True Things: the woman on the edge

As for what "true things" are, the joy, happiness, pain, and despair Kate feels are all real. Her forbearance, learning, and departure are also real. For Blond, it's all just a performance.

The male character, Blond, is adept at picking up women and dating, but consistently demonstrates disregard and indifference towards Kate's feelings, and is skilled at manipulating her (blaming her for his own mistakes). Throughout the relationship, Kate is constantly subjected to Blond's agenda. He first calls her cute, then abruptly leaves her. Upon their next encounter, he calls her "darling," claims they are soulmates, invites her to his cousin's wedding, and later finds her annoying for believing his words. This erratic treatment lacks consistency and sincerity.

Kate feels uneasy about Blond's affection, fearing he doesn't have genuine feelings for her. On the other hand, she desperately craves an intense life, rather than her unfulfilling and monotonous work and personal life. She is constantly belittled in her relationships with family, friends, and colleagues, lacking a sense of self-worth. The wild and passionate aspects of Blond's personality attract her, making her feel desired and cared for, allowing her to escape her current work and life, and rush onto a highway led by a free spirit, shining a strange light and free from all the rules. Despite being ignored, taken advantage of, and experiencing self-reflection and painful questioning of the relationship, she feels (finally) fulfilled and liberated. She has a strong attachment to Blond – every aspect of her life is filled with him. When he's around, she's incredibly satisfied; when he's gone, she constantly checks her phone, writes and deletes messages, searches for him, as if he were her only lifeline.

Blond generously reveals his life to her and fast-forwards the relationship from sex to embracing, vulnerability, empathy, and promises. On their first meeting, he tells her about his turbulent childhood of abandonment, and while in bed, he holds her and calls them soulmates. I suspect that Kate's inability to adapt to life and her lack of joy and fulfillment might have found a mirror in his expression of pain and admission of marginalization, and then been liberated and elevated by his carefree, wild, hedonistic lifestyle and personality; perhaps in his reflection and companionship, she embraced her true self and her pain for the first time, seeing a possible path and escape to finding joy and value with another person. And at the same time, she also believes she's licking his wounds and hopes to save him from his precarious life; she may genuinely hope and believe that they can become one, dependent on each other, relying on each other...

Unfortunately, Blond clearly doesn't think so. She may also be an escape for him, but for him, life is spent in the pleasure and chaos of parties and one-night stands, and as an escape, she might represent order and stability, as well as an easily captured, manipulated, and satisfying sexual object, another disposable prey in his life. In their relationship dynamic, he is volatile and intense, while she is passive, yearning, and forbearing. He wants many things: the present moment, freedom, pleasure, control; he wants the option to leave, to be free from responsibility and consistency, yet when he sees other people's marriages, he desires stability and settlement. He's skilled at expressing and performing to get what he wants in each moment, and afterward, he won't hesitate to discard what he previously desired and chase after something new. This makes him appear fickle, dishonest, and inconsistent.

Perhaps others attracted to his charisma don't care as much, but his duality tears Kate apart, making the validation, enjoyment, and companionship she thought she found vanish into thin air, possibly along with her self-identity, judgment, and self-trust. She thought she had found something real, but in the end, her trust earned her Blond's disdain and mockery. Blond proves himself untrustworthy and irredeemable, and Kate's trust and attempts to save him are futile.

As for what "true things" are, the joy, happiness, pain, and despair Kate feels are all real. Her forbearance, learning, and departure are also real. For Blond, it's all just a performance; he's not truly living.

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