Oh gosh, so, and honestly I probably don't know how to explain this without sounding weird, but here I go.
I got really into the Titanic when the James Cameron movie came out. I was 8 but something about it struck a chord with me like nothing ever had, or really ever has in the same exact way, since.
A few of my friends got into the history too and somehow we ended up developing this habit of spending hours at slumber parties, on the playground, or just pacing our neighborhood, going over the idea of being on the Titanic. How would we survive? Would we survive? Just 8-9 year old me and friends, endlessly poring over stories of how we might give up a spot on a crowded boat for a woman who says she has children at home; or how we might lose our friend or husband or child and spend so long trying to find them that the boats are all gone; or how we would beg the officer for our older brothers to be considered children, or cling to them so fiercely that they would not be able to put us on a boat, and so on. "I" would almost always die die, often only agreeing to live when a friend would create a scenario where they wanted us to get on a boat together.
Eventually we moved on from being obsessed, as kids do, but that Titanic hook was in me and (pardon the pun) never let go. Somehow in the... jeez, 20 years now, of Titanic being a part of my life in some way, I just felt like going down with the ship would be... a type of gesture that I needed to do, the "natural" choice. Out of some kind of guilt or maybe a type of catharsis. A "this has been a part of my life for so long, and now that it's here, now that "I'm" experiencing it, I need to go down with it." A very (very) mild version of what one of the survivors felt when he snuck himself onto the set of A Night to Remember during the sinking scene, and tried to go down with the ship, maybe? Especially with Lotte there.
I think, and again this sounds weird, that may be why I kept hesitating when the lifeboats turned red. Unlikely as it was in the end because of how fast the spots were taken, I thought--I can't possibly get into a lifeboat and leave Lotte behind on this ship and find myself safe on the Carpathia. That's not how it ends, that's not how it was ever supposed to end. After all these years of Titanic, I have to go down with her.
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I got really into the Titanic when the James Cameron movie came out. I was 8 but something about it struck a chord with me like nothing ever had, or really ever has in the same exact way, since.
A few of my friends got into the history too and somehow we ended up developing this habit of spending hours at slumber parties, on the playground, or just pacing our neighborhood, going over the idea of being on the Titanic. How would we survive? Would we survive? Just 8-9 year old me and friends, endlessly poring over stories of how we might give up a spot on a crowded boat for a woman who says she has children at home; or how we might lose our friend or husband or child and spend so long trying to find them that the boats are all gone; or how we would beg the officer for our older brothers to be considered children, or cling to them so fiercely that they would not be able to put us on a boat, and so on. "I" would almost always die die, often only agreeing to live when a friend would create a scenario where they wanted us to get on a boat together.
Eventually we moved on from being obsessed, as kids do, but that Titanic hook was in me and (pardon the pun) never let go. Somehow in the... jeez, 20 years now, of Titanic being a part of my life in some way, I just felt like going down with the ship would be... a type of gesture that I needed to do, the "natural" choice. Out of some kind of guilt or maybe a type of catharsis. A "this has been a part of my life for so long, and now that it's here, now that "I'm" experiencing it, I need to go down with it." A very (very) mild version of what one of the survivors felt when he snuck himself onto the set of A Night to Remember during the sinking scene, and tried to go down with the ship, maybe? Especially with Lotte there.
I think, and again this sounds weird, that may be why I kept hesitating when the lifeboats turned red. Unlikely as it was in the end because of how fast the spots were taken, I thought--I can't possibly get into a lifeboat and leave Lotte behind on this ship and find myself safe on the Carpathia. That's not how it ends, that's not how it was ever supposed to end. After all these years of Titanic, I have to go down with her.