The tides

I just finished watching "Prince of Tides" for at least the 20th time. I've read the book and watched the movie and can never get enough. And whenever I need to feel, a deep, real feeling, I know I can count on this movie to connect me.

The problem is, when it is done, I feel hollowed out, empty and left on with tears and all the thoughts it brings to me.

It's a love addict's movie to some degree. I remember I was involved with someone very seriously the first time I saw it. I related so much to the line, "Before I met you, I was in a deep. deep sleep." It was true, I had been. I had never opened myself to love before that relationship and when it ended I was devastated and torn.

I remember too that I watched the movie -- or at least part of it -- with R. I couldn't bear to watch it to the end and made an excuse to get up and leave before it ended. Because even then, I knew that like Nick Nolte's character Tom, I would return to my home, to my husband, and I couldn't bear to let R. see my face and the tears that came as the movie ended and Tom drove across the bridge whispering "Lowenstein, Lowenstein."

This time as I watched the movie, I paid particular attention to the way Nolte fabulously acted the part of an abused child living as a grown adult carrying the immense burden of deep and horrifying secrets never told. "The southern way" was the way in my family too, so ingrained that the warnings never had to be whispered. I grew up, like my neighbors, my cousins, my siblings, my friends ... knowing that there are some things you simply never tell. Those things may kill you, make you want to kill yourself ... but never tell.

I was thinking this week that I am thankful to be an adult now who has the choice to tell.