i'm not sure what the trigger is, but something from my childhood obviously stuck with me - i can't watch scary movies. or movies with grotesque violence. i can't watch anything with depictions of violent crimes, guts being spilled, big sharks eating people, aliens eating people. there is something about them that profoundly freaks me the 'eff out. i can give three examples of me trying to watch them: 1) as a senior in high school, some friends were hanging out and decided to watch "the exorcism" - i ran out of the house in tears. 2) when i saw the matrix for the first time, i had nightmares for three days straight about fields of human babies being taken care of by machines. 3) on a school trip, they played some bad movie where it's a haunted house that used to be a mental institution. a character was given electroshock and i got so upset and freaked out that they had to turn it off to keep me from getting hysterical. i couldn't stop crying. (of course, that response is completely normal, given the fact that i know my mother has had electroshock therapy twice in her life.)
i get physically uncomfortable, nervous, nauseous, anxious... i can't do it. my friends still tease me that if we go out to the movies, it better be a romance or a comedy or i won't go with them.
so why, oh why, when i already had a fever and a headache, did i choose to watch a marathon of "criminal minds" yesterday? there were episodes about rapists, serial murderers, pedophiles, and of course, shizophrenics. it's just a crime drama on tv, with mandy patinkin (who i LOVE), but for some reason, the episodes made me feel just like scary movies do. but i kept watching them. i KNOW myself better than that. and just as i would have predicted, i had nightmares all night about rapists, serial murderers, and children being hurt. i must have woken myself out of them at least 5 times throughout the night, and i am still shaking when i think about them.
i was describing this to someone this morning, complaining that i should have called my father after the first one, damn the time it was... but i couldn't do that, right? it's childish. i know it's a tv show. i know that there isn't a rapist in my house, or that a little boy is being held captive on my floor.
and as i said the words, i realized that this must be what it's like to be my mother. she lives with these kinds of visions in her head all the time. her most common delusion is that children near her are being hurt by a murderer, or that she must save children being abused - frequently, her visions are that her own children were murdered and that the ones currently alive (me and my brother) are actually stand-ins or actors, put there to keep an eye on her or harm her.
if i had been a little kid, i would have told my father or mother about the nightmares, and they'd soothe me, and probably lull me back to sleep. but no one was here to lull me back to sleep. i kept falling back asleep and waking up again from another nightmare.
i'm not saying i'm like my mother. only that last night gave me a new insight into what it must be like to be my mother. i feel a lot better today. i told my friend at work about the dreams, and he laughed at them and gave me a hug, and i spent the rest of the day feeling better. i know i'll sleep a bit tonight.
but my mother doesn't ever get the "hug" and the reprieve. once again, i'm left feeling so sorry for her. and sorrier still that i cannot help her.
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