You’re So Stupid, Rose! (Pt 2 – Even Stupider)

Rose killed Jack.

I said what I said, and now I’ll tell you why. First of all, I’m sick of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, so I wanted to talk about another disastrous relationship ending. And since I’m with it and hip, let’s talk about a 25 year old movie. 1997, long before Johnny Depp started taking facial hair cues from Ron Jeremy and that creepy Italian Uncle who made you feel weird after you had to kiss him.

The point is, times have changed and I need to talk about Titanic. Remember how Rose was safely on the lifeboat, and she decided to hop off the afloat lifesaving ship and hop on the sinking one? For love? And Leo says, “You’re so stupid, Rose!” when they reunite?

She was fucking stupid, and her stupidity killed the man!

Think about it, if she had just stayed in the damn boat, there’s plenty of room on the door for Leo, and he survives. There’s no argument about if they both would have fit on the door because she wouldn’t have been there! Jack gets on the door, he survives. Rose stays in her boat, she survives. Then, I don’t spend hours of my life sobbing that his heart had to go ooooooon because he’s alive and it’s a freaking happy ending! Dammit Rose!

Is there a metaphor in this? You betcha! Is it shit related? I don’t think so. Don’t wanna get too one (brown) note.

How many sinking ships have I jumped on for no damn good reason for some misguided notion of love?

How many times have I, at a minimum, screwed up my life under some bizarre thought that I can fix/help/save them, or that we’re meant to be together. despite it being perfectly clear I’d fare significantly better staying put?

How many times have I drowned somebody else with my idea of love? How many doors did I hog when there was a perfectly safe boat for me? Conversely, how many times have I frozen to death in artic waters because some broad (or miscreant from Tinder) hopped on my sinking ship again?

Now in the case of Rose, I suppose it worked out fine enough for her, but it sucks for now dead Jack that he couldn’t get on the door she took up.

And okay, fine, Final Destination traumatized me too, so maybe Jack would have always died, but I think he was clever enough to figure it out if Rose had just not been so stupid. And fine, the lines between love and madness often get blurry, so maybe I’m being too much of a Leo Stan. Maybe if Leo jumped back on a sinking ship, I’d think it was romantic. But I doubt it. I mean, seriously, what did she think she was going to do jumping back on? Is it just to get a few more minutes with him? I mean, he worked so damn hard to get her to safety, and she just fuck it’s right back on. Stupid.

And let’s be honest, it’s not like she was hopping back on to save him. It’s not like she could have stopped the boat from sinking, so at best she’s just going to her death just because she loved him. And I guess you could say ohhh they could be like the old couple in bed, but dammit, they both could have lived instead! How many times have I chosen a weird notion of love instead of life? Instead of living and loving? Or, I suppose, a grave misunderstanding of one lead to massive problems in the other, interchangeably! So I guess I’m just glad no one got killed — unlike Rose who fucking murdered Jack!

And I’m not even touching on chucking the diamond in the ocean. Like that’s just shitty. “Hey I have your life’s work here in my pocket” “oops!” That’s another day I suppose.

The lesson I’ve taken from this is that I overanalyze movies, AND that I can see, accept, and love the Rose in me – stupid, shitty, or drawn like a French girl. I can see all the times I’ve made breathtakingly stupid or shitty decisions in the wrong name of love. I can see the Jack in me, letting others’ breathtaking stupidity cause me near deadly problems.

Hell, I kind of think movies have kind of distorted my ideas of love and romance, anyway. Because 25 years ago what I’m now calling stupid, I did call love.

The only reason I can see it in them is because I see it all in me. And that’s pretty damn exciting; since, what I observe is not me, even if I observe it in myself.

This Titanic over analysis gives me hope that I am growing to the point that as the ships of life hit icebergs, crack in half, and sink, I will sit in my lifeboat, genuinely loving myself enough that I will throw up the deuces to bad situations that will inevitably have bad conclusions.

…Or, if, for example, anyone was treating me with any of the literal or figurative shit of either side in the case of Mr. Depp and Miss Turd…✌🏻in contrast to how I have, thank God metaphorically, shit the bed in quite a few relationships, too.

(Dammit, I had to make a shit reference…)

I am really glad I saw so much of myself in that trial – if I can observe it, it is not me. It was me: before times changed, and before I knew better. Thank God I know better.

I hope more warriors can remember the same.

It’s worth noting, I originally wrote a post similar to this not long before I got sick. As I was getting sick, I became paranoid about my blog, and I deleted it. I deleted every single poem and post I had created. I had no backups, so they were gone. This was one of my favorite things I had written to date, and it crushed me after I realized what I had done. Re-writing this has brought in new perspective – seeing the Rose and Jack in me – that I didn’t have then, and I think it’s cool to see a literal manifestation of the idea that you spiral around old lessons to learn new truths. And there’s a butt ton of insight from the Turd trial, so that’s cool too. There’s a funny catharsis in writing something you’d lost and seeing you had it all along. But that’s a Wizard of Oz reference for another day.