I enjoy watching those cheesy Hallmark romantic comedies, so many are set around Christmas, however there are others that are set during different times of the year. You know the ones, a guy or girl returns to their hometown & falls in love. They are usually straight to TV movies and there are so many that are pretty much exactly the same storyline and premise. The other day, I watched three in a row that were set in a background of a restaurant!
I like the cheesiness & predictability of the storylines, they are a great way for me to relax because I don’t have to think too much and the story just washes over me, often while I’m doing something else at the same time.
There have been a few I’ve watch lately that remind me of being a late diagnosed autistic/ADHD woman. This may seem like a strange thing to say, but hear me out.
The movie goes like this. The main character, usually a woman, is going along in her career, doing what she feels like she should be doing. This is usually a high-powered career or taking over the family business. She is doing what she feels like she should be doing, and everything looks like it’s going well, at least on the surface. Then something happens to disrupt her life. It could be having to go home for Christmas, or an old love shows up, or someone dies and she has to go and sort things out.
Due to that disruption, she starts questioning her life and her goals. There is a struggle involved for the main character through this process and a pull back to her old life. Often this is where the ex-boyfriend or boss shows up to entice them back to what they were doing before.
After this struggle, our main character realises that she can’t go back to that life as it’s not what her heart is telling her to do, so she changes her life, and there’s a romance in there too, along with a happily ever after.
I don’t usually see any aspect of myself in these movies, they are pure escapism. However, there seems to be a mirror to my own story, minus the romance.
I spent the first 44 years of my life going along, trying to be ‘normal’, to fit in and do the things that society told me I had to do. It was hard and I often felt like it shouldn’t be this hard. On the outside, many people thought I was doing just fine, but inside, I was crumbling. This is the first part of the movie. While I wasn’t working in a high-powered career, I did have a job that I was good at while being a single mum.
Then I received my diagnosis, and this changed everything. I started exploring my brain, working out why my life wasn’t suiting me and I struggled so much. This is the disruptive part of the movie, the struggle to work out what to do next. This is where I am at right now.
The next step is changing my life so it’s one that suits me, where I can have my happily ever after. Not sure if there will be romance in my future, but who knows. So far, a gorgeous farmer or ship’s captain or chef hasn’t come in to my life, but who knows what the future will hold.
I found it fascinating the number of these movies that have a similar theme of a person not being themselves, instead doing what is expected, and then dropping that mask or pretense of conforming to their expected roles instead of following their dreams. In so many ways, I feel this is a perfect illustration of life as a late diagnosed autistic/ADHD person, at least it is for me.
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