Friday, August 26, 2011
Dreaming About Living Is Easier Than Living
Reading Unbearable Lightness, it's unbearable. An eating disorder; snowballed from young age with a low self-esteem, an insensitive and unsupportive family paired with delicate perfectionism in a superficial world teeters towards dangerous self-loathing and eventual depression. That's what Aussie actress, Portia, went through. She reveals her struggles as a budding actress in crazy Hollywood, where being a size 0 is the only way to be seen as beautiful, talented and successful. If you were larger than a 2, you were fat - and no one would want to cast you in their TV series or movies.
I can't say that her story resonates entirely with me - maybe just the part on coming to terms with her sexuality, but hey, she's got such an awesome deal right now with Ellen - I will never truly understand the anorexic mind. To me, anorexia is untouchable perfection; almost a disease of excessive perfection. There is a brilliant tidiness to anorexia, I think. Because the anorexic will always possess incredible self-restraint. Most importantly, the anorexic is always in control.
Portia craved that kind of control and restraint. She wanted to keep her life on track, to live an ideal constructed by society and thrust upon her by unspoken expectations and desires from her family, friends, the industry and society in general. She was strong and talented, and through her strength she achieved all that she thought people wanted from her; a hit TV series, a lead role in a Hollywood movie, magazine covers, photo shoots, ad campaigns and a stick-thin, bone-jutting perfect body to boot.
But people will always be "people", especially those "loved ones" around you... who will always claim to want the "best" for you, and to "protect" you. At the time when Portia was at her thinnest - 82 pounds - her brother broke down and sobbed in front of her, her mother cried and pleaded Portia to eat again, to not be "so thin, so awful" anymore. What was she to do? She cried too and hugged her family, and they all said they just wanted her to be who she was, that her happiness and health was the most important. They wanted her to promise to eat properly again and to gain weight, so that she might be "normal" again. Portia agreed, of course. She wanted to please her them. She always had, and she always will. Wasn't that one of the reasons she got herself into that state in the first place?
Reading all that angers me. In every so-called disorder, the people around you will always demand that you be okay again. They will always cry, they will say that it makes them sad and it hurts them to see you "suffer" this way. But in all honesty they are only thinking of themselves. They are never thinking about you. It's not about you at all... They don't really care WHY you're experiencing all those feelings, they never want to ask you, they don't ever bother to find out - hell, it just makes things more complicated for them. Just BE NORMAL already you attention-seeking weirdo! is what their so-called concern screams out. It's deafening, sickening and it's just utterly cruel.
This book is such a poignant and heartbreaking account. It might not have been written and edited in the best styles or methods, but it is raw and very real. Its brutal honesty and vividness is the book's winning formula. Portia said that it was painful and embarrassing to re-read her own book after she wrote it, and why wouldn't it be? She bared her whole body and mind and soul to the very naked flesh and bone which revealed an exquisitely intimate part of her life that eventually created such a magnificent narrative.
Ellen told her, It's gonna help so many people baby.
Indeed it will, unlike fleeting words like "You're sick. Stop doing this. Be normal again. It hurts me to see you like this."
Because guess what? If it hurts just to see it, imagine the kind of excruciating agony and torment the person actually going through it must feel.
``larcenciel
Music: Rihanna medley - Matisse
Mood: Indignant
11:26 PM
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Even A Cynic Could Be Idealistic
Sometimes, in all my activist work, I'd fall into occasional bouts of anti-activism-depression. Whether it's about vegetarianism, against animal factory farming and other cruel "delicacy" practices, about opposition politics, about GLBT rights, about no-discrimination in any form, about environmentalism and so on... I want to try so hard to do so many things; but even then what I'm doing is never enough. I stumble all the time - stumble from disapproval, discouragement, teasing, disagreement and ignorance and the silent and curiously contagious "I'll settle" disease where everyone knows something is wrong but no one wants to do anything about it.
And so, I trip and fall and make a fool of myself, right? But every now and then I'll trip over someone, accidentally or not, and make a difference to how he or she thinks about certain issues. And it takes just that one person to say, "You're absolutely right. Why didn't I see it before? I believe in what you're fighting for." It doesn't make all the wrongs right, but it surely makes me feel like what I am doing is right, somehow, and will make a difference, somehow, and so will save the world, somehow.
I never wanted to be a cynic. Because inside every cynic is a disappointed idealist, and I don't want my idealism to be disappointed. What's going to sustain me, then? I believe that things will get better - not for myself, no - but for others and the rest of the Universe. A being is so much more than just itself; its place in the world and everything else around it is what truly defines it. So today, I might be battering myself up hard, but I'd still force my eyes open, wake up and slide right back into the ideal shell and try to do all the ideal things I want to believe in.
I mean, I still pray to a God - just that it's a God I don't believe in. And that's idealism in a cynic for you.
``larcenciel
Music: Breakeven - The Script
Mood: Pensive
1:41 AM
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Where Is My Mind?
I'm re-watching Suckerpunch now, and watching it a second, third and fourth time makes me experience the whirlwind of emotions and meanings the film encapsulates all over again. I re-watch scenes and notice the tiny details now, and I can piece the meaning altogether now, and then I wonder how blind I was all along when I couldn't see all that laid out so clearly and obviously in front of me - the viewer.
"Let the pain go, let the hurt go, let the guilt go."
The precious, poignant two minutes of flashes when Babydoll was in the asylum and knew her fate; when she looked right into the eyes of Sweetpea; when she stole all the items that would eventually help Sweetpea escape - right until the moment just before the lobotomy happens. It's such a powerful scene.
But stories are just stories, characters are just characters... One moment you think you are the main hero or heroine in your own story, the next moment you realize you've been such a fool, and all you've been doing is playing supporting role to someone else's main story. Then, you'd think the play was badly cast, wrongly cast even, and the story was told wrongly - but the truth is often more complicated. Reality is a prison, but your mind can set you free. Imagined or not - that world can feel as real as anything, so that even if you're standing on your two hands, upside down with your head on the ground; you'll still be able to walk, to move on to where your mind takes you.
``larcenciel
Music: Where Is My Mind - Yoav feat Emily Browning
Mood: Hazy
1:24 AM