riddance [rid-ns]
the act or fact of clearing away or out, as anything undesirable; relief or deliverance from something
Synonyms include: disposal, clearance, removal, sacrifice

If I had a dollar for every time someone has asked, suggested or insisted that I watch The Holiday, I think I could've had a mighty satisfying visit to J.Crew or Banana Republic by now. Whether someone said they fell in love with Jude Law, or was surprised at Jack Black's romantic role, or was enchanted by the charming elderly gentleman in the film, one opinion remained universal - it was touching. Touching? Oh geez, I thought, is this movie going to make me cry, make me think? And so it did...

I have a cycle...I have many cycles; all which involve me going from one extreme on the emotio-meter to the other when it comes to matters which I find quite easy to disregard, but become most difficult to ignore once I acknowledge it. I feel less than myself one minute, unable to think sensibly or act confidently, and then I get some sense knocked into me somehow and I find myself in that This is B.S., I'm too good to be feeling this way stage. I love that stage. It's where I seem to laugh the most because it's where I feel the most myself.

These characters in The Holiday seem to want to be at that stage too, because for whatever reason, they found themselves in situations that left them feeling fragmented; yet figuring a way to fix it seemed impossible because they kept doing the same things that broke them in the first place. Jack Black's character asks, "Why am I attracted to a person I know isn’t good?" And Kate Winslet's character sums up the answer in a most poignant monologue:

Because you’re hoping you’re wrong, and every time she does something that tells you she’s no good, you ignore it, and every time she comes through and surprises you she wins you over and you lose that argument with yourself that she’s not for you.

I understand feeling as small and as insignificant as humanly possible, and how it could actually ache in places that you didn’t know you had inside you. And it doesn’t matter how many new haircuts you get or gyms you join, or how many glasses of chardonnay you drink with your girlfriends. You still go to bed every night going over every detail and wonder what you did wrong, or how you could’ve misunderstood. And how in the hell for that brief moment you could think that you were that happy. And sometimes you can even convince yourself that he’ll see the light and show up at your door. And after all that, however long “all that” may be, you’ll go somewhere new and you’ll meet people who’ll make you feel worthwhile again. And little pieces of your soul will finally come back and all that fuzzy stuff, those years of your life that you wasted, that will eventually begin to fade.

I know that I've made many testaments on this blog; many hopeful epiphanies catalyzed by overcoming some sort of troublespot in life, only to be followed by a desperate cry for help shortly after. But I realize that you can't always wait for those revelations to precipitate before you get moving on. Sometimes the way out isn't so much going through or overcoming something, as much as it is just about consciously cutting your losses, clearing out your thoughts and emptying your system of this blight altogether. The challenge is knowing when to stick it out and get through it, and when to walk to away.