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Late in the winter break of my second year of college, my family and I decided that going to a theater would be a fun way to spend the day. We jumped onto Google to see what was showing nearby. To give some idea of the cinematic landscape of the time, here are a few of the things we probably found:
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Gran Torino
Yes Man
Valkyrie
The Wrestler
Doubt
The Reader
Not such a bad selection. The movie we left the house to see was none of these, however. We went on Fandago to reserve tickets to see "Seven Pounds." Which, for people who are unaware (and if you are, I'm about to ruin the movie for you), is a movie in which Will Smith atones for a past mistake, which took the lives of seven other people, by jumping into a bathtub with a killer jellyfish in order to have his dead body chopped up, divided into its notables, and shoved into seven new people in need of organry.
Now, I can't be the only one like this, but I have a hard time processing my own emotions, as in things that happen to me or people around me. If someone were to have all of their fingers chopped off, they would say "Oh dear god, my digits! You’ve just killed my dreams of becoming a hand model for Lamasil!" And they would be appropriately upset in the moment. However, if I had all my fingers chopped off, I would stand there like a mute idiot looking bewilderedly at my fingers while expressing the emotional latitude of a rusty bike chain. It wouldn't be until months down the road when I was eating a bag of Bugles and discovered that I would no longer be able to put them on the tips of my fingers to look like a witch that my new, fingerless reality would come crashing in around me.
Conversely, when a normal person goes to the movies and watches on screen a sad thing that they know is fake, they can rationalize to themselves. "Oh, well that's not me, so why would I be upset by that thing. I still have plenty of popcorn and I don't have to pee yet. This is awesome." I, on the other hand, immediately break down and begin to weep uncontrollably. "Nobody puts baby in a corner! Oh, God, that's so beautiful.... buhhhhuhhhuhhhhh (rough onomatopoeia of crying like a pussy to a poorly written movie line)." And from this point forward, the other patrons of the theater get to listen to my constant snuffling for the duration of the film.
So, with this new knowledge in tow, one can accurately predict how I spent the latter 60-70% of the 123 minutes of the movie Seven Pounds. I cried like I was trying to solve a water crisis. I had to go refill my empty Sprite cup from the fountain outside because I had run out of tears and shooting blanks from my eye-holes was starting to hurt.
Around 143 minutes later (we have a lot of previews at our theater), I stepped out into the lobby emotionally drained and deliriously dehydrated. My eyes were red and salty from all of the tears and rubbing with popcorny hands. I didn't want to do anything, I didn't want to go anywhere. I was burned out thoroughly. The other patrons as they flowed from the doors behind me were completely unaffected, chattering excitedly about how they were going off to do more "fun things with their day" like jetskiing and blow. My family started walking toward the exit, my mom rattling her car keys in her purse.
"Hsmsmmmhnn.." I muttered as I raised my arms in pathetic defiance.
My family stopped and turned.
"C-can we please just stay here. I can't go out into the world after that enema of sorrow. Can we just watch another movie, but a happy one this time?"
After a surprisingly short exchange, I convinced my family to stay. I must have looked really bad.
It was settled that the second movie of the day would be "Marley and Me," a whimsical tale of a dog and his particular knack for getting into zany scenarios! On paper, it seemed like the perfect remedy for my emotional destitution.
We walked into our new theater; my family found seats and sat down, I followed them slowly and collapsed into a chair near them. Falling into the chair had expended the last of my reserves. I lied comatose, and awkwardly diagonal, in the chair as the same twenty minutes of previews I'd already seen flickered at me.
The movie started and it was really dumb, which was exactly what I needed, so I was happy. Marley was tearing apart the house and jumping out of moving cars and generally being raucous while Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson were doing an embarrassingly bad approximation of responsible pet ownership. I was starting to slowly come out of my funk.
Then, Marley started to get sick.
No. No, no. No, no, no, no no no no no nononononononono.
I felt like a kidnap victim about to get kidnapped a second time. This wasn't happening. I couldn't go through this again.
But I was going to. I hadn't moved in my chair and I was still lying like someone had dumped Stephen Hawking out of his wheel chair into a sticky theater seat.
I tried to go to my happy place as Marley began his terribly cheesy death-spiral. I repeated in my head "Do not cry to an Owen Wilson movie. Do not cry to an Owen Wilson movie." But I couldn't help myself. That damn dog knew it wasn't supposed to exercise after eating or drinking, but did it anyway and killed itself. I was already too vulnerable from the previous movie and this new wave of sad ripped through the emotion levees my heart was struggling to rebuild. When Owen Wilson shed that first poorly faked tear over the taxidermied dead dog replica, it was too much for my weakened constitution. I sank into my chair and started to blubber and convulse in a fit of despair.
I don't remember how I got to the car. Someone might have carried me.
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I still can’t look at Owen Wilson’s crooked nose without a flashback and a reawakening of my PTSD.
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