This one needs a little more 'splaining, Lucy, because it took me a while to understand exactly why I was so drawn to these movies. I've never been in rehab. I don't think I've ever been addicted to anything illegal. But I've longed for escape, escape from the pain and fear that were instilled by my family from childhood, and I get it. I understand what it's like to never want to feel like that again, to not care what you have to do to avoid it. I've chosen to stay in relationships just so I would feel loved --- even though I was being abused on a daily basis, I would have done anything to avoid being alone, to avoid hearing that voice in my head: No one will ever love you. Where does that fall on the irony meter: A women's studies major in an abusive relationship? You have to laugh! You have to laugh or it swallows you whole. So I smile now, because it's ridiculous, and it's been decades now. I know now that I'm not unlovable. I know that because I love myself. I don't need anyone else to do it for me.
All that to say, I know what that feels like, to do anything at all not to feel. Before I pinned that down (through a whole lot of self-reflection and counseling and work, yes I say that a lot, WORK), I just knew that I loved these movies. They spoke to me on a cellular level. So here's the list, and again, I'll keep the spoilers as light as I can.
Drunks
This movie is split into two separate plotlines, centering around an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. The main character Jim, played by Richard Lewis, is a recovering addict, who is setting up for the meeting. He's something of an example for the rest of the attendees, but halfway through the meeting he bolts, and immediately starts drinking his way through the night, moving through progressively harder drugs. This is intercut with footage of the stories told at the meeting by the attendees about their lives and how they got to this point in their lives.
I watch this one about once every six months. Jim's descent into complete horrifying drugged stupor is pretty intense. The other stories are pretty awful, but I get a lot from their self-reflection and how they realized or were forced to realize how far they had fallen over the edge.
I have a Demotivational postcard someone gave me as a joke at work that says, "It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others." In some ways, that's how I feel about these movies. If I don't do the work, if I don't watch my motivations and make sure that I'm not lying to myself about why I do the things I do, I could easily slip down that rabbit hole and disappear. I know it could happen. If I want to be who I'm meant to be, I have to be careful. I have to be vigilant. That's part of the attraction.
It's also what I always hoped my mother would do. I can see her in these stories. I know what her home life was like growing up. I know how she was treated. I can see it in how she treated me, in how she acted, in her behavior every moment I was growing up. And she knew I could see it, and she hated me for it. Nobody likes the truthtellers. (That's another blog post altogether.) And I always hoped she would realize how her background affected her, and try to do better than that.
But she didn't. She chose as her mother did. Wall it up, and move on. She never dealt with the past, left it in a huge mess in a room in her mind, to fester and leak out into her dealings with her family every day. She didn't realize it, but it poisoned everything around her. Including me. As William Faulkner said, "The past isn't dead; it isn't even past."
Rating: 20 viewings, but a big impact.
28 Days
Not to be confused with 28 Days Later (an excellent zombie film), this film centers around Gwen, played by Sandra Bullock, a trainwreck of a woman. In the first few minutes, she shows up wasted and an hour late to her sister Lily's wedding, stumbles through the ceremony, at the reception dances directly into the wedding cake, then steals a limo to go find another cake, crashing the car into a house.
Like I said, trainwreck.
After being placed into rehab for 28 Days (hence the title) in lieu of jail time, she proceeds to judge everyone and everything around her, correcting pronunciation, rolling her eyes at the chanting of the serenity prayer, refusing to participate in anything, and trying to find drugs immediately. Her boyfriend visits and slips her some drugs, she uses, and her counselor sets up a transfer to jail. Still in denial, she insists that she could stop using if she wanted to, saying she's a writer and they all drink, she likes to have a good time, she's not an addict, that's for those other people. Out of stubbornness, she throws the drugs out the window, then tries to shimmy down a tree to get to them. After injuring herself, she realizes the extent of her addiction and breaks down.
The rest of the movie involves her journey as she throws herself into treatment, participating in everything, trying to gain back everyone's trust, and reaching out to Lily for help in talking about family issues. One of the scenes that will always, always bring me to tears is when Lily talks about wishing she had helped Gwen when they were younger. Using her newly found knowledge from the program, Gwen says, "Well, I never asked for help, so." Lily replies, "But you needed it, didn't you?"
Everyone needs help in this world, at one time or another. Of course I was raised to believe that I didn't deserve help, and so I couldn't ask for any because no one would help me. You're reading this; you've probably already read something earlier so that's already a given. But even if I did get the courage to actually ask for help, I faced a huge wall of resistance. My mother would flip out, giving me all of the reasons that there WAS no help to give. No money available, no time to do what I was asking for, no way that it could be done. If it was something I valued, but it didn't line up with presenting to the world the image of her as a perfect mother, it just couldn't happen. Impossible.
So I learned. I learned not to ask, that help didn't exist. And I worked around that void for decades.
I had to start small, and ask for little things before I could believe that it would work. Any setback was a huge setback, and I had to start from zero many times. But eventually I was able to ask for help without feeling like a huge imposition, like I was asking too much, taking up too much space, being greedy when I should be giving instead of taking.
One of my friends said something a long time ago that reframed the situation for me. She asked me if I liked helping people, and how it made me feel. I said I loved helping people, and it made me feel good, and useful, and like I was needed. She said, why would you want to keep someone else from feeling that way? Wouldn't you want to allow someone else the pleasure of feeling that way if you had the chance?
Digression again. That's just one of the pieces of this movie that meant so much to me. Watching these characters deal with their past, and learn from their mistakes helped me figure out how to do that myself.
Rating: 300 viewings, at least. I could probably recite this one, easily.
I don't know that I'll ever fully recover from the childhood I had. I'll probably always be in recovery. But these movies gave me hope that I wouldn't have to use food or books or other people to hide from my feelings about my past forever. Instead, I could move through my feelings and step up into a new life, one where I could acknowledge where I came from, but live as myself without letting my past dictate who I would become.
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