#but I simply cannot get viscerally upset. I have never cried at a movie or tv show

[fremulon]

i am missing the gene that lets me get upset about things that happen to fictional characters I think

[samtheflamingomain]

alive: how to traumatize a 13yo in one easy step!

Alive is a movie about a group of people whose plane crashes in the Andes mountains, and yes this is the next descriptive sentence, "they must make difficult decisions to survive". I'm 13, in French class, watching this movie with French dub, and I suddenly vomit.

Well, not so suddenly. The movie starts kinda normal. Plane crash. Worry. Desperati- oh okay they're already eating their dead classmates very cool and normal.

Not even in passing, off-screen or in conversation. Nah, we're 15m in and they're literally slicing off meat from a dead person in 4k.

You may be asking yourself, "Why were you watching this in French class of all subjects?"

Well I'll tell you why: we were assigned to read a book about a man stranded in the Andes. He doesn't eat other people. There is literally no other connection, I think the teacher just googled "stranded in andes movie" and picked the first hit.

To get back to my vomit, I was the second one to physically react. Paulina was allowed to leave after starting to cry as the first corpse was cut up. I tried to keep it together but again, I'm like 13. I didn't wake up saying "Boy I sure hope to see a man eaten by his best friend at 9am today!"

It was super embarrassing in the moment, and I was of course excused. The entire class waited in the hall while my vomit was cleaned up.

I was sent to the counselor's office, but after 20m, the rest of the class reentered the room to continue the film. After one student cried and another vomited. I didn't know this until the next day, where we resumed the film. I cannot fathom what made my French teacher think this was a good idea.

I put my head down and had earbuds in for the entire class, usually a punishable offense. But I was one of at least 4 or 5 others that did the same.

Alive is widely considered to be a horror movie because of its deeply upsetting and graphic nature. If I'd been told that and watched as an adult, I don't think I'd have the insanely traumatic memories associated with it.

As a kid, I had horrible OCD. Totally eradicated through the right combo of meds and basic therapy, not even the least of my present-day issues.

But I still get 2 days. "Human Centipede" days and "Alive" days. Where I am consumed by the images of each film and they bring me deep discomfort I cannot escape. HC started because I heard of it and read the Wiki entry and... just obsessed over the very concept.

Alive days are more... graphic? I haven't watched even a second of HC, but was forced to watch all of Alive. So when I have an Alive day, it's filled with clips from the film. HC days are mostly me obsessing over how unbearable it would be to be In The Middle. It legit consumes me for hours just imagining every sensation and how it would be traumatizing.

But my worst HC days are really bad just because of the concept, but days when I remember Alive often lead me to the question, would I ever eat my best friend to stay alive? And I know the answer is yes, but I don't want it to be.

HC is just visceral disgust and horror. Alive is a goddamn philosophical endeavor. And I have so, so, SO many visuals from that film permanently engraved into my brain. HC is a worse concept but at least I've managed to never see more than one or two images of the film.

It's actually, now that I think about it, kind of interesting that a film I've never seen hits me as hard as one I have. I think it comes down to the very specific concept of HC hitting me in the right way versus Alive being a movie I watched with 15 other people and everyone reacted as expected. Maybe that doesn't make sense. Experiencing something, even something traumatic, with other people can very much lessen the trauma it may cause simply by being able to share it with others.

Everything I know about Human Centipede is text. Everything I know about Alive was a lived experience. Their Days are bad but differently. It's hard to explain. They feel so different but I know it's the symptom of the same illness.

I know it's an Alive Day when I wake up sweating thinking "Oh my god I just ate a friend". I know it's a HC Day when I wake up and have to run and puke and then I say oh my god what if I was In The Middle and I can't stop.

I know no one really cares, and honestly, it's really rare for me to get OCD days now cuz I do have a solid Pharmacopia that helps but some days I can't stop it. OCD may be far down on my list of Big Problems, but for me, it never really goes away.

Last point, a bit long but really hammers home how bad it can get. These Days, as a kid, used to be consecutive without stopping. I wrote about 200 pages of a journal in the 2 months that followed me seeing one (1) still image of Human Centipede and me reading the Wiki. That's all it took to launch me into the worst summer of my life.

During this summer, we were watching Beavis and Butthead, and they made reference to HC. If you're unfamiliar, they usually play a 1-2m clip of the reference before making jokes. I absolutely LEAPT across the room for the remote, hurting my father, landing on the ground before I hit the "off" button just as the clip was about to roll. Dad crying out in pain, me bruised from the dive. But I absolutely collapsed to the floor in relief and started sobbing.

"What in the FUCK are you doing?" Dad asked, not unwarranted.

"I can't see it. I can't see that movie." Then we went into a convo about my OCD about HC and they didn't understand and just wanted me to put the TV back on. I couldn't. I said I had to wait 5 minutes to be sure I didn't see clips when it went back on. During this time (I was literally counting seconds in my head) I tried to explain why HC was so bad for my OCD but they just didn't get it. It was one of the most frustrating mental illness moments of my life. Luckily I had the remote and thus controlled when viewing would resume.

I don't have a huge point I'm building to but I do have a take-away: anything that causes you that guttural feeling of deep discontent is valid. Might take years of therapy to accept it but if I've learned anything from therapy it's this: if it upsets you, it's not unimportant or silly. There's a reason it upsets you and it's worth talking about.

Stay Greater.