we not wonder at our response should our widowed mother remarry? (Yikes!) Can we not relate to the secrets kept?

Why, then do we not turn our tears toward each other? Real people? For one day, take our mirrors and turn them outward, fully seeing the needs of others, the love that surrounds us and the compassion that is everywhere.

And hope to God there are enough Jack and Toby’s for all of us.