I Saw A Movie. In A Theater! WOOT!

 Welcome to my posting for May Monster Madness, a blog hop hosted by ANNIE WALLS, LITTLE GOTHIC HORRORS and SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES.  I hope y'all will take some time and visit some (ALL!) of the participating blogs.

I went to the movies on Saturday.  Like I actually got up, dressed, got in the car and drove to a real movie theater!  My daughter wanted to see The Raven and since I'm also a fan of Edgar Allan Poe and John Cusack, how could I possibly resist the call of $12.00 movie theater popcorn and $6.00 Coke, Poe and Cusack?

Cusack did an excellent job of portraying Poe.  Although, I was expecting a more debauched, less dashing Edgar Allan, I did find John Cusack to be believable. The movie provides a unique take on what happened before Poe's mysterious death in 1849.  "The Raven" is basically a good old-fashioned whodunit!

The movie centers around the three days prior to Poe's death.  Murders are being committed in Baltimore by someone copying Poe's more famous poems and stories.  Luke Evans plays Inspector Fields, who seems ahead of his time in the use of forensic science. Mr. Evans has very prominent canine teeth and it was a bit disconcerting 'cause I kept thinking he might be a vampire but I was just mixing up my genres during a Skittle high.  I wasn't familiar with Luke before this movie and teeth aside, he did an excellent job of playing a detective who thought about the "why" of the crimes and not just the "who".

Emily Hamilton, Poe's love interest, is portrayed by Alice Eve.  The woman is angelically beautiful.  She loves Edgar Allan in spite of his alcoholism and drug dependency because his writing and devotion speaks to her soul.  His deep and selfless love will be what surprises in the end.

I'm not sure what movie critics are saying about the movie, I don't read them because they usually hate every movie I love.  I really enjoyed "The Raven", so screw the paid critics and listen to me!  The film didn't rely on over the top CGI or huge movie "stars".  It told an intriguing, suspenseful story through good acting and excellent writing.  The movie was a beauty to watch because of the attention to detail in costuming and sets along with skilled cinematography.  I'm giving "The Raven" four bats!

 

 

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Stained

There are instances in your early life that stain your psyche as red wine will stain a white tablecloth.  Those times seep into the woof and warp of your being.  Th stain is permanent and unlike a tablecloth, the stains that color your self cannot be tossed away and replaced.

Some people are able to let the stains fade.  They incorporate them into their fabric so they are barely noticeable.  Others will continually expose their stains to the entire world, never attempting to to hide them. Then there are still others, I think the majority of us, who are aware of the stains and keep trying to diminish them.  We don't want the stains to color our lives, even as we know they will.  We mentally scrub at them over and over.  We know that even though we mask the stains fairly well, they are still evident.

The realization that we are all stained in some way just by remaining alive became very apparent when I was talking to a friend I've known since childhood.  She is, outwardly, a vibrant, successful, intelligent woman.  Inside she struggles to remove the stains made by the rejection and torment of her two cousins.  I never saw the dark marks within her.  To me she was and always will be the kind of person I want to have as a friend.  She's good, kind, generous, smart, talented, funny and a myriad of other things that maker her a special person.  She labors to remove her stains yet hasn't let them color her personality or life to an overwhelming extent. She has and does fight the good fight every day. But I now know that when she looks inward; she doesn't usually see what I see.  Many times all she can see is a fat girl with opinions that was shunned because of her body and her sharp wit by thinner more popular relatives. 

My friend and I know that what we see in our inner mirror is only a pale illusion of whom and what we really are but we can't escape those stained ghostly images.  We carry them with us like an invisible backpack.  

I've been told by many that I'm a strong, confident, intelligent, creative woman.  My own inner mirror reflects an image of a woman marked with self-doubt, frailty of spirit and stupidity.

My stains are deep.

I know I've been death eating a cracker lately.  I'm going to do a couple of fun posts shortly just so y'all don't want to jump in the abyss with me.  

Livin' On The Edge

There's somethin' wrong with the world today

I don't know what it is

Something's wrong with our eyes ...

Livin on the Edge – Aerosmith 

I don't know if every person who suffers from depression/anxiety/panic disorder feels the same way I do or if their depression started the same way mine did. My depression sorta snuck up on me. It took baby steps, on little cat feet, like fog.

Like the fog, my depression will shift. Sometimes deep and opaque, sometimes barely hovering on the ground. Unlike the fog, it never goes away. I believe mine started after my daughter was born. Back in the dark ages of 1977, post-partum depression was called, “The Baby Blues”. New mothers were thought to be “hormonal” and nervous over the new baby and trying to adjust to a new lifestyle. I was told, in various ways, by family, friends and physicians, to “Walk it off. Rub some dirt on it. Build a bridge and get over it.” The progression was slow and I began to think that what I was feeling was normal. This was the new, not improved version of me.

My mother was a very private person. I never knew what she was feeling. She was mostly on an even keel everyday. Our family motto isn't embroidered on a pillow, it's carved in marble – BE STOIC, KEEP QUIET. (This is why the Scots invented Scotch and a game where you wack the shit out of a little white ball with a stick.) I figured after the first mentions of my feelings and the subsequent responses, I'd better adopt the family motto as law. Since Mulder's family crest is an ostrich with it's head stuck in the sand and IGNORE IT, IT WILL GO AWAY, written in Latin, I really didn't have much chance to get a grip and nip it in the bud. 

I guess I wasn't a total loss because I always hung on to HOPE. I hoped life would get better. Both Mulder and me worked and got on with day to day living, such as it was. Each day was a struggle with my internal demons but since I didn't really know anything else at the time, I figured this was the way I was supposed to feel now – sad, exhausted, indifferent, joyless, angry. Really, really angry. We were both still young and even when I was 31 and my son was born, I still had that hope that things would be better in the future. Life did improve, at least for awhile. My depression began to recede. Since I started having panic attacks, I was prescribed an anti-anxiety medication. That worked pretty well. I hadn't killed anyone, the kids were okay. Our financial difficulties were a thing of the past. We had decent jobs that we both liked. I saw the light through the fog. All in all, life was damn good.

But in 2005 the fog came rolling in, not on little cat feet but bounding on tiger paws, like I was London in the summer. 

Please note ~ I'm not writing about my battle with clinical depression for sympathy.  I'm writing because I hope that if you live with and/or know someone who is waging the same fight, my story will give you some insight in how to deal with them.  Pity and sympathy don't do a fiddler's fuck for anyone who is depressed.  Knowledge, understanding and education is what the person needs.  Learn about depression. Understand that it is, "not in their head" - OH! Hell, yeah!,  It effects the brain but it's not "made-up".  This is part one of maybe three parts, maybe more. 

To be continued ...

from vi.sulize.us

Happy Easter!

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