Tangerine

I had forgotten how very depressing that movie is.

Well - I may not have been affected quite so much the first time I watched this film. At the time, I was very happily engaged. Now that I am dealing with the end of a relationship that was not all bad, my reaction to the movie has changed considerably. I always thought that the premise of the movie was ridiculous. Why ever would you want to erase someone - or need to? You see - usually when I end a relationship, it is just that: I END IT. Perhaps I never really thought about how rough it might be to be on the other side of that - or even to end a relationship through the desire of both partners. Relationships ending - this kind of stuff was never particularly painful for me.

Now - I still think that it would be ridiculous to try to erase my fiance - and even if thinking about him does cause me pain (and oh yes - it does) - our relationship was far too important to me to want to eradicate the memories completely from my brain.

There are some types of pain that I do get rid of when possible, and I will admit that I have used certain substances to temporarily erase hurt from my consciousness. If my muscles ache, or I have a wound of some type, I run for the Ibuprofen. When I get sinus infections (horrid, disgusting things) - I drink gallons of fluids and take codeine for the splitting headaches. Emotional pain is so different, though. It can SEEM physical, but it truly has different implications. Taking ibuprofen every day until a wound heals is one thing - drinking tequila every night to take the edge off of a bad break-up is quite another. While the ibuprofen allows the wound to heal anyway - many methods (at least - the ones I've tried) for getting rid of emotional or psychological pain don't work in the same way. If I drink until I can't feel feelings anymore - my mind is not dealing with the deeper issues - like the body CAN when under the influence of Advil.