#leave me alone I need my emotional support devistating movie | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

michaeldenobile · 7 years ago

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When life gives you stop signs and dead end streets...

Time keeps moving on thru the sunshine and the storm

And my dreams are set in stone that someday I'll be who I wanna be

For now I'll wait for the sun to shine again

And for now I'll wait for the rain to pass away

~Leeland, "Brighter Days," 2008

From their 2008 album Opposite Way and the soundtrack to the 2008 film Fireproof, the song "Brighter Days" is a bit of an anthem for me. Since I was a teenager, I loved the analogy of "storms" to describe struggles in my life. Storms often come without warning and are unpredictable, leaving hardship, devistation, and confusion in their wake.

And I'm lookin' for the brighter days

When all my hurts seem to fade away

I'm lookin' for the brighter days

To come my way

They bring floods, felled trees, debris, feet of snow, ice, limited vision, electrical fires, and power outages, both literal and figurative, even cutting us off from the outside world, making us feel isolated, alone, and forgotten. Some of the scars of storms are physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, financial, social, and familial. Storms can make or break our lives. They can make us stuck in the past, obsessed with the future, or focused on the present, for better or worse.

Faces come and faces go but none seem to look my way

And walls have stood and walls have fallen but my heart seems to wait

One of my favorite Robin Williams movies is What Dreams May Come (1998) about Chris Nielson (Williams) who, with his wife Annie, copes with the death of his children and then, when he himself dies in a car accident searches heaven and hell for Annie, who had committed suicide. As dark as the movie is, it is an uplifting drama about the humanity of life and what unites us all regardless of our beliefs. A quote from Annie speaks to the human reality of suffering: "It's just that when everybody's dancing, I feel like . . . I'm alone in a sea of faces."

Well-intentioned "faces" will "come and go," trying to offer support, take advantave of us when we're down, or completely ignore our existence. We build walls and we tear them down. We push people away and we invite them in.

For now I'll sit at the end of the road

And for now I'll wait at the end of the pathway

I'll see the sun one day shine upon me

I'll see the sun one day

And watch the nighttime turn to morning

But for now it all comes back around

In the Adam Sandler movie Reign Over Me (2007), Charlie Fineman (Sandler) is stuck while grieving the loss of his family, five years after they were killed in the attacks of September 11th. At one point in the film, Charlie tries to commit suicide by cop and in the legal proceedings that follow, the judge must determine wheter or not to commit Charlie to an psychiatric facility. His therapist Angela Oakhurst (Liv Tyler) testifies, "I think that Charlie needs to find his own way. Not on our time, but on Charlie's time, and I think that will happen. He'll find people that will fill his life again. Not today, but soon... slowly."

When storms shake our resolve, those well-intentioned faces try to diagnose and treat us. But most often, the remedy of our situations tend to be simply "sitting" and "waiting," in thoughtful reflection, for the "sun to shine upon" us in our own time, not others'.

Gary Allen sings, "Every storm runs, runs out of rain / Just like every dark night turns into day / Every heartache will fade away / Just like every storm runs, runs out of rain."

In our modern world where we can't live without one-minute microwavable burritos, instant fast food Big Macs, cell phone notifications for mail we will see when we get home, and texting for and from people who are feet away from us in adjacent rooms, waiting in times of suffering is an eternity of horror for most of us. We lose sight that the hurricanes of our lives will break and times of recovery will allow us to regroup and prepare, stronger for future storms.

In Jane Yolen's novel The Devil's Arithmetic (1988), a time travel novel set between 1980s Scarsdale, NY, and a concentration camp during the Holocaust, character Rivka, a Jewish teenager in one of the camps, discusses how one of the greatest acts of bravery is survival.

Surviving our storms, in our own time, is courageous. It is also necessary for our health and well-being. It's knowing that brighter days will always come. The dawn will always follow the dark night, and we must patiently carry our crosses through this transient life. If we have goals and dreams, sometimes we must climb the heights of heaven and descend the depths of hell in order to achieve our fullest and truest potential in this borrowed life. Through the storms and the wars, the trials and tribulations, the hardships and sufferings, the deaths we experience (both literal and figurative) can defined our existence or propel us to certain glory. We are not a product of our scars but a legion of our choices, both positive and negative. And we are but a heartbeat away from epic fear and failure or absolute fortitude--that is survival.

When the war gives you a minefield, you push forward and navigate through it. I have dreams and a plan, and I am not letting stop signs and dead ends dictate my end game. I am a champion, and my only opponent is myself. Only I can decide if I win or if I l lose.

But for now I'll sit and wait for the sun to shine again. I'll wait for the rain to pass away.

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