Friday Night Lights

I’ve been watching Friday Night Lights. Like any great, well like any great anything, it’s made me look at my life from a new angle. Made me re-examine my choices, particularly those I’ve made since moving to Seattle, my Exile Years.

In Season Three Episode 4, Brian “Smash” Williams, whose end-of-the-season knee injury could have easily ended his brilliant football career, gets himself back into fighting shape and is eventually admitted to the University of Oklahoma. (I’m hazy on the details.)

It goes without saying that everyone is behind him. The love on this show, in this town, is so thick you could cut it into pieces and sew it into a quilt. There’s maternal/paternal love, puppy love, marital love, fraternal love between friends and co-workers and just fellow football fans, love of the Panthers, love of town and state and country and on and on and on. The town is awash in it. I dive deeply into the worlds created by films, novels, and beautiful television shows. I take escapism seriously. Entering this particular land rights the toy boat that is my precarious little life.

So anyway, everyone is helping “Smash”. Coach Tyler practices with him in the mornings, his mother takes a second job, his football buddies encourage him, the doctors take great care of him, and he makes a full recovery. Still and all, he is dubious. He thinks he’s slower, and when the General Manager of the Alamo Freeze where he works part time offers him a job as Regional Manager, he tells his Momma he’s considering the offer.

The point is, it takes many people 50 impossibly inspiring TV minutes to convince Smash that he can do the one thing he was born to do: play football. The episode culminates in a speech by Coach, seconds before Smash will begin his trial, in which he tells him exactly what he needs to hear. After hearing the man who is essentially his surrogate father tell him he has dominated in times of crisis in the past and will do so this time, he of course, succeeds brilliantly and is accepted.

It was after that speech that I thought, “Waaaaait a minute. Who has ever gotten exactly the encouragement they needed just when they needed it? What if we all did? What if I did? Seriously, what more would I have accomplished by now? Who would I have become?”

It’s too hard to pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps all the time. Even Smash couldn’t do it, and he talks about himself in the third person. I am tired of trying. I cannot be my own personal football coach. It’s impossible. Even in the best of times, everyone needs guidance. And I get that support sometimes, I do. But let’s face it, I am not in a “best of times” scenario at the moment. I am…well, I am bereft, frankly. I feel like an old housecat going out to the woods to die alone. I just want to be somewhere dark and quiet where no one will ever bother me again. I’m starting a play, which is excellent as far as enforced interaction goes, but goddamnit I want to wallow. I want to wail and rend garments and gnash teeth. I am not okay. I do not want to do what I was born to do because it is too hard and I am too tired to do any more hard things all alone. And let there be no mistake, alone is what I very much am.

This is not say that I will end up working at the Helen-equivalent to the Alamo Freeze, doing something I hate because it is easy. I know myself well enough to be certain that someday, I will be proud of myself again. I think I just need to remember that a couple doses of great advice may not be enough to save me from myself today, and I guess that’s…what? Fine? Well not fine, but reasonable.