Triggers

I love theater and movies. I love to get so lost in the story lines and the performances it's like I wake up when I leave the theater. Like I have been lost in other stories that, somehow, have some threads attached to me. I guess, deep down, they do. As art reflects life it also reminds us that we all experience the same emotions, highs and lows of life - a collective consciousness that is like a low wattage current flowing and encircling the planet. Sometimes those threads trigger memories or remind us of deep longings that may never be quenched. Sigh.

I just took myself to a movie - in the middle of the day! Made me feel just a little like I was skipping class for some odd reason. It was a little birthday gift to myself as tomorrow is...well another one. I saw "Silver Linings Playbook". Really, really great and I can see why Ms. Lawrence won her Oscar.

The theater is only a few miles from home and only a mile or so from where I grew up. I might mention here that only two days ago I was lucky enough to go see the musical "Next To Normal" which is also fabulous and also deals with a family dealing with bi-polar disorder.

Okay..I digress for a moment... The music is FANTASTIC and I would HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend seeing this show. As good as "S.L.P." was this musical was AMAZING. Okay...back to it.

Anyway, having dealt with people in my life with this disorder and watching it pull at their lives....it is funny that I have had these two cultural experiences back to back. One - it is great that people are finally talking about the issue of mental health and illness. Two - how much it can touch the people around the patient. Three - and this is the real reason I guess I was drawn to writing today.....we are all so important to each other.

So I am driving home and thinking over the film. The strange family dymanic is intense but the love is evident. Then I started to think, as I was near my childhood home....  Fifty one years ago, today, my mother was alive and pregnant. My father and my brother were waiting for me to appear. Our little house was near fields and all that I was driving through was not there then.

Then, out of the blue, it hit me in the solar plexus chakra how much I missed my family.My parents and my brother (who is alive but grown up like me and living far away) and our little house and our family life. How little things were important, like birthdays, and how much I wanted to walk back into that house and look back into my own childhood for just a moment.

It was an "Our Town" moment, for sure.

I haven't cried over my parents' death in a while now. Mum's been gone since 2009 and Dad since 2006 but that pain felt like it was an instant ago.

And now I think about how special my mum always made me feel on my birthday and I think that there is a little piece of me that is gone. It's not a big dramatic thing, this piece, but I can feel it's sharp edges and it can cut deep....deep. That piece broke off when I became an adult orphan and  - okay bear with me  - I felt released into the wild with no protection.

In fact, after sitting in a rather cold movie theater - I was dressed warmly  - the outside air was so bone chilling. I mean really cold. Did the temperature dip while I was inside? No idea.

Okay, I digress in a big way. Hey, that's what blogs are for, I guess...

Bottom line...art, theater, movies and music continue to thread us all together so that we are really not all alone out there. It reminds us that every feeling we have ever felt has been experienced by those we love and those we will never meet. Kinda blows that whole 13 year old angst I used to feel. You know the one - no one understands me and I am all alone.

Bull.

Just go to the movies. You'll see how wrong you are.