Sensitive

This weekend, Mr LSG and I went to see our first movie in the theater in at least a year. We chose Iron Man, partially because the reviews were good (Mr LSG) and partially because of Robert Downey Jr (me). Unfortunately, I didn't know the backstory of how Iron Man -- the character -- came to be, or I would have thought twice. You see, depictions of torture and I don't mix. I can still remember watching Reservoir Dogs and having to leave the room when they were cutting off someone's ear -- I can hear the moans of the character as I type. And that was 10 years ago.

Anyway, let me try to explain my sensitivity. I *feel* the pain that the actor is portraying. In that instant, my mind flashes an image of it happening to me or someone I love. I know it's coming sometimes, but often not. Usually, I'm just cruising along, watching the spectacle, then WHAM! Full technicolor image of my fingers being twisted off. I can feel the water filling my lungs and my last breath leaving. My kidneys disintigrating under that blow from the villan's steel tipped boots.

Mr LSG (and others) watch me go still and silent, cover my eyes, sometimes moan a little and wonder what the heck is wrong. It's just a movie, for goodness sake! It's not real. I remember watching Titanic, a full year after my father had died. I thought, cool, CGI, great SFX, let's go! And about an hour in, I thought "whoa, this is a huge mistake" as I watched the terror and tragedy unfold. A corner of my mind was still able to appreciate the mastery of Cameron's creation, but the other %90 of me was sobbing as if my heart was rending anew. I was LIVING the tragedy with the actors. I can still see out of the corner of my mind's eye my best friend and her husband watching me sob with a mix of humour ("isn't this funny that we're tearing up in this disaster movie") and shock ("wow, she's really coming undone").

Now that I have kids, the mental images have gone in a new direction. Just watching the news can send my Demon of Imagination into fits of ecstasy. For instance, a story of a sect in India that drops infants from a two story building onto a stretched sheet as an initiation rite of some sort has me imagining for days my children meeting that fate. The images pop into my mind unbidden and unbanishable. I can barely pay attention to the story to find out that the kids aren't harmed bodily by the drop because I'm imagining the terror they feel. Now you know why I refuse to watch Michael Jackson dangling his kids over a balcony. As my stomach does a million flips, I squeeze my eyes shut in a vain attempt to stop my brain from finishing the accident-in-waiting.

Is this visual sensitivity down to Mom and Dad striking disaster/horror movies from my view list, preventing me from growing a thick mental skin? Or was I always this way and that's why they didn't let me watch those things? My Grandmother used to refuse to watch "nastiness". I used to think she was just old. Now I wonder if she was sensitive too. I do know that after Dad died, I suddenly had to strike death from my movie/tv show theme list as I just couldn't handle it. Especially if the theme was Daddy-dying-leaving-daughter-to-bravely-soldier-on. Anyway, I can't ask my parents any of these questions, so I'll never know. (There, did you feel the pain? The loss? It's always there. Like an iceberg, the raw exposed tip is there, worn down by the years, not a sharp or as big as before. But the large, gaping pain is underneath the surface. You may think you are avoiding hitting it, but man, it's too big.)