When a Singular Gesture Ends
She'd had it, finally. Finally, after years of theorizing and imagining the way that her life would connect after one final romantic gesture, Mindy got her moment. She ran through the damp streets of New York after a romantic falling out and a stop at a 24 hour men's barber shop for a seven dollar haircut, all to profess l-o-v to through an apartment window. This was it. It was the type of moment she'd dreamt about: adrenaline, tears, and uniting with the kind of reunion kiss that always ends a season finale of television. Or a Nora Ephron film. Or Mindy's life.
There was the unexplored territory, though, of what becomes of the world after the final scene. Mindy had always considered this, but naively protected herself from reality by assuming that any challenges the couple faced afterwards would never be so momentous that the love that brought them together for their streets-of-Manhattan reunion could not conquer it. Mindy calculated that such kisses were the epitome of love, and that any events thereafter could always be compared back to that kiss and the problems would eventually resolve, thanks to the entirely romantic foundation of their love.
Unfortunately for Mindy, reality returned in a nauseatingly swift manner. Her life couldn't wrap up in cute clips in the ending credits of her and Casey visiting her parents, kissing happily in the line for customs before boarding the plane to go to Boston for Christmas. Her future wasn't going to be in quick shots of framed photos of her and Casey in Haiti, happily cuddling children in their village, playing hacky-sack and reading scripture. She actually had to go to Haiti.
She actually had to go on leave from her practice, leaving Danny and Jeremy as co-owners who had to find a replacement to take on Mindy's patients. Could she truly expect her job to be there for her when she got back, chocolate fountain flowing and a wealth of expectant mothers eagerly postponing childbirth for her return?
Mindy loved her job. She worked incredibly hard to get to where she was, professionally. Her residency was absolute hell and the part of Mindy sitting in a cab, on her way back to the hospital from Casey's, felt insufferable pangs for willingly opening up her American career for dismantling in her absence.
How was she going to do this? How was she going to truly and honestly rent her apartment for a year to some gross stranger, ask Danny to keep the key to her office and practice safe in his desk, and cross the equator? She had to cross the equator, right? Mindy didn't even know, geographically, where Haiti was. A quick search on Google Maps alleviated this one concern, but seeing it there, tiny and nestled between Cuba and the Dominican Republic, made it so, so real.
The romantic elation that she'd felt at Casey's soon melted into panicked anxiety and absolute indecision. At thirty-one, Mindy still felt confused. According to her arbitrary calculations, she would have liked to have more of a handle on her life's decisions at this point. She'd always though that there would be some sort of mark of stability and closure in her life. In her hypotheticals, it was always love that would be the mark of stability in her life. Mindy's real life reflected something different: her job was her longed-for stability. Her job was what she had come to rely on, to challenge herself with, and to love.
She'd said it herself to Casey: all she'd wanted in life was to fall in love and be in a great relationship. She'd done it! But here she was, the day after the movie ended, feeling slightly underwhelmed and Googling "what is love". After watching the Haddaway video more than once, Mindy found no solace in Wikihow articles or Yahoo Answers. "Come on, Internet." She scolded, displeased with the seeming lack of virtual women out there who shared her same dissatisfaction in the aftermath of romance that was supposed to leave her permanently happy for the rest of her days. Where was her Nicholas Sparks-level maddening fulfillment from one single person?
Mindy closed her laptop. As luck and years of misplaced romantic cultural conditioning would have it, Mindy had no choice but to slowly come to terms with her true, honest feelings: something wasn't right. She was entirely confused, completely torn between a whole wealth of troubling emotions. She reopened her laptop and looped Natalie Imbruglia.
To be continued