It hit me hard

Saw Still Alice over the weekend, starring Julianne Moore in her Oscar winning role as a linguistics professor hit by early onset Alzheimer's. It's a powerful movie, and she's wonderful in it.

But it upset me. Really upset me.

It was hard to watch a vital woman -- at 50, she's younger than I am -- lose everything. As she says in one of her last lucid moments, she's begun to "Master the Art of Losing." She loses her curiosity, independence and confidence. She becomes a burden to those she loves.

Gulp.

Watching it stirred a lot of feelings for me. I am independent. That's what I am, first and foremost. I have always steered my own ship my own way. It's the only way I know how to live.

And yet I've discovered recently that I'm tired. Not lonely. There's no one I want to spend more of my life with than I currently do. But tired of being the only one holding the reins, tired of being responsible for everything. I believe that's what's at the heart of my current cowboy obsession. I'd love to be the only woman on the Ponderosa, protected and pampered and ... eh hem ... "romanced" regularly.

 But that's a fantasy. I know it is. And there is something way more disturbing than always, always being the responsible one, the capable one. And that is not being able to be responsible and capable.