Don’t date a director

Written during a very bad time with Nikki, my boyfriend of two and a half years as of writing. We’re generally okay as long as his shoot sked doesn’t hijack our dates. The ‘Don’t date a…’ series has run its course online, but If anyone deserves a ‘Don’t date a…’ entry, I think its directors.

Don’t date a director.

They see what you can’t see. They will frame you. They will challenge your story over and over again. It’s a strange process, you are never really certain why it has to be told that way. You love them when they’re afire with their passion, when they tremble to their fingertips as they beg you to hear their tale. You count up to the thousands when they crash, when their tempers get the better of them, when they nitpick every little detail not seen by the naked eye.

But you will be dazzled by how they put you into the light that suits your mood. You forgive them when they will make you hope and believe that things will be just like the movies, that through it all, no matter how flawed, it will be happily ever after then cue end credits.

Then the schedule comes in. You will be made to wait. You will wait anywhere from days to weeks.

Like their jobs, with you, you know they work hard behind the scenes, but you have no idea what it is that they actually see. If you’re lucky, there’s a monitor, and you can see minutes of that scene they just shot. But it’s one scene out of the hundreds, thousands, all lined up but waiting to be put together. You only have to trust them to make it right. It’s like a blind person hanging onto a complete stranger and trusting that he’ll lead you to where you need to be. But while you trust them, sometimes, you have no other choice but to stand still in the dark, waiting for the next set-up (And god help you if he likes going off-script). As someone in a director’s line of sight, you have their full attention, and you don’t. You are among among people but are so alone.

Through the heartache, through the shouting, and take after take after take, in the murkiest of certainties, when it finally comes through on your big screen, you are swept away in awe. It is larger than you, than him, than her, and it is – it has always been – for you. That is why you cry when you smile and laugh, and you hurt in all kinds of places but through it all you love. It’s the gray areas that make sense to them, even if they can never say so.

Don’t date a director. Date someone who can keep the time, make your dates, who will be there. Someone who you will hear, see, touch, who will tell you as it is. You will say your ‘I love yous’, and your vows. You will have polite kisses and perfectly planned dates and three point five kids. You will see the big picture even before it unfolds because hey, it’s all according to plan.

But if that were a film, you wouldn’t watch it.