All better?

I had a breakthrough a few months ago. 

I am only writing about it now because at the time it was almost too easy to write about. Kind of anticlimactic, and not as resolved as one might hope. I did know I would get to it eventually.

I have written before about this unbearable grief that comes upon me during movies, where I am crying verging on hysteria. I have known there was sadness, and that it was connected to home and family, especially parents. I have worried that at some point it would all break out, and I would be left crying helplessly for days, which made me hesitant to pursue it that hard.

(I most recently wrote about this last year: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2021/02/wild-abandon.html)

Then, the night of June 3rd, I did. 

Over the few months preceding I had watched Encanto, Seeing Red, and Everything Everywhere All At Once. The parental themes of those movies probably played a role, but also with the last one... it really shows how life beats you down. I related to that.

It had been on my mind, and after I went to bed I decided to just let it come.

My father was never happy with me. I could not fix that.

That was it.

To be fair, it was knowledge that I already had. I'd figured out a while ago that my sense of there always being something wrong with me came from my father's dissatisfaction with me, and figured out that the real problem was that he was dissatisfied with himself.

I had also been aware of my overinflated sense of responsibility and desire to fix the world, and known that it was not really possible.

Apparently I had not quite connected before that the first thing was the reason for the second thing, even though it is entirely logical. I was trying to make up for my shortcomings by taking care of everyone else.

Maybe what was different that night was the clarity with which I understood that this was not my responsibility.

It was so simple and easy that my reaction was "Huh."

I didn't need to cry about it. Maybe that's because it was all old news, or I had cried enough previously, but maybe it was just relief. So many times when there is a breakthrough it means more to work on. This was freeing.

I think that's where the hysteria came from: the sheer extent of how overwhelming it was to need to fix the whole world to be worth something. That was a big burden removed.

Even at the time I realized that there were still things to figure out. I still care about other people and want to do good things. There's still room for figuring out what I can do and doing it. That "Now what?" was already there.

I'm not saying I have that all figured out. 

I can say that Minari did not wreck me. I bet Coco still would, but I can probably be "normal" with most movies now. 

I do seem to feel things more now, in general. Apparently, recovering from the one really bad hangup requires less compartmentalization. That's okay; it is not overwhelming.

I suspect this is a good time to write about it because I just discovered something else that I really needed to do. 

Without saying that it's something I was eager to do, it was manageable.

That's worth a lot.