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I watched 2015’s Carol recently and it’s since kicked off a bit of a personal renaissance. The titular character Carol (played by Cate Blanchett) meets and seduces a much younger and less experienced Therese (played by Rooney Mara.)  The two are separated by age and social class, with the older Carol being a socialite who frequents expensive restaurants and dons a fur coat; versus Therese, a student who sticks to plain dresses and dive bars. They are, however, united in being at a crossroads in their lives: Carol at the tail end of an acrimonious divorce and Therese nervously deflecting a marriage proposal from her pushy boyfriend.  

The two hit it off after a chance encounter at Therese’s department store job and bond over the course of a road trip. At one point Carol takes note of Therese’s photographer aspirations and purchases her an expensive camera and film set far beyond Therese’s means. The moment is touching insofar as Carol is making overtures at understanding Therese, who returns the gesture by taking candid photos of Carol. At the heart of this film are subtle moments like these that convey yearning, curiosity and understanding that which becomes a language unto itself, the language of lovers where needs and desires are anticipated and frictionlessly met.

I, the lonely homo that I am, took to this film like penguins to ice. I wanted to emulate Carol’s effortless charisma: a well placed smile, a playful smoulder, a gentle touch combined with comforting solace; all touchstones of someone supremely self assured but tempered with grace and poise. 

But I also wanted to be Therese. Her life was one marked by rootlessness, one to be exerted upon by men or domineering bosses. Therese finds freedom in Carol who whisks her away from her ho hum life, but more than that she finds understanding. Therese laments her own indecisive personality and how she never makes her own decisions, something Carol takes note of. In a pivotal hotel room scene, the two are on separate beds, the sexual tension between them palpable. Carol, taking note of their prior conversation, doesn’t push herself on Therese. Instead she says “You needn’t sleep over there,” offering Therese a chance to choose for herself which bed she would like to be on. 

I wanted to be like Therese because she was understood.

For a while now I’ve grappled with a nagging discomfort in my life. It is only recently I’ve come to understand that what I’m feeling is the void of something I never had: the language of being completely and totally understood by another. This is a rare thing for anyone, but my life circumstances were such that no one even made the effort to know me as well as Carol knew Therese. I was a nuisance to my parents, a weirdo to my peers, a loose cannon by colleagues; always someone to be avoided, derided, exploited, but never known. 

I realized tonight that particular wound, the invisibility of being unseen, had cast a tenebrous shadow over my life. So often my actions were driven by a desire to be understood, and that desire was overwhelming. I am fearful, petrified by my own loneliness and lack. I am forever being chased by my own sense of inadequacy and failure, torn and splayed by some sense that I am, in a fundamental way, broken inside. 

And people can pick up on that. I might say something completely innocuous, like asking someone if they want to hang out; or I might be bombastically manic and ask someone I barely know to live with me. In either case, the driving emotion is the same: the desire to be known and understood. It’s an invitation not just for someone’s time, but their emotional comfort, their assurances that I will never be alone again. And when people pick up on this they say no, because of course they do. They can’t be my Carol, my raison d’etre. Many of them are barely holding on themselves, my own insecurity would be the albatross that sinks us both.

This of course has the unfortunate effect of reinforcing my sense of unlovability, driving me further into self destruction or isolation. I withdraw, I harden myself of emotions, commit myself to becoming an unfeeling and unneeding person with no desires, no vulnerabilities. But there’s always a crack, a weakening of my defenses where I allow myself to hope that someone might want to embrace all that I am. I am only human, after all.