Be good to yourself, everyone else will follow.

this post is text-heavy so i'm making up for it with a screenshot of the hottest cop ever (and i dont even like cops)

Rhodes: We're not all bad.
Annie: (starts engine, doesn't hear) What?
Rhodes: (tries to talk louder)I just sa--.. We're not all bad.
Annie: Oh, yeah.
Rhodes: Actually the rest of them are, but not me. I'm the best of them.
Annie: Kay, thank you.
Rhodes: Anyway.. (waves)
Annie: (driving away) Thank you!

Isn't Nathan Rhodes just a dreamboat? Vulnerable, genuine, caring, sweet, funny, but can also be at-your-face when you need a good slappin on the butt. ....A good ol' G-RATED slapping on the butt.

source

My best friend Carmen visited me two days ago after a long dry season in our friendship and we ended up watching Bridesmaids, laughing our lungs out, and having squeal fits over Officer Rhodes, played by "the Irish Seth Rogen": Chris O'dowd (tell me i'm not the only one that noticed this). I'd already seen and enjoyed it (IMMENSELY) before and thought of C instantly since it was about girls and best-friendships and changes and all.

I'll be honest here, I have been feeling very hopeless about my friendships lately, or well, the days preceding that day I finally got to see C again.  I thought it was already at the point of no return with my old friends, her included. And it wasn't an issue of replacement with new friends. I simply just felt that I had NO real friends anymore. We consider each other best friendssesses, and we are, but in reality we don't get to see each other much. With graduating students, when it comes down to juggling school that can possibly ruin your life (or at least your confidence in it) if you don't do it right, and friends that will love you no matter what you do, maintaining your relationship with the latter just gets pushed and pushed for later.

In the end, all of the bad stuff I felt seemed very silly when we hung out again. I know she sort of feels a bit silly too, I know that the idea of our relationship's ultimate eventual demise has crossed and bothered her mind, like it did mine (we talked about it). In the end, I realized that if everyone saw through each other's eyes and grew relationships that somehow seem to dissolve egos in a magical way, a safe "place" where you know that you are loved and accepted and understood, (and if not, acknowledged and sincerely welcomed to explain yourself) then nobody will ultimately feel abandoned. They will understand what causes people's shortcomings towards them and will eventually play on their loved one's side against the problem, instead of on their own side against their loved ones and whatever is "wrong" with them. It's impossible to hold a grudge in relationships that are so open and sincere and open to vulnerability, and I'm so lucky to have people in my life, a lover and a best friend that I can be like that with.

It's easy to generalize a bunch of things when you come across ONE EXAMPLE of it that affects you in a big way, especially negatively. This doesn't only apply to situations and things as described above, but also to people. One man who's abandoned your mother and siblings becomes another man that abandons you and your kids, therefore all men are a ticking time bomb, waiting for the first chance to explode into coldness, disinterest, confusion, boredom, and to start something with "someone new". And well, always being the "someone old" can be pretty sickening, that the easiest route to feeling okay again is to just console yourself with the thought that all of men are like that. Or worse, that something is wrong with you and you're just not lovable in "that way". Exactly in the way we judge one person's symptom as representative of their whole being, even though we haven't given them a real chance to show us what that is, we also generalize certain groups of people in the way they deal with things.

To be honest, I don't think the similarities are intrinsic to them. If you'll allow me, I'd like to go out on a limb and infer that it's our uncalled-for defenses that make the symptoms repeat themselves over and over. We protect ourselves from feeling a certain horrible feeling again, and this is only natural. But as we do these weather-proofing things (example: giving too much so that someone would keep loving you, trying to "catch" someone before they do something bad) we generally just give off a vibe of detachment from each other.

Another thing we might consider is the idea that when we get treated the same way over and over again, maybe it's because the previous devaluing has made us devalue ourselves, and as a result we act as if we're not worth what we're worth, and most importantly, we associate and surround ourselves with the same kind of relationships. And sometimes the wrong kind of people. (I don't mean "wrong kind" as if there's actually a wrong kind of person, because like I said everyone just has their own struggles that only they can see, but in this life we only have so little time and it's not our job to fix everybody we meet or wait for everybody to change. The right kind of person is somebody who compliments you wherever you are in your life's journey. All I'm saying is: Cover your own ass before you try covering anyone else's.)

This whole post (which has gotten very long I apologize) is for the good ones, and the ones that can't find them. We should never make ourselves believe that the good ones don't exist, lest they actually come along and we won't be able to notice them. You'll never know who might pull up in a cop car being all Irish and cute and creampuff-loving and offering you baby carrots. (I'm talking to you, Annie. You lucky baker.)

But even more important than finding good ones out there to fulfill holes in ourselves, we should look inwards and find the good one inside of us. We should look at ourselves with the same mercy and empathy that we'd offer for anyone that we have that certain unconditional love for. Stop waiting for your wholeness to come from somebody else and grow it within you. Raise your self-value until you get to that place wherein you feel rightfully entitled to claim what you feel you deserve. And I'm partly, if not mostly talking to myself here. Stop acting as if everything is trying to get away from you and just BE someone so happy that it makes people happy to be around you.

PS: I hope everyone who's reading this has seen Bridesmaids already, and if not, well I hope this makes you check it out. As a film critic, I'd say it was ok, but as a Bea, I say it's really hilarious and combo-punches all that gut-busting Kristen Wiig humor with the fact that the film actually makes you think.