Why I shouldn't watch Helen Hunt movies

Since Middle School, I've been trying to make mild depression seem romantic.

Honestly, I'm not sure I even suffer from depression. More exactly, I'm VERY sure I either suffer from serious depression or none at all but, in either case, when feeling stuck in the thickness of my head, wearing three day old sweatpants, watching (but not following the plot of) old TV sitcoms, staring down piles of laundry wondering how televised housewives can match socks with such easy enthusiasm, and feeling like even the smallest movement will set off a thin ragged fault line through myself, in those moments, I want depression to seem romantic.

I blame the old movies they showed us in health class: made-for-TV (or worse: Made-for-Health-Class) films depicting reluctant suicidal teens charming poorly-dressed psychiatrists or sweetly dispositioned anorexics captivating loving gymnastics coaches. When Helen Hunt jumped through that window or that odd alcoholic girl drunk-rode her horse down Main Street, I thought personal problems never looked so good. Those movies made me think being troubled (being crazy?) wasn't too unusual a state of mind to make work.

Then, later, Helen Hunt again, with what I call The Twister Complex. Remember the movie Twister? Hunt is all gorgeous and brave, chasing tornadoes and flipping over cars, but (like 99% of the professionally successful women characters in film) she uses her work to hide from the emotional risks of her love life. Enter Romantic Interest, so drawn to her recklessness and beauty! Enter Romantic Interest, to save her from herself! He grabs her out of the mouth of a tornado (oh the metaphor!), confronts her emotional reluctance as rain soaks her thin T-shirt (oh the drama!), and makes her give love a chance despite her deeply broken heart (oh the romance!). The Twister Complex is when you perfect being beautifully broken to the point where other people are irresistibly drawn to fixing you. See the appeal?

Although he is totally the Run-Through-Tornadoes type, my husband met me when the metaphorical skies were clear. In fact, he met me at the absolutely most healthy moment in my life (perhaps the most healthy day) when, all confidence and cunning, I asked him when the Martin Luther King Jr holiday would fall that year (I already knew the answer). After that, I kept arranging lunch dates until, tired of waiting for him to make the first move, I showed up at his office unexpected and asked for a goodnight kiss. I actually said "I've come to get a goodnight kiss". He complied willingly without, he now assures me, any sense of being stalked.

The Best First Kiss Ever.

This was a time in my life when I was confident and relaxed, thinner than I'd been since Middle School, prone to jogging for fun and laughing over small delights like they were all that mattered. This was a time when I made all the important moves (going to graduate school, getting my own apartment, eating healthy, falling in love) with a confidence and easy enthusiasm you'd never see in Health Class. This was the best kiss from the best man and I didn't have to do anything to seem more romantic than I actually was.

Comparatively, this all made any future Twister Complex harder to pull off. Now when my husband comes home to find me eating brownies, my hair tugged into a sloppy ponytail, a shadow of izabella's yogurt (or is that snot?) still smeared across my sleeve, and dirty dishes stacked by the sink, neither of us think "How Reckless and Beautiful!". Now depression seems boring and tasteless, nothing worthy of the time it slowly chews on and swallows. To make depression seem romantic now I'd need to wear heels and bolder lipstick, I think, or maybe a wet Tshirt? Short of that, mildly (seriously? not-at-all?) debilitating moodiness just doesn't seem worth a rescue mission.

So I try, depressed or not, to keep my family in matched socks and clean dishes. I try to shower whenever needed, watch less TV, and write whenever I can. I try to make phone calls, leave the house when the sun shines, and play games with the toddlers. And instead of trying to make depression seem romantic, I try to find romance in the rare unexpected order of take-out and in my husband's unflappable optimistic belief that this too shall pass.

Still, you better believe that if ever faced with the opportunity to dodge a tornado-tossed cow and tracker combo I am totally going to make depression seem romantic. Timing is everything.