Weird things are changing about me as I age. For instance, I can no longer stomach violence in the media I view. Once upon a time, I watched (and enjoyed immensely) the film Braveheart. It's only one example, and I'm sure the violence got to me a bit, but still. Okay, I also watched American Psycho, which if you know me right now, you know is INSANE. I couldn't even handle Children of Men. I can't handle freaking cop shows that involve shooting. It's as if a switch flipped in my head sometime in the past couple of years, and I now can't tolerate any sort of filmed violence (real or fake). I think about movies that I've seen with Sam in the theater--god, Black Hawk Down--and I wonder, how the hell did I make it through? How did we not end up walking out? I don't know, it seems like once upon a time I could handle small doses of it, but now it just makes me sick.
Sort of hand-in-hand with that is an increased...sensitivity, let's say, towards other people. I've tried to express this in a post (things that never got posted, likely) in the past, but sometimes just the sight of a raggedly looking homeless person fills me with such absolute sadness it's as if I'm paralyzed. My chest literally feels heavy, observing these poor folks. And lately, I find myself feeling bad and guilty for things that for all intents and purposes should NOT make me feel bad. My aesthetician and I got our wires crossed last week and I ended up being in the city at home while she sat in her spa and wondered where I was. I felt simply awful--I hate being late for things, and then the thought of not showing up for something? It's dreadful. I didn't used to feel this way, either. These things happen, and you know, you laugh and especially with Tiff, I've been having her do my eyebrows for.....6 years? 7? Something insane like that. I'm sure she understood. In fact, I know she did, because I went two days later and it was just fine. But I get this horrible feeling in my chest and I just have a HARD time shaking a feeling of guilt.
Part of it is this: I hate failing. I hate failing so very badly that any little thing that feels like a failure is bad. This doesn't apply to the violence thing, but I suspect that I feel really badly for homeless persons because I'm feeling badly that they've failed. That we've failed them as a society. Isn't that slightly ridiculous? I need to take it down a notch, clearly. And I mean, I am a drama queen. Lest we all forget, I can do dramatic with the best of 'em. But a lot of the time, this stuff, these feelings that I feel, I don't express them. I muffle them, because I know people will think I'm being silly. (Although, my hairdresser [what is it with me and the aesthetic professionals, eh?] today said that he was finding he had very little tolerance for violence anymore--he mentioned Natural Born Killers as a movie he could no longer watch--BEFORE I said that I had been thinking about that very thing. And the weird thing is, I HAD! I'd been thinking about blogging this extreme reaction to violence since this morning at work. It was very strange to hear him say the sam exact thing. But...where was I?)
Either way, I think both of these things are okay, in a moderate way. It's probably quite alright if I never want to watch a violent movie again (Sam is happy to watch most movies that are violent while I'm sleeping soundly and he's staying up late.), and it's pretty okay to worry about and feel bad for and want to help homeless persons. The guilt? I don't know about that. It's good to feel bad about shit, to an extent. You know, empathy and all that. I just need to...not let it wreck my night. Or day, or whatever.
Okay. Resolved. I will try to keep the guilt in check.
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