It's gonna get bleaker, Rick.
When
you have anxiety, your brain isn’t always your friend. The fear impulse is out of whack; the mind
cannot differentiate between real fears and imagined ones, small irritations or
major calamities. Everything is DefCon 1.
It is also wired to look for impending
doom. It needs to feed itself, so it
looks for things to be afraid of. It is
the foundation of worry. It is also the
reason why I have to still abstain from certain movies, TV shows and above all,
documentaries. Even though I have my
anxiety mostly under control, there are sights and sounds and thoughts I can’t
even let into my brain. Those who do not
relate to things are baffled when anxious people avoid specific media. They think we are childish or
ridiculous. We are just not engaging;
like an alcoholic might stay away from bars. We avoid specific pain. We avoid the news. We are protecting
ourselves.
I
say this because I will never watch the movie Se7en again. Nope. Saw in the theater with my wife, haven’t seen
it since. I know people love it, and it
was well done. It features actors I
enjoy, but the story and imagery are too much for my subconscious to
process. The same goes for the movie Ransom.
Not a great movie, but there are scenes in that film that will
absolutely crush you if you are both a parent and have anxiety. You can’t mess with kids. You just can’t. Most of my anxieties as an adult
revolve around my children, and anything that could happen to them. I’m not a daily worrier, and I feel bad for
those people. I am one who tries to
sidestep nightmare fodder. To hear the stories secondhand isn’t really
enough. But if I see the images I’m
screwed. I walked out of Life Is
Beautiful when the Nazis rolled in. I will never watch the dark serial
killer horror movies and I will never, ever watch Funny Games. I know the entire plot of that movie and I still won’t
see it. Fuck that movie, and fuck the
people who made it.
Sometimes,
there are just scenes or episodes of an established series that take me by surprise. I realize The
Walking Dead is a superb show. I’m
not really into zombies, but I can tell a well-made show when I see it. After a season, I had to bail. The darkness
and the complete lack of hope just bum me out too much. There is too much
senseless death and child endangerment.
I have learned enough to avoid those seeds from being planted. Cop and detective shows have a lot of those
scenes as well to further the plot. I
appreciate when they are constructed with a little class and tact. The CSI-inspired
picking and digging and scraping around human remains is so unbelievably
unnecessary. We get it. A dead body. I don’t need shots of the
entrails and vomit and chunks of brain. Just give us the report already, you
disgusting assholes.
Amistad and Schindler’s List are permanent fixtures
on the inners walls of my head. Brutal
scenes of inhumanity, etched like cave paintings that I will never be able to forget.
They were great pieces of storytelling and deserve to be seen by everyone.
Which brings me to 12 Years a Slave. I am an American history guy. This is an Oscar-winning film made by
talented artists. I may never see it. It
pisses me off sometimes that I am like this.
I wish I had an iron constitution.
I wish I could take the good with the bad and process them for what they
are and go about my life. But it is not
that way with anxiety. I cannot give the
bear a big slab of meat. To see it would
flame hatred inside me for racist dickheads and unnerve me to see humans
tortured for two hours. I mean no
offense. I just can’t do it.
I
don’t need a life of musicals and Disney movies. I have enjoyed a lot of dark shit. I like thrillers and suspenseful movies that
other anxiety-prone people can’t handle.
I just know the buttons that get pushed. It is a bit of a handicap that luckily can be
managed. If I watch something intense, I
always make sure I do it during the day.
Nighttime exacerbates the feeling of fear and daylight has a way of
taking you out of it. If I see something
late, I always watch something afterward that is light-hearted. Wartime atrocities are easily swept away with
a couple episodes of Archer and Family Guy.
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