A Thing of Beauty is A Joy Forever

The lighting and sharing of the cigarettes, straight out of some of my favorite old classics.

lol, Carmy being jealous of Adam was hilarious.

I love the relationship development between Richie and Sydney, the way he told her to stay, think back to season 1 and he would’ve let her leave or even told her to. But him asking her to stay and the conversation she was privy to shows just how much they love and trust her. She’s literally one of them now.

I totally missed Sydney calling Richie the n-word on my first watch, hahaha, it fucking killed me. She loves him as much as he loves her now.

The softness in her eyes as she’s watching Richie and Carmen hash it out, it’s so nuanced. Her understanding the importance of Richie for the survival of The Bear and giving him a piece because it’s his home.

The way Carmen was ready to give Sydney what she wanted. And the way when Nat came out Carmen was literally staring at Sydney, they two of them nodding to each other.

The Bear is one of those shows that’s like reading, if that makes sense? like you have read between the lines, the comprehension has to be a bit sharper.

I think Carmy has been actively trying to grow since he confronted Fields at the end of season 3. So when we get to 4x10 he’s had a couple of months to already work on healing.

He takes the jealousy, he turns it into admiration and realizes that he might actually be holding her back and does for what her, what he didn’t get from Fields, support. Granted he does it in an immature way, but he’s so incredibly proud of her and sees these qualities and tries and wants to set her up for success.

He truly meant it when he said she makes him better at his craft. She “wakes” him from his disassociation during service, she gentle parents (tho she needed to be firmer at times) him.

And I think what happens off screen is that he heals and his love for food and what it means changes and grows.

I recently (in the last couple of years) have been thinking a lot about my choices, friends, relationships, career, etc. I’m an introvert who can be extroverted. Most people assume I’m an extrovert. My job required me to be extroverted and I realize now that I used that socializing and the power to be extroverted beyond my capacity as a way to not deal with things that have been building up for years and childhood traumas that I told myself were whatever.

Carmen I think may have been the same. It sometimes feels so great to let yourself believe you’re just having fun, that maybe this person you’re with will calm down the raging fire inside of you. And you do feel good temporarily, crazy in love even as you push down the warning signs.

But you end up intensifying it instead. For me it was extreme socializing, I don’t like to drink alone so I drank with people almost 5-6 nights out of the week, some of whom I thought were my close friends, amazing people I thought, who I invited into my life and home. But once I reached the peak of my spiraling that I’ve been avoiding by being out and partying or constantly keeping busy with company, I realized just how not okay I was. How I actually didn’t have shared values with these people I was so close to.

I get what Carmen meant when he said he felt like being on fire, and I also understand that Claire may have provided him a false sense of peace, so for a while he did think that. I was in a similar situation with a guy that I initially didn’t want to have anything serious with to us spending a miserable couple of years together. I was chasing what I thought he initially made me feel and I think he was miserably comfortable. I locked the fuck down on everything and felt super alienated and out of touch. Started losing interest in my job.

The funny thing everyone in my circle told me that it was a good thing to be with this guy initially, they told me I should date cause that’ll be good for me and because I loved and valued them, I went for it, even though something in me was telling me I shouldn’t. I’m not blaming anyone just get why Carmen listen to everyone, why he chanced it.

Your mind has a way of giving you subtle warnings like him only being able to calm down by thinking of Sydney. But you ignore them because you also have the monster of self doubt and sabotage working as a third party to everything. Control is sometimes the only way you feel like you might not die.

It’s after you let go and “die” that you can breathe again. Breaking patterns. Things felt different once I let myself actually spiral and start the healing process. It made it easy to walk away from people, and a career that never really served me. Just cause I was good at it didn’t mean I wanted to do it anymore.

So now into my healing process, I’m obsessing over some fucking fictional characters from a show about trauma and ambition and family. I’m enjoying being an introvert spending my summer with my dog and the trees and breeze, and slowly relearning to love the things I used to love like tumblr and being weird af, before I let people break me down into what I thought they wanted me to be.

I couldn’t find a pic of the hug in the last episode of season 5, but that hug between Richie and Syd looks pretty normal hug between friends.

Side note: Sydney/Ayo has amazing chemistry with everyone so I get it.