I will openly admit there are times when I don't take break ups well. This was one of those times. A week ago in my mind I had been crushed by a boulder and this was it. This was what they call rock bottom. Depression, anxiety, Asperger's, and ADHD were not exactly helpful either. By admitting these things I've set the scene and painted a clear picture. Pain.
How do you get over pain and cope with its remains? How do you adjust to a new normal without someone you thought could be your other half? How do you get out of a hole you're not motivated to get out of? Google can provide answers to these questions but it's easier said then done. Time can heal all wounds but three days isn't a whole lot of time. I didn't have the answers to these questions and I still don't. Maybe in the future I will. Maybe after writing this post I'll figure it out. Who knows? The point is during this time I had to work with what I knew from experience. My solution was to distract myself but productively.
Cat videos and dog pictures are a great distraction but what exactly does 100+ hours of cats afraid of zucchinis going to accomplish? How are you going to feel better when the videos are over and in between the pauses you still feel the absence of feeling? From experience I learned you distract yourself with something productive. Some people use writing to cope. Others create art. Some people indulge in exercise. These kinds of activities contribute to yourself and sometimes the world if you put yourself out there.
As an aspiring filmmaker watching movies counts as something productive. To Write Love on Her Arms and A Girl Like Her are films that I've put on my Need to Watch list because they contain subject matter that I need to study for my novels. So I curled up, got cozy, and watched To Write Love on Her Arms first. When I first saw the trailer I thought it was going to be a stereotypical boy meets girl Love story with hipster music and a repeated message that would make its way on my walls of inspirational quotes. WRONG. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. words can't describe how unprepared I was.
It was a true story about Renee's battle with bipolar depression, drugs, rape etc. and the events that lead up to the on-going charity group To Write Love on Her Arms. What really tore me up (in an enlightening way) was that the film didn't stop when she "recovered". The story continued. That's real life. We get through our worst and then we think we're okay but we don't stay okay and we face more obstacles and hit rock-bottom time and time again but if you never give up hope you'll always be able to pick yourself up and keep going. The struggles in the film hit me hard because I know what it's like to not be okay.
The rest of the film talks about the effect the charity group had on people and that's when I reached maximum enlightenment. That was the moment I remembered the cause that my films and novels stand for.
Giving people hope. I especially want to reach out to people who were or still are like me. People who have struggled with suicidal thoughts and the fear that they're not good enough. Autistic people learning how to accept and understand themselves and struggle with explaining themselves to the people they love. I've never been bullied but I want to reach out to those who have before it's too late. People of the LGBTQ community, people of color, feminists who are ashamed by feminatzis, etc. I want to express the idea of not giving up hope through my fictional, and not so fictional, Love stories, drawings, films, etc.
The next night I watched Girl Like Her. I knew this was going to be a "feels movie" meaning a movie that required a box of tissues. I liked movies that emotionally engaged me because feeling intensely feels a lot better than feeling nothing at all. Feelings are just reassurance that you're alive. The film tore me up in a way that was more painful than enlightening. The world we live in needs more Love to outweigh the cruelty and corruption and it breaks my heart to know that right now there are people laying awake at night thinking that they deserve the psychological and physical pain that people are inflicting or have inflicted on them. If you are one of those people and you reading this I want you to listen and listen good.
You do not deserve to be cut down and emotionally wounded by anyone. You matter.
Time has passed and the wounds have healed a little. The important thing is that I found my purpose in a time and place that I least expected it and one of the many beautiful things in life is its sporadic moments of clarity.
-Just Jane
"It always seems impossible until it's done. The greatest glory in living lies in not never falling, but in rising every time we fall."-Nelson Mandela
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