A Night of Cabiria

I don't know that I've ever over-identified with a film character before, but after watching this film, I'm feeling pretty heartbroken.

Short plot summary (spoiler alert!): Cabiria is an aging sex worker who constantly feels out of place and like she doesn't belong in polite society. She has built a stable, financially independent life for herself and because so many men have fucked her over, tries to be all tough and shit by putting up a cranky hot-headed exterior. She then meets a man who she doesn't trust at first, but who she eventually believes is the love of her life after he courts her hard. In the end, he fucks her over big time by taking all her money and leaving her.

When I type it out like that, it sounds really cheesy, but it's a really moving film. As y'all can tell, I've been feeling a bit doom and gloom of late. Cabiria's resigned sense that she's damaged goods who has all but given up on finding love kind of hit me hard. During the film, I thought about my relationship with The Bad Ex who never wanted to hear about my sex working past, and who eventually used it against me during our first big fight, calling me a slut and a whore and everything else she could think of to bring me down.

Years later, that sense of shame sometimes finds me, as does the suspicion that there's something wrong with me that I haven't found love yet at 30, and that moreover, there's no guarantee that it will come. Cabiria reminded me of that feeling of waiting for the shoe to drop every time I find someone wonderful who seems too good to be true, because they are. I also thought about my fundamentally broken picker that leads me to looking for fruit on tree branches that are just out of my reach.

During the final scene of the film, Cabiria smiles through her tears as she walks the long road home. I am also trying to grin and bear it during this uncomfortable transition into the next step in my life, and like Cabiria, I don't quite know what lies ahead.