rabbit hole

I watched this movie, tonight, after already being in a mood that was probably not helped by watching. Perhaps though, I could appreciate the sorrow, despair, sadness, rage and…hope that it conveyed because of this.

I won’t go into a synopsis of the film. If you want to know what it’s about, Google it. Watch a trailer on YouTube. Rent it (because you can’t own it yet).

While I was watching it, I had to keep asking myself: “How does one move past something like that?” It would seem so easy being on the outside of a horrible situation offering someone your shoulder or an ear or words or…whatever. After all, at the end of day, you get to walk away, back to your undisturbed life while those going through something so horrible have to contend with the fact that “s/he is gone…forever…and not coming back.” They are gone and nothing you can do will change that.

I hate to call things “real”, but that’s what this film felt like to me. It seemed (because I’ve never been through anything like it before) like what would be an honest portrayal of a couple experiencing grief over a dead son. It was utterly depressing, but it did end on a note of hope. It wasn’t a happy ending, but it was a hopeful one. That maybe, someday down the line, they wouldn’t move past the fact that their son was taken from them, but they’d learn to…accept it and cope and adapt.

It reminded me of an amazing book I read two years ago, “Beautiful Children”. A child runs away, disappears into the night and is never heard from again. Part of the narrative focuses on the parents and how they cope (or lack thereof) with the situation. I almost imagine having your child runaway would be worse (if such a thing is even quantifiable). I mean, when your child dies, you know they are gone and not coming back. When they run away, there’s always that hope that they’ll return; the never knowing for sure what happened, or why. Or even if they’re still alive.

Watching it brought me back to this idea I had for a story. I had started part of it, somewhere down the line, but I lost inspiration and quit. I wanted to tell the story of a teenage boy who kills himself, and the aftermath. I had certain scenes all formed in my head. The opening would be of the mother in her therapist’s office, talking about the morning she discovered her son. How she woke up in the morning. Took a shower. Started making breakfast. Grabbed the paper. You know, doing all these mundane morning things we all take for granted. And then she goes to get her son out of bed and... Because, you know, that's how these things go. Death and loss aren't movies. There's not always some grand, exciting scene. It just happens and most times without warning. Just...bam. One moment life is positively fine, and the next it's not.

Another scene, one I almost sat down and wrote out a couple weeks ago, involved the father coming home after a long day of work. The house is empty. He starts to walk to his room, but something stops him. He turns to the door that belonged to his son’s room and he can’t help but go in. At that point I’d have gone into detail about how untouched everything was. How, as the father goes through everything that his son left behind, he never really even knew him at all. That he had never taken the time to get to know him or want to. And he breaks down and just loses it. In my head, if it were to be put into the screen, it’s this really dramatic, yet quiet scene of both rage and despair; love and loss and regret.

That scene I found I couldn’t write, because I was drawing from my own relationship with my father and imagined that it was him coming into my room and looking over my things and realizing that he never really knew me at all. And it got to be too much, so I stopped.

I think I might pick back up on it though. Of course, come tomorrow and this feeling having worn off, I might not.

I also think about these things I write down and post on my blog sites. Or on my journal on my hard drive, which is essentially everything I post to the public. Because let’s face it, I don’t think anyone really reads this. Even if they do, you don’t know me outside of this screen. You’ll probably never shake my hand, or laugh with me or cry with me. You’ll probably never have lunch or share drinks and stories. We won’t ever drive insanely fast down the lane with both windows rolled down, screaming out the lyrics of some punk or indie-rock song.

That’s okay though. In the end, I think that there’s this subconscious drive in all of us to want to be remembered. I know I’ll never be remembered for doing something great and historic. I take a small comfort, I guess, in knowing that someone, someday might stumble across all this in a random Google search. Maybe they’ll read an entry, find it interesting and continue on. And then they’ll keep reading until all my posts have been absorbed.

And even though I won’t know it because I’ll be long dead and gone, I’ll at least have been remembered. Thought of. Mortality is so…

We are mysterious creatures, yet in the end so much it seems not to matter.

Oh. One other thing I liked about rabbit hole. In part of the movie, the mother meets with the boy who hit her son. They talk and through each other cope. Well, he makes this comic book about a boy who travels through parallel universes, searching for his father.

At one point, the mother, after having read it and they’re talking says something like to the effect that she likes the idea that, somewhere out there in another time and space, she is happy.

I like that idea too. That maybe, in another universe, there is another version of me who isn’t so hard on himself. Who isn’t so unhappy for reasons he can’t quite explain. Who takes the love given to him with open arms and doesn’t question or sabotage or make light of it. Who can express himself outside of words and blogs and to the people in his life who can reach out and touch him. Who can laugh honestly and without fear of rejection. Who can be himself around everyone, and everyone likes him for it.

Who can sleep peacefully at night and not dwell on things that are best left in another universe altogether.