If you were a character in a film...

...who would you be?

Today, I would be Frances McDormand playing Marge Gunderson in Fargo.

Marge, who is burdened with many months of pregnancy, goes to work everyday to chase down murderers and find bodies being ground in a wood chipper. She deals with pretty serious issues, copes with the stress, negotiates with her coworkers, and keeps her wits about her. She then goes home, after a gruesome day, to her husband, who is upset that he did not win a duck-painting contest (or some similar hobby-type activity.) She sympathizes with him, saying maybe next time, and is patient and listens to his feelings. (I am not referring to my own husband here, for the record.)

I am not pregnant (also for the record) but I have some mental cramping from the events of the last few years. I find myself in various roles in my life which require a great deal of responsibility and maturity and patience and thought and far-reaching decisions. It might involve the serious illness of a very close family member, being that person's caretaker from 800 miles and one country away, working on projects that will affect the citizens of an entire city, being attentive to the needs of everyone, etc.

And then I turn around to find the many people in my life complaining about stale Cheerios and a misplaced comma or colon. And these people have no idea how much effort and how many resources went behind buying that box of Cheerios. And they don't notice the words enveloping the misplaced comma.

It feels like one of the little absurdities of everyday life, the ones that I usually laugh off, by either telling stories to Paul or writing them in my head or on paper. I feel sometimes like I'm walking down the sidewalk, looking at the clouds and the buildings and the trees and the animals and reading books and creating things, but the people around me can't stop staring at the crack in the sidewalk. I can relate. I've been there. It has taken me a long time and cost me a lot of tired tragedies and excruciating sacrifices to be able to look up and away from the crack and see something bigger and experience something new. And now I find, standing here, looking around, that it has its own price. It's lonely.