Uptown Girl

This morning I started my day with a couple of yoga classes at Perennial and then headed out to CamRock to mountain bike. I hadn't been out there for a while -- I've been making do with laps at Quarry Ridge most of the summer -- and it felt good to ride some longer trails with some different challenges.

Afterward I took a bath and then a nap - my favorite post ride activities (at least now that I'm solo) -- and then roused myself to meet a friend at Sundance for a movie. We saw Trainwreck, the new Judd Apatow movie, and I thought it was awesome entertainment. I cried -- and I love a good cry -- both because I was moved and from laughing so hard.

Today's selection is from the soundtrack -- it's the song that the main character's somewhat dorky doctor boyfriend always plays in the operating room:

Uptown girl
She's been living in her uptown world
I bet she never had a backstreet guy
I bet her mama never told her why

I'm gonna try for an uptown girl
She's been living in her white bred world
As long as anyone with hot blood can
And now she's looking for a downtown man
That's what I am

And when she knows what
She wants from her time
And when she wakes up
And makes up her mind

She'll see I'm not so tough
Just because
I'm in love with an uptown girl

You know I've seen her in her uptown world
She's getting tired of her high class toys
And all her presents from her uptown boys
She's got a choice

Uptown girl
You know I can't afford to buy her pearls
But maybe someday when my ship comes in
She'll understand what kind of guy I've been
And then I'll win

And when she's walking
She's looking so fine
And when she's talking
She'll say that she's mine

And just like in Billy Joel's lyrics, the lovers in the movie end up together. I'm glad it works out in the movies, because it doesn't seem to work out that way very often in real life. The friend with whom I saw the movie is going through a break up -- one she instigated -- and struggling with her decision.

She said that she had never been in the situation before when you really love someone but love isn't enough. I warned her that what I was about to say was informed by my own experience with love, and then I told her that I thought that was crap. The problems she described were about her difficulties maintaining a sense of herself in the relationship -- and I get that that is a challenge -- god knows it was in my last relationship. But the answer, if you ask me, if her love is of the same mind, body, soul magnitude as mine for the New Englander, is not to break up. It's to work that shit out together.

I can't know what is right for her, but I can know that I do not believe in walking away from a great love. I can't control his choices, but I can know that I would not and will not make the same decision the next time I'm in his shoes, or my friend's shoes, or anyone else's who has found a great love and walked away because of not being able to deal with their own shit...