My Name is Kirsten Lee.
On special occasions, I weekended with my friend Paula to her home in Lake Erie. We’d hang out with all the other teenagers on the beach, drinking and laughing and playing loud music from a boombox. While I was still socially awkward and had no idea how to talk to people, these nights were good nights.
One night, after everyone else fell asleep, I stayed awake to watch a video that I’d seen in Paula’s parents’ collection: a movie called Days of Wine and Roses.
I had a special curiosity about this particular movie, because I was named after the lead character. Lee Remick played a woman named Kirsten, and my parents – who saw the movie at the theater – thought that name was beautiful.
So my name is Kirsten Lee.
With the old VHS player at hand, I watched Days of Wine and Roses, listening for my name. It was only uttered a few times, and even in the movie, no one ever pronounced it correctly. I rewound and rewound and rewound, every time they said, “Kirsten.”
At the age of 17, and in my drunken stupor, I didn’t really understand the movie. The old black-and-white flick was a bit dull by 1980s standards.
But the movie is about alcoholism.
Spoiler alert: if you haven’t seen the movie, I am literally about to reveal the ending. Of course, if you haven’t seen the movie in the past 60 years, chances are that you aren’t breathlessly waiting to know what happens.
At the end of Days of Wine and Roses, a very drunk Kirsten leaves her (now sober) husband and her newborn baby to become a full-time alcoholic. The character simply can’t – or won’t – stop drinking.
And I was named after her.
The irony was lost on me at 17; I was just trying to figure out how to pronounce my own name. Many years later, after I got sober, I watched the movie again. This time, it made so much sense! And it was so incredibly sad, watching Kirsten stumble away into the darkness.
Kirsten was trying to explain why she drank and said something that has stuck with me for decades. She said, “I want things to look prettier than they are.”
And as a sober adult, that’s the part I rewound over and over again. Because it hit on something I’d not previously understood. I drank because the things around me didn’t live up to my dreamy standards. I thought the world was spectacular and magical – and by middle school I realized that my idealized version of reality is … not real.
I still have issues with this. Ask my husband.
But I somehow got sober and the fictitious Kirsten stayed drunk.
So when Lee Remick, the actress, died of lung cancer, I took it to heart. I felt emotionally tied to this woman, whether or not it made any logical sense. And I quit smoking cigarettes – finally – just a few years after her death.
Sometimes people can beat the odds.