the silver linings playbook

Last night the Mr. and I went to see The Silver Linings Playbook. 

It is now one of my favorite movies.

I loved it so much, more than I was expecting. Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence are incredible together, and the story...the story made me cry, made me laugh. So much of it hit home for me. 

On the way home, the Mr. (who also loved the movie) remarked that the characters in the movie made him feel normal. 

I couldn't say the same. For me, they made me feel like I wasn't alone. 

Dr. Cliff Patel: Alright. Can you talk about something that you did, before or after?
Pat: Yeah, about a week before the incident, I called the cops and I told them that my wife and the history guy were plotting against me by embezzling money from the local high school, which…wasn’t true. It was a delusion. And we later found out from the hospital that’s because I’m, uh…
Dr. Cliff Patel: …undiagnosed bipolar.
Pat: Yeah. With mood swings and weird thinking brought on by severe stress, which rarely happens, thank God. And then the shower incident happened and that…that’s when everything snapped, so I then realized that, oh, wow, you know, I’ve been dealing with this my whole life. And uh…and without any supervision I’ve been doing it all on my own, uh… with no help, and um…you know, I basically I’ve been like white-knuckling it this whole time.
Dr. Cliff Patel: That had to be hard.
Pat: Yeah. It’s a lot to deal with, especially when you don’t know what the hell is happening, which I do now. Sort of.

That moment hit me square in the heart. Because I know that feeling. That feeling where life just seems so hard. You're struggling so much to just keep your head afloat, and other people are flying past you doing perfect strokes. Excelling. Exceeding. People around you are doing all these great, incredible things, and you're struggling with getting fucking dressed in the morning. I remember as a kid just being sad all the time, just weighed down with this heavy, heavy sadness that sat on my shoulders and made me feel like I was slowly drowning. I grew up in the mountains, so I would just walk through the woods by myself and cry. A lot. I mean, a lot. And I didn't understand why or how I could be sad for no reason, so I would make up reasons. I would think about the most horrible things I could imagine. I would dwell on things like my grandma's death and how much she must have suffered from the cancer that slowly ate her alive. I didn't understand that it's not normal to be sad first and think of reasons second. I didn't understand that it's not normal to be sad like that at all.

In college I was an Education major for a while, and one semester I took a class that was specifically about how to recognize the signs of abused children in your classroom. I remember sitting in that little room, by the window that looked down into the courtyard, reading in my textbook, listening to the professor, and slowly realizing that oh my god this is describing my life.

Up until that point, I thought my family was pretty normal. I wasn't close to my parents, especially my Mom. I had hated my Mom. But that was normal, right? All kids hate their parents, right? I had no idea that some people were something like friends with their parents. My roommate was really close to her Mom, and it had always confused me. 

But there it was, in stark black and white on the pages of my textbook. My life, under the headline "Verbal and Emotional Abuse." 

I didn't know what to do. It was like getting sucker punched in the stomach. I remember hunching down in my chair and trying not to hyperventilate. It was like I had been looking at my life with rose colored glasses, and I'd finally had them ripped off my face. I could see everything now, and it terrified me.

I kept it all bottled up for a couple weeks. But I was spiraling into panic and that darkness sunk it's claws into my skin and held on. 

After a couple weeks I saw a therapist for the very first time. It was one of the counselors provided for us at my college, and I had to write on the slip of paper my reason for the appointment. I remember staring at that blank spot on the paper for what felt like years. Finally my pen moved and wrote the words "possible parental verbal and emotional abuse." I had to put that word "possible" in there, because I still wasn't totally sure I believed it myself. Maybe I was just being a baby. Maybe I just needed to suck it up. Maybe I was just trying to get attention. Maybe everything was my fault, and the therapist would just laugh at me. 

During that first appointment I picked a hole in the knee of my jeans with shaking hands, I was so anxious. The therapist was a very nice, slender, middle aged woman who had a perfectly coordinated outfit, completely with the perfect accessories. She looked like she had stepped right out of the pages of a J. Crew magazine. She looked so perfectly put together, and I instantly hated her. 

She asked me to describe my childhood, my relationship with my mother, etc. And so I did, and her face softened as I talked and she nodded and inserted the proper consoling, understanding comments in the proper places. Her eyes would flick from my frantic fingers back to my face, but she didn't say anything about the fact that I was destroying my jeans. And I guess I got what I needed, she validated what I'd been afraid of. My childhood was not in fact normal. My mother was in fact abusive. 

I saw her a second time, and she asked if I would ever consider confronting my mother. I said no. We made a third appointment that I blew off. I never went back. 

That is my experience with therapy in it's entirety. In the four years that followed, I figured out a lot of stuff about myself through a lot of thinking, a lot of reading, and a lot of trial and error. I know that I struggle with depression. I know that I struggle with anxiety. It's really hard for me to talk about things like this out loud. Writing them is different. It's easier, somehow. The words can flow from my head through my fingers and out onto the page. They get stuck somewhere between my head and my mouth. They come out in shaky fragments and rambling tirades. 

I am trying to work my way back up to am emotional place where I'm ready to try therapy again. Some part of me does want help. About five months ago, I was in a really dark place. I actually called several places that provided therapy, trying to get pricing information. There's no free counseling provided in the real world like there was in college. The costs were high, and I couldn't bring myself to tell the Mr. that I needed help. I didn't want him to worry. So I just kept trying to make it through, white-knuckled. 

About two months ago I started not eating again. That was the first breath of relief. I had something to focus on, something to do that made me feel like I was in control. I was in control. I could breathe again. 

So for me, The Silver Linings Playbook made me feel like there was hope. That you can be crazy and still be happy. That your relationships with other people can be lifesavers. That it's ok to need help. But mostly, it reminded me that I'm not alone.