Some time ago, I think I was 12, I realized that sometimes I just have to have a day where I am just unjustifiably sad. Somewhere around 18-19 during that insufferable spring (how did my family put up with me? I was horridly morose for no good reason, a break up was not a good reason for that crap.) I realized that it was the perfect day to watch all the sad films I didn't want to watch when I'm happy. And this works for two reasons. 1) Watching sad films when you're looking for a reason to cry is perfect tear fodder. and 2) People don't ask you if you'll be alright and think you're crazy for crying during and after particularly sad films. And it's important that they be films and not movies. They have to be good, the kind of good that makes you put down the freaking popcorn and cry.
I have a solid week off work. A solid week to organize the apartment (it's almost there. It's at the point where I can function and the rest is just design.) and to let out this pent up need for a cry fest. So I took it today. Today is the cry fest day. Today is the day I justify investing in Kleenex.
So I went out to the movies. I watched The Intimidation Game. It was fantastic. Brilliant. Perhaps the best film I've seen in ages... since Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, or Van Gogh, or Third Star. But oh it was brilliant. But I knew what I was signing up for. I know the outline of Alan Turing's biography, and it is not a happy one. It's a game changer. The kind of story that makes you reevaluate a lot of your own life and what one person can do in changing the world. (Take a moment. Imagine your life without a computer. Not just with out a computer, without a cell phone, without all the digital enhancements of your car, without the information age. Hell, forget calculators even. That life. That 1950s world. That's where we'd still be without Turing. And before last year you probably didn't even know his name.) But it's not a happy ending. Turing was a homosexual. In 1950 UK, that was illegal, punishable by 2 years in prison or chemical castration. Turing eventually was found out, and was sentenced, and chose castration in stead of prison because he couldn't work from prison. A year later he committed suicide. The man who brought us computers, the predecessor to Steve Jobs, pushed to the breaking point because he was different. It's pretty rare that I sit through the credits of a movie because I'm crying so hard that I can't walk through the lobby. But today... after that, I had to sit in my car for a moment to be alright enough to drive.
So I stopped by redbox, and I picked up the rest of my cry fest movies. I've gathered my comfort foods, and then let them be in favor of wine Mom bought me at Thanksgiving and chocolates I got from work at Christmas. The cats have given up trying to fix me, because somewhere around half way through The Fault In Our Stars, the tears were just too much for Waffles to deal with.
I'm on to August Osage County, because after that I should either be drunk enough to sleep it off the rest of the way, or I'll be resolved with this sadness.
Thank goodness for this apartment. I think the move was just in time to save me. But that's another post.
For the night: Chopin Etude no 3 in E major, OP 10, no. 3
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