Not just the mechanical things like breathing, feeling your heart beat, hunger, shitting etc. These things are important too, certainly, and boy do you feel it when they go awry — but that’s not my point — it’s the other things that occasioanlly nudge you with the subtlety of an 18 wheeler that makes us human, holy, and great — far more than simple existence.
* Crying so hard and furiously that you convulse in hiccups
That’s pretty high on the list.
I’m a sap. You know that already if you’ve read me for any length of time or met me in person. I get sentimental over silly things. I have an exhaustive memory for sentimental moments. I can’t remember birthdays or phone numbers, but certain moments in time are captured in crystal and quickly ferretted away to some lockbox in my brain.
I cry at movies. In fact, I’ve been known to lose contacts in movie theatres while crying so hard. Seriously. I’m just like that.
So last night I put in a flick to cheer me up.
Crazy First Love A goofy Korean romantic comedy which talks about the insanely obsessive love between a boy named Tae-Il and a girl named IlMae.
The opening scene, a bunch of school girls are riding bicycles on a bridge and are followed by a teacher in black motorcycle gear who is tempering the pace of the pack of schoolboys on bikes behind him. Citing excessive TESTOSTERONE he causes them to crash behind him in a Buster Keaton approved pile of chaos.
Next a boy, our hero Tae-Il, with a fro (Yes, a korean man with a picked out fro) is on a boat by the bridge screaming out into a microphone that he insists on marrying IlMae and that her father, the teacher in black, has broken his promise to allow this union.
The promise? When he grew hairs on his nuts, then Tae-Il would be allowed to marry IlMae.
You can imagine what happens next.
The film goes on to show the extraordinary exhaustively passionate, psychotic, and obsessive love that Tae-Il shows in manic devotion and struggle to win her father’s approval and permission to marry Ilmae. This includes dramatically improving his grades, getting serial nose bleeds, and getting into law school. Tae-Il has mad blueballs throughout the film.
Now what I didn’t expect from this film with this premise, and the lead hero being the same dude from My Sassy Girl, was that the film would have a moment to trigger a bawling session.
A full on epiphany bawling session resulting in hiccups, convulsing, shudders, and sniffles. For a good hour.
Jayzus.
But it was good. Very very good.
And I’ve not allowed myself to feel anything that strongly in a while.
My parents have always tried hard ot protect me. My entire life. Sheilding me from events that would trigger strong emotional reactions. I had no capacity for handling horror films. I teared up at long distance commercials. I threw things after watching the news.
This has – not changed.
When my mother was dying in the hospital, my father would limit my time and visits there, insisting that my time was better spent managing the store for him than being in the hospital. So I missed the last 6 weeks of highschool, worked at my dad’s store, and intermittently visited the hospital when Mom & Dad would let me. I was otherwise sitting at home, feeling very confused and alone.
And that was still more than I could handle. I didn’t even start properly mourning with crying sessions until a good 3 months after she passed away. She died exactly 10 days aftter my highschool graduation – time enough for her to see the photos developed.
Something about that film: A sharp and delicate conveyance–
About that one moment when you decide that sacrificing everything in your whole life because you want the other person to be able to live their life and be happy without you — because you know that being loved that much is more responsibility than you can handle –and that your time and journey will undoubtably be different than that of the person you love – is rather stunning. Terrifying. And so very very gorgeously hard. I’m not able to articulate well why it triggered such a tender bruise in me…
I don’t think it was until last night’s bawl out session that in the dark recesses of my brain I had realized how very much I’d resented my parents keeping me from the hospital then. Or that it took this cheesetastic stupid Korean film about nosebleeds, blue balls, pubic hair, cock blocking, cross dressing, fights, and manic ambition for the sake of true love — for me to finally “get it” 12 years later.
I miss you Mom. You stubborn goofy crazy lady. I finally get it.
