Being Emo and I Apologize

I had the movie The Elephant Man on tonight last night. Dea came home towards the end and stopped in the doorway. She knows it is one of the movies that I don’t watch so much as cry-my-way-through. And she asked, point blank, “why do you do it to yourself?”

And it’s a valid question, I suppose. I don’t know why I do it to myself. Masochism? Catharsis? Maybe I just need permission to cry. No idea.

There are select movies that can cause me to weep through them. I love them, but they cannot be watched very often. I only put them on when I need to work something out of my system. And my watching is not limited because I weep uncontrollably, but because they do something to me, alter me for a little while. I get extremely introspective. It's almost like defragmenting myself. I do a self-assessment. I explore all those negative sectors. It takes a while. When I'm done, I'm better for it, a little more organized, possessing a little better perspective. But to get to the better end, I fall apart, mentally, emotionally.

When I went to bed last night, I was still in this highly vulnerable state. And Dea, angel that she is, came in to check on me. She settled herself beside me, her arm over me, her head against my chest, and I broke down and cried at her for who knows how long, interrupted only by my profuse apologizing. I'm not even sure what I was crying about, if I was crying about anything specific, or if I was apologizing for crying or for something else entirely.

She ended up spending the night (all completely chaste). I woke to her, still wrapped up in my arms, still sleeping. And I felt so much better. And so much worse. And I wanted to weep all over again. For all that love and all that trust, no matter how equally matched we are in both for each other, I don't feel worthy of it. I don't think we idolize each other. I think we are both too aware of each other's faults to consider even thinking of each other as paragons. But she adores me in a way I cannot comprehend because I'm not exceptional in any way, not extremely talented, not extremely patient, not even extremely kind.

For all that I am older and stronger than she and the most responsible member of the household, I'm not very good at this life-thing. I blunder my way through it. I pretend at confidence. I fake joy. Even when I am closest to bliss, like this morning with her contentedly beside me, I ache with an inexplicable misery. And it sounds so emo, I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I know how to be happy. I am sure I have the potential to be, but I don't know how to access it. And maybe that's why I watch films that destroy me, because I'm looking for something I cannot find so it's better to take it all apart and sort through it one item at a time.