Bittersweet Symphony

On [Self-]Acceptance and Realizing, "That’s Life"

Annette (played by the incomparable Reese Witherspoon) is as cool as a cucumber as she cruises down the interstate at the end of the equal parts melodramatic and sexy 90s teen drama Cruel Intentions. For context – spoilers ahead; but it’s been out for 25 years – good-girl Annette is wooed by player Sebastian as part of some stupid bet with his sinister and nubile step sister, Kathryn, then Sebastian and Annette actually end up falling in love for real, but then Sebastian dies and Kathryn’s bitchy antics are exposed to everyone. There’s a lot of in-between stuff but that’s the gist of this 90s teen classic. 

The general plot isn’t important here; rather, it’s this ending shot of Annette driving in Sebastian’s vintage jaguar, a sanguine yet resigned expression on her face as The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” plays in the background. What amazing lyrics to this iconic song, right? 

'Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, that's life

Tryna make ends meet, you're a slave to money then you die

I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down

You know the one that takes you to the places where all the veins meet, yeah

No change, I can change

I can change, I can change

But I'm here in my mold

I am here in my mold

But I'm a million different people 

From one day to the next

I can't change my mold

This song and the surrounding scene have been replaying – both literally through my Spotify account and figuratively through my mind – over the past few weeks. In less than two weeks, I will be embarking on something so harrowing, so mind-numbing, and so rewarding that it’s impossible to comprehend other than its common two-word moniker…law school. Strangely enough, the academic and career component of this endeavor is not the one that scares me; it’s the social and personal aspect of my life over this next phase and beyond that brings me pause. 

My entire life, I’ve felt that I was in some perpetual state of movement, evolution, transient. I’ve always felt myself drawn to the concept of a liminal space, which is typically defined as an empty or abandoned [man-made] space with an eerie, otherworldly aura. A metaphysical waiting room – the best thing to describe it for my personal experience. My entire life, I’ve been working for something. Waiting for something. Without ever receiving that something, and without even truly knowing *what* that something is. My family has given me so much – nearly everything, really. I have an endless list of things to be grateful for. But with that, in the fine print of the footnotes of the contract, is the also endless list of rules, terms, and conditions, of which I am expected to fully abide. 

Our dear Annette of the Cruel Intentions universe, therefore, is relatable to me in certain ways. Green, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and naive in the ways of men, life, and love. Her earnest OP-ED in the nameless publication entitled “Why I Want to Wait” is something I definitely would have written when I was 15 or 16, with my devout parents peering over my shoulder as my pen moved swiftly across the page. See, around that same age, my parents also gave me a purity necklace – Tiffany, and engraved with True Love Waits – along with a letter emphatically insisting that I maintain my purity until marriage. As many repressed dutiful daughters do, I enthusiastically embraced that particular display of love – after all, good girls listen to their parents. But, like Annette, the desire for both genuine intimacy and lush carnality simmered beneath the surface. 

I lived my life between the lines of love stories, spent my days in the pages of romance novels – soaking up every moment so my deepest consciousness could experience what it seemed as though my physical body would never have the opportunity to comprehend. Attending the private, cloistered institutions of my youth and being sheltered by religious parents gave me a complex about love, sex, and identity. I was taught nothing but fear and negativity about every realm of life that wasn’t strictly centered around propelling my academic prowess. So by the time I hit my college years, at age 18, I was an utter fish out of water. And I expected love to fling itself at me unexpectedly, because I was taught that that’s what good girls deserve and thus receive. 

Boy, was I wrong. 

My mental state for the past few years has oscillated between unbridled optimism and expansive pessimism, and has finally settled on a sort of cautious, subtle optimism combined with an unprotesting air. It’s the feeling that Annette experiences in the latter half of Cruel Intentions, that which all [former] “good girls” come to terms with at some point in their journey – being the “good girl” doesn’t mean that your urges won’t eventually get the better of you at one point or another; it also doesn’t mean that messy, manipulative people won’t see your inner light and deliberately try to pull you into their messiness (most of the time, it’s the contrary, actually). 

I’ve learned, though, that solemn resignation doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Yes, Annette is mourning the loss of her [first] great love, but she had a great love. She found love in a hopeless place from a very unlikely source – but she found it nonetheless. The love between Annette and Sebastian was chaotic, beautiful, short-lived, and real. And then he died. But, oh, was it real. And, upon learning of Kathryn’s manipulation, she also learned that stepping out of that good-girl framework to stand up for herself and expose evil – and doing so with a small bit of her own manipulation – isn’t a bad thing. Finally, she learned that being the “good girl” doesn’t guarantee that you get the fairytale happy ending that you’ve been “promised”. For all humans, there’s only one ending. But I am a firm believer that girls with gumption, bravery, cunning, intelligence, beauty, and tenacity, there are always good endings – even if they’re not always a fairytale. 

This is a central message of this movie that I am just now starting to internalize at almost 24 years old. The rulebook had its place for quite some time, as a way to protect women from the wicked ways of the world (men). But at this point, in a world where good deeds do indeed sometimes go unpunished, the rulebook needs to be thrown out. I stand with the fact that being a good person entitles you to zero reward, but I also believe that playing by the rules doesn’t always give you the reward you’re looking for, either. My life has been extremely blessed; it has also been sequestered in isolation, shrouded in repression. Following the rulebook and holding a candle for the arrival of a promised fairytale was akin to being held in a thick cocoon that does not allow me to blossom but calcifies into a hard shell of hollow protection. 

My world is about to open up immensely over the next three years and beyond, and I have spent the past five spending more time laying the groundwork for what’s to come than the most seasoned doomsday preppers. As Annette observed at the end of Cruel Intentions, however, is that sometimes, just showing up as yourself is enough – without all the superficial bells and whistles – and that it can even be the catalyst for something as incredible as it is cataclysmic. I don’t have to morph into some brand-new version of myself that’s so far from the real me that I become unrecognizable. I don’t have to change everything about myself in order to become more appealing – I even had a dear friend tell me the other day that my stammering earnestness and sunny disposition are genuine parts of my charm, and I’m leaning into it instead of trying to change it. And even though I do have a desire to leave some of that good-girl programming behind and just let life flow as it flows, I’m also letting go of most if not all of the expectations I’ve had about the future. I think that’s the thing about the liminal waiting room I’ve found myself in for so long – what if, despite your absolute best efforts, you’ve spent so much time in this space waiting for a particular outcome that may never come? Or what if there’s a completely different plan for you entirely, but you’re blinded and delirious by the stark white walls of that holding space? 

Who knows if my true love will fall out of the sky and come complete with an NFL or NBA contract, like my mom seems to believe? Or if he could be someone I meet at school in the coming weeks or months? Or if he could be someone on the other side of the country, or the world? Who knows if my one true love in this life could end up just being myself, and I could spend my days speeding down the highway, wind in my hair, with nobody to answer to but God? 

There are no guarantees in this wicked game of life. There is just as much divine intervention as there is randomness. It’s just sex and violence, melody and silence. That’s life.