The 20 Something Diaries: What J Gatsby Taught Me

Is it too cliche to say I'm listening to Lana Del Ray and writing a blog that will attempt to parallel my life to that of The Great Gatsby? Well, if it's wrong, I don't wanna be right. Tonight I watched The Great Gatsby and could not help but feeling like I related so perfectly to Jay Gatsby.How? Well, for starters, I don't come from old money. If you don't either, we're already hitting it off because people with old money know all the right ways of doing things. They keep their toast on their plate when spreading butter, and they "have people for that." "That" being everything. Those of us who hustle for our earnings will never be quite what they expect; we will never be in their inner circle.

Secondly, and I will stay here for most of this little storyline, I find that I sacrifice for and hope ridiculously in, love. Yes, it's that straight forward folks.

A few weeks ago an old friend sent me a message. She warned me that she was not looking for answers (she must've read my previous blogs) but she simply wanted someone to vent to. She wrote about a fight she and her husband had and how in the heat of it he said, "You want me to give this up but what have you sacrificed for me?" Stunned, I imagine, she wrote to me in a sigh, "Doesn't he realize how much I've sacrificed?"

Reading this I smirked a little because I felt so much less alone and the only response I could give her was that she is not alone. The plight of marriage, young adulthood, and even womanhood, is realizing the sacrifices we make and comparing them to what could have been had we not. Watching the bizarre love story between Jay and Daisy, I learned that love is sacrifice, but it is not always a sacrifice made for our beloved counterpart. Often we make choices that are painstaking for us but we hold our oblivious loved one accountable when our love is not magical. Unspoken dreams that we choose to bury for a walk down the aisle or a stable bank account become the glaring resentments we feel when years down the line we are left with noisy parties but no friends to help clean up. We want the trade to be precise, even, just. We wait for our husband, boyfriend, (you fill in the blank) to realize what we've done, then we tempt them to go back in time with us, to turn back the clock so we can do it all over. We want a second chance to see how this plays out when we sacrifice love instead.

I suppose the only unrelenting hope we carry is that we will realize that the dreams, visions, plans, hopes, etc, all pale in comparison to the partnership we've found. But we cannot live with half hearted requests. We cannot love in a time warp. The vow of someday must eventually become today and not only for us, but for our sweet partners as well. We must be vulnerable to all aspects of love; the pain, the wonder, the disappointment and the heartache, because in the end, relationship is all we have, and hope is the only thing that will push us onward.

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