My life, in movies

[Just Call me J]

Apologies for posting about a movie in the "songs" area. I didn't scroll down far enough.

Anyway, in the last week since the shit hit the fan, I've had several movies popping to mind. The first one to grab my attention was The Matrix, because of how jarring it was to wake up after taking the "green pill." My whole life had to take on a new understanding in just a few minutes' time. And then deconstructing how I had repressed all these memories, I feel like I had been living in the Matrix all this time. My brain had made this carefully-constructed fantasy world for me to grow up in. Looking back, it's good that I was able to grow up withOUT this baggage, so that I could become strong enough to deal with. As SoCalJohn told me, I've been healing all along.

I've also been thinking about Unbreakable a lot, since it's about someone who's life has been lived in a fog, until he discovers the truth about his purpose. And it's about being a hero (not just a superhero).

And then there's the Truman Show, in which Truman asks "Don't you ever feel like your life has been building up to something? Something big?" (or something to that effect). Because I always have. And the way that I repressed my memories, and how my brain kept holding up clues until I was ready to see them, I feel like there is some sort of method to the madness.

Then there is 12 Monkeys. It's about questioning your sanity. And it stars Madeline Stowe.

...who was in Closetland, a movie my brother brought to my attention a long time ago, when I worked at Blockbuster video. It starts out like Kafka's The Trial, then dovetails into issues of molest. And I wonder why my brother suggested that particular movie to me (or how he found it... it's an indy flick).

There were a few more movies on my brain in the last few days, but those are the ones I can think of. I'm beginning to think that I can bring ANY movie back around to the abuse, or recovery. Since I'm heading to a comic book convention in a few days, my mind is on heroes. And I'm beginning to feel like one (or at least that I want to be one).

We're all stronger than anyone thinks we are. Don't let anyone tell you different.

We are TRUE SURVIVORS! Fuck the million bucks!

J
would like the million bucks after all

 

Back in March I saw the play "W;t" for the first time. It only won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 -- that's me; right on the cutting edge.

I have been fascinated by the play ever since. I wrote a fan letter to the author, and she answered!

It's not about molestation, it's about cancer. To be precise, it's about Vivian Bearing's cancer. She is the main character in the play; an expert in the Holy Sonnets of John Donne.

Dr. Bearing mostly knows she is a terminal case. To give her death meaning she submits to an experimental treatment in a research hospital where she is taken on a hellacious ride through modern medicine. But she insists on retaining her "bearing." She is alone, she is accomplished, she is brillant, she will deal with cancer as she has dealt with life, "dignity, always dignity."

The point is cancer doesn't respect her dignity, it steals it from her and she experiences pain like she never knew possible.

The point is Dr. Bearing is forced to concede that she needs people, and the person she reaches out to, a nurse who has more heart than her doctors and most of the staff --but wouldn't have lasted ten minutes in her class -- reaches out to her.

So why does this play stay with me?

Because my cancer was hate; hate for my abuser and most of all, hate of myself. I'm not in the least accomplished as the Dr. Bearing character in the play, but I was going to "tough it out." (Prove you are a man, take it and keep your mouth shut! Nobody wants to know anyway)

That's a cancer. It eats away at you because you are always on the alert and you always have to ask yourself "What does she/he really want? They can't simply like me, I'm a victim not a person."

At the crisis of the play Dr. Bearing flashes back to a lecture on one of Donne's last sonnets where he writes about his "salvation anxiety." Donne is anxious because he wants to believe in forgiveness, but is forgiveness real? When we are we called to answer for our sins at judgement is God really going to forgive us?

It's a very real question for someone in Dr. Bearing's position, and she wants to "run into bed and pull the covers over my head."

I won't spoil it for you. You'll have to go see it when a very gutsy theatre company offers it in your town, or get the video version on HBO with Emma Thompson.

For myself, when I ask God for the grace to forgive my abuser and let myself off the hook (I have to do it again and again until I really believe it) my cancer, my hatred and the paralysis that goes with it recedes and diminishes.