Hello. I'm Missy Mussy.

I have self-diagnosed myself with Cinematic Over-Identifying Affective Disorder.

Does anyone else have this problem? Anyone over the age of 13? I didn't think so.

Last night Benoit and I saw Walk the Line. I loved it, but my love for it feels a little too preteen, a little too....much like my love for other films that have caused me to doubt my sense of self. Like Home Alone, when I totally thought I was the next Macaulay Culkin. As we walked to the car afterward, I felt a healthy identification with June Carter. I told Ben to disregard our recent “commitment” talks; I would be stringing him along for the next seven years in order to heighten the dramatic tension needed to turn our relationship from ordinary to legendary. No biggie. I'm sure tons of people make life decisions this way. It's got to be more reliable than horoscopes.

Here's what happened. I needed coffee to stay awake through the 10:00 movie, and I think they put ground-up speed in my iced mocha at the weird Japanese coffee shop.

A few hours after our return home, tossing, turning, twitching, and scratching at invisible bugs while Ben tried to sleep beside me, I felt dead certain that I WAS John R. Cash. I was right there with Johnny when he was going through his withdrawal from the black Mexican uppers. I know what he went through, man!

But I also wanted to be June, with her adorable, feminine outfits! Who can blame me for fancying myself a Southern Baptist divorcée who stands by her hard-living man? I've lived that life. Thus began an existential dilemma from which I am still recovering. How can I be satisfied being normal: Or, more truthfully, how can I be satisfied living a life that never gets made into a biopic? Or even a screenplay that has millions sunk into pre-production but never gets made, causing Kate Winslet to nurse a lifelong desire to play me, to the ruination of her career?

Someone famous said a life unexamined is not worth living; some things make me feel like it should be amended to the unfilmed life is not. I blame the E! Network, Oprah and Paris Hilton. Just not myself.

I've always known this was a problem, but thought I had it under control. My worst bout was in 1994, after seeing Legends of the Fall, when I pined away the year believing my life would be worthless if I never drove a man (preferably named Tristan) so wild with longing (by marrying his brother) that he had no choice but to circle the globe on pirate ships, smoke opium, and name his daughter after me when he settled for someone else.

That was embarrassing, but I got over it.

Then there was the “Frida” Minesweeper debacle. If I could think of a way to describe it without appearing completely insane, I would. Equating carpal-tunnel syndrome with a full-body cast is pure hubris, but quite fertile for the old imagination.

Good thing I've stopped short of appearing completely insane.