A Defense for Cowboys & Aliens

A few weeks ago, I saw the film Cowboys & Aliens. If you have not seen it, I suppose you should not read any further as I am bound to give away critical information regarding the plot, however, I'm pretty sure you don't want to see it. You've heard it's crap. You were jazzed by the trailer, hellbent on picking a side before it came out (cowboys?aliens? some hybrid of the two?), but your best friend saw it, hated it, and now you're dead inside.

Sound about right?

Well, I have news. Great news. Cowboys & Aliens was good. So good, in fact, that I'm still talking about it a month later.

For your reference.

There is this part in the film where Daniel Craig wakes up in a desert with no memory of where he is, how he got there, and worst of all, he's got this fierce bracelet on and he can't remember who gave it to him. Oh, and also, he doesn't know who he is.

He meets an array of colorful characters including Han Solo and 13 from House. Some of these people even seem to recognize him, but Daniel Craig, with his unchanging facial expression, can only access the faintest memory which is of some lady in a field. Not very helpful.

This concept legitimately scares me. A similar thing happens in Muppets Take Manhattan when Kermit is hit by a bus or something and all of a sudden he thinks he's some flashy executive. It also happens in the series finale of the hit television show Full House when Michelle falls off a horse and then wakes up with no memory of her three dads or her rigid Tanner duties. Also, Men in Black. Memory-erasing happens all over the place in Men in Black.

For Daniel Craig, Kermit, and whichever Olsen twin happened to be sober that day, memory loss brings about a slew of emotions. There is fear of being in an unfamiliar place, sadness for a loss of self, and frustration with an inability to emotionally connect to integral aspects of life.

This is a clip from the Full House episode "Michelle Rides Again". Note her anguish and despair.

This same emotional recipe has existed in my life. I have not suffered memory loss (at least not to my knowledge), but one day I experienced the same confusion that Michelle seems to feel in the above clip. I woke up and I was a college graduate living in Austin, Texas with a man next to me calling himself my husband. In what seemed like an instant, I went from a sweaty college freshman on my first day of Welcome Week to a Sadie Sadie Married Lady with a legitimate Bachelor's degree.

Everyone knows this is an interesting transition. I'm not the first to write about it and I won't be the last. Many of the people I know are in this exact same boat, and let me tell you, it is weird. This is the first time where we truly could sink or swim. We could choose to pursue this new life with a boldness and determination that we always dreamed we would or we could sit, lie, wait, and let our muscles atrophy until we don't even resemble human.

For me, I choose the former. That's just me though. And this blog is to hold me accountable to that. I will write about my life, my marriage, my faith, and my pursuit of joy. Maybe in doing so, I will identify myself as the woman I see every day in the mirror with a ring on her finger and a super hot husband. I still just can't believe it.