What If The Ending Were Different
“It took me 20 minutes to pick you up and it will take me 20 minutes out of my way to take you home. That’s 40 minutes out of my way. I’m never going to do that again.” Five months into dating him was five months too long.
When I was in high school, the movie Never Been Kissed came out. It became my favorite movie for the next decade. The main character Josie Geller, played by Drew Barrymore, was playing my real-life story. (Except for living in Chicago, being an undercover reporter and falling in love with her teacher). But the awkward girl that never got the guy – that was me.
Josie was twenty-five and sent on her first assignment as an undercover reporter to be a high school student. This was her second chance to go back to high school and hang out with the popular kids.
It didn’t work out that way, at first. She was still awkward. They made fun of her. Then her twenty-three-year-old brother Rob decided to enroll in high school to play baseball and told the popular kids all sorts of lies about Josie’s life to make them like her. During this transformation of becoming popular, she expressed to her brother,
“I’ve waited my whole life to fit in and now I finally do.”
Somewhere along the way, she and her teacher Sam Coulson developed a friendship and they fell in love – that was the real story she was to uncover.
Spoiler alert - sorry.
Josie pretended to be someone she was not so the cool kids would be friends with her.
When it comes to my previous dating experience, I have spent way too many hours waiting for my crush to call or text me when he’s clearly not interested. I have spent even longer hours holding back parts of my personality I don’t like so my boyfriend at the time would still date me.
In an article in Psychology Today titled, “Why Ghosting Hurts so Much,” (ghosting refers to someone who stops all communication with you and disappears from your life) the writer says,
“Social rejection activates the same pain pathways in the brain as physical pain … One of the most insidious aspects of ghosting is that it doesn’t just cause you to question the validity of the relationship you had, it causes you to question yourself … This self-questioning is the result of basic psychological systems that are in place to monitor one’s social standing and relay that information back to the person via feelings of self-worth and self-esteem.”
Rejection doesn’t feel good. But I actually feel better about myself when I’m not spending my energy chasing after someone who doesn’t see me as someone worthy to pursue.
I watched the movie Legally Blonde this week. (I know, chic flick girl right here!) Elle Woods chased her ex-boyfriend across the country to be the person she thought she was supposed to be to win him over. And after she became that person, he still didn’t want her. In that defining moment of her life, she said,
“I’m never going to be good enough for you, am I Warner?”
Something changed for Elle Woods when she said those words.
This was the part where I could see God saying, “Are you done trying to do it on your own? Are you ready to be the person I made you to be?”
He formed us in our mother’s womb. We are custom built. We are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:13-14). He knows the plans he has for us (Jeremiah 29:11).
Elle Woods gained her confidence back. Her ex-boyfriend came graveling to take her back but she knew who she was and turned him down. The course of her life was dramatically changed after that.
Nearing the end of Never Been Kissed, Josie was about to tell her teacher Sam who she really was but her cover got blown. And like every other plot in a movie, there was drama. I don’t have to tell you how it ends, you already know how it ends, right? It’s like every other movie – the girl gets the guy and they live happily ever after.
But it got me thinking - what if Josie’s cover wasn’t blown and she revealed her true identity to him in that moment? Would they still end up together? Probably. What if I still dated or even married the guy who would never drive out of his way again to pick me up? What if my story ended differently then where it is right now?
Thank God that was not the end of my story. Even in my loneliest days of singleness, I don’t wish for what could have been.