Closure with Carrie

For someone who owns original US DVDs of all 6 seasons of the show, a coffee table book about its fashion and even its game board, my friends found it hard to believe that I didn’t line up at the movie house when the much-awaited film version of this phenomenal TV series came out. We’ve been talking about it for YEARS. Just as soon as the last episode aired in 2004, my closest girlfriends and fellow fans already knew in our hearts that a movie version was inevitable. It was just a matter of time. I’m talking about “Sex and the City”. For fans, calling it SATC would suffice.

I was more than a fan. In my own little corner of this world, I was Carrie Bradshaw sans the the fashion-on-steroid quirk. Manila was my Manhattan. I was a writer who wrote about my Quest for LOVE, though not professionally, but quite publicly through my old (deleted) blog that existed in the world wide web 4-5 years ago. It was VERY different from what I have now, and my longtime readers can attest to that. Actually, “different” is even an understatement.

Back then, I wasn’t a Christian yet. I was a non-practicing Catholic girl (educated by Jesuits in elementary and RVM nuns in High School, you get the picture?) who merely viewed going to church as a Sunday family tradition or habit. And since I didn’t really have a family, with my parents separated and my siblings doing their own thing, I didn’t see the need to sit through an hour of Vatican-fed sermons.

I found wisdom and affirmation in these four diverse NYC women whose only similarity was their pursuit for LOVE. Notice that I’ve written LOVE in all caps for the 2nd time already. I shall continue to do so until this article ends. Why? Because for the first time, after a long period of debating with my mind and struggling with my heart, on whether I should write this article or not, I am going to talk about SATC with tenderness here in this new blog.

Contrary to the title, SATC is not about sex. IT’S ABOUT LOVE. And I shall be talking about SATC in that light. Why Candace Bushnell named her book that way is something we can’t do anything about. As we all may know, sex sells in the secular world. Manhattanites know nothing about Christian morals. She was trying to sell a book to people who didn’t have a God, so what did you expect? (By the way, to those who have no slightest clue to the origins of this TV show, yes, it was all birthed from a novel; a bestseller at that.)

I admit, the show had sex; talked about it; lived it. But that was not why I watched it. In fact, back when I was a non-Christian religiously following the weekly episodes on HBO, I even found some of the sex-related plots appalling. But generally, it was written in a straightforward and sardonically witty way. It was just an honest depiction of how we mere mortals crazily go about searching for that eternal LOVE. That’s why I related to it. In the non-Christian world, where I was weaned, single women do have catastrophic encounters with LOVE in the city. That was the harsh reality, and I was once a poster girl for that.

Just like Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha, I and a million other girls here in Manila didn’t grow up in Bible-based Christian churches. Catholicism not counted obviously. Unfortunately, we weren’t rigidly raised to find a righteous man. But like everybody else, Christians or not, we all just wanted to find LOVE and KEEP IT. And of course, we non-Church-going gals went the carnal route because that was the “norm” in our fallen world.

To some conservative Christians, Carrie and her friends may have been easily seen off as promiscuous women. True, they were engaging in premarital sex but if we look past that and just be concerned about what these women really desired in their hearts, we will see that they were all just hopelessly, desperately, rummaging through the clutter of city life for any sign of LOVE. Unfortunately, in this urban garbage pile, like non-Christian girls resembling them, we only found LOVE that was either wrecked or already rotten. If we ever did find LOVE that was a bit “recyclable”, oftentimes polishing it to a brand new life proved to be more tedious than its worth. Generally, we had more damaged goods in our midst as compared to the fresh produce that Christians grow in their organic garden. (I’m still talking about men and LOVE here, alright? Hehe.)

From my vantage point, I regarded the sex part in SATC as just an incidental element in the entire story. For me, what the show was really talking about was LOVE and all its challenges and facets – relationships, men, friends, commitment, marriage, etc… Sadly, let’s just admit it. Painful as it is, LOVE in the secular fallen material carnal SINFUL world (the world that probably 90% of its inhabitants know and are comfortable with) is always associated with sex in varying degrees. I’m running the risk of sounding like I’m defending the show here but I would just like to say that despite its title SATC was not meant to promote sex. The show just depicted the awful truth that sex always tainted LOVE in the non-Christian world. Truth hurts. It’s glaring. I always say that the ladies who grew up in church are sooo blessed to have been fenced in away from all of that. I would have been a different person growing up but the case was otherwise.

As Carrie went through six seasons of breakups and breakdowns in LOVE, she finally had her breakthrough in the finale episode when the elusive Mr. Big swept her off her feet in Paris. The non-committal guy committed at last! I remembered myself shedding rivers of tears watching that moment. It gave me Hope. It fueled my Faith in LOVE… That one day, just as I have been living my Carrie-esque life, I too will have a Mr. Big committing to me… I too will find LOVE. I did find LOVE. But he was BIGGER than Mr. Big. I found LOVE in GOD!

People who didn’t watch the show would surely easily dismiss the characters of Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha as mere shallow sexually immoral BAD role models for women. Yes they may have been bad girls, and if that was the only measurement for evil then a lot of Filipinas are. Oh no! For someone, who related to them, who felt every hurt they endured for LOVE, who cried and laughed with them through every mishap of the heart, I know they weren’t BAD; didn’t mean to be bad examples… they were just BROKEN and BLIND.

They just didn’t know any better. We were all just looking for LOVE. We’ve all been around the block and back but found zilch. Then I realized that I was scouring for Mr. Right in the Wrong district. It was all God’s grace, and truly a miracle that I found my way out of the boroughs of sin and into the municipality of Christ.

There are still a lot of Carries, Mirandas, Charlottes and Samanthas out there who needed to be trafficked out of that errant highway. I was once a Carrie, who finally got towed away by God due to a lot of violations. Part of my spiritual rehabilitation was my severance to anything that was connected to my former damaging lifestyle. That included watching SATC. It was quite a coincidence though that Christ came into my life soon after the last episode aired. It almost seemed like it also prompted the end of my Quest for LOVE.

So technically, I have been in “rehab” for four years now, and like in any rehabilitation program, this is the part where I have to come in terms with some issues and put a lid on it once and for all. One of these issues is SATC. Because of my new convictions, I decided not to watch the movie when it came out a few months ago. But I was battling inside. I wanted to find out what happened to Carrie four years after she found her LOVE.

So with my husband’s permission, we got the DVD version of the movie and I finally watched it with him last night at home. Carrie got married too, just like I did. Although not exactly in the same context but I just can’t resist seeing the rough parallelisms between me and her that continue until now. I cried!!! Even though they weren’t real; even though they were just characters in a TV Show, I’ve always felt their friendship. Their stories; their pains, and joy were real to me. I missed them. They were my companions during those sleepless nights of crying over another broken heart.

Carrie was not a Christian role model but her character gave me hope to not give up on LOVE. I didn’t have Jesus then. I just had Carrie. But Carrie was obviously not enough. And that was when Christ took over. I don’t think Michael Patrick King (SATC director/writer) or Candace Bushnell could have written my story any better.

Finally, I had closure with Carrie. For the longest time, I was ashamed to share that I was an avid fan of the show; afraid that my church mates would find me as a stumbling block; that it would impede my endeavors in ministering to my disciples. But in the end, I felt that denying it defeats the purpose of my testimony. I am not celebrating my past but much of my desire for spiritual restoration now comes from being reminded that I was once a sinner. I didn’t mean to set this as a tripwire for my Christian readers but as a rope to hoist anyone who desires to get out of her pit.

To all the remaining Carries, Mirandas, Charlottes, and Samanthas out there… your stories in this world created by God don’t have to end in the same light that the SATC creators have written it. You can be more. I was like Carrie but now I am much much more because of Christ.

NYC. 2005. That's me "feeling Carrie" while strolling around the Upper East Side, where she lives.