one ticket to your most upsetting movie, please!: why discomfort is comforting
it’s my manufactured danger, and it will keep me safe.
Five years of working 40 hour weeks is enough.
More than enough, really.
I have a hard time believing that I’ve managed it this long. Abusing sick time, showing up late, having panic attacks in the bathroom - it’s an assault on my senses and my sensibilities. I know I’m wasted here, chugging away at spreadsheets and whatever else I do here.
What do I do here?
But it isn’t enough, is it? That maw of the future, the empty void that beckons to everyone my age and older. Work yourself to the bone. No respite is coming. There will be no house, there will be no home.
And so, between the 8-hour days I remember that I’m here forever, and my body is doomed to toil one way or another.
That’s kinda dramatic. Whatever.
It’s hard to feel much if you’re pretending to be an employable person for so much of your time. I’ve relented to the fact that working is what I must do; it’s not a fear so much as an inevitability.
But I do have one fear. That I will lose what feeling I have left, and what shreds of personality remain. That I’m gonna get so use to softening my edges for capitalism that I’m just going to end up a little nub of a person, whose sole identifier is “data entry person.”
I’m not always sure what makes me, me. I don’t get to spend my time doing what I thought was “me” any more. Not as much drawing, writing for fun, reading for fun. I really do attach a sense of self to what I do. Is that unhealthy? Is it what we all do? I’m not sure.
But doing whatever I do at work makes me feel so empty. And so, when I can do the things I like to do, it needs to be the most extreme version of what I like to do. It needs to be visceral, it needs to fill me up, and it needs to do so as fast as possible. I don’t have much time to be a person, after all.
So what keeps me hanging in? What reminds me that I am a complex person with a rich inner world, and not just some drone?
The answer is paradoxical - what comforts me is that which upsets me. Because it is comforting to be discomforted and to be reminded that, “yeah, I’m still in there.”
The small, pitiful ways I can rebel against the squeaky clean, emotionless image of the employee Jennifer and recapture the Jenn within is by consuming the most upsetting media I can get my hands on.
And when I say “upsetting,” I mean it’s upsetting on a controlled level. A lot of things upset me in ways I do not particularly enjoy because they’re things I can’t choose. It’s not fun to have a panic attack because some rando at work is ranting about how the abusive actor from The Emoji Movie deserves a second chance or whatever. I don’t control any of that situation. I can’t pencil it into my schedule.
But I can put aside time to watch something like Strange Circus, the movie about sexual abuse, self-harm, catatonic trauma, and every other upsetting thing in the book. I know what I’m getting into, and I can look at it and say, “alright, I’m ready to feel this. And if I’m not ready to feel this, I can turn it off.”
It’s weird, but bad feelings are just more intense than good ones. Well, maybe they’re not more intense, but they’re just easier to feel and I’m more familiar with them. It’s not like I don’t have happy moments in my life - there are times when my cat is so cute it fills me with more happiness than I ever thought possible. The mere existence of my nephews can get me emotional, I love and treasure them so much. A good night with my friends in the city can energize me for days, if I’m lucky. And yeah, those feelings do make me feel “real” and “alive,” too.
But those moments are unpredictable. I don’t always know what will make me happy. There are a lot of outside factors that can ruin a good vibe, and happiness can get undone pretty fast.
Discomfort, though? Oh, that shit’s gonna last. I may not always know what will make me feel happy, but I always know what will make me feel bad.
So if I’m feeling all static-y or empty or bored, I can pick up a movie, put on an album, or read a book that I know is going to eviscerate me. It’s cathartic to force those bad feelings out this way - feelings that, really, I’m having during the workday but I just don’t get a chance to experience healthily. I have to bottle them up, and the only way I can release them sometimes is by crying while watching some fucked up movie.
And if the piece of media gets to be too much? I put the book down, I turn the music player off, I pause the movie. Easy! Okay, I’ll probably be upset for a little bit after, but it’s still pretty much in my control. Whereas if I try to think about an element of my individual life that upsets me, I ain’t gonna be able to turn that off. It’s going to ruin my whole week and put me in some obsessive thought cycle or something, so might as well just watch Last House on the Left and get freaked out by that for a tight 80 minutes instead.
Plus, it’s like, I don’t have time to do, right? So when I do, it needs to be as evocative as possible.
So, if I read, it needs to be the short, visceral, violent bursts of an author like Dennis Cooper. If I listen to music, I want whatever will make me feel the most brutally - grindcore, Xiu Xiu, Lisa Germano, whatever. If I have an hour or so to watch a movie, well, it better be the sickest thing I can find.
Whatever will fill me with the most triggering feelings in a safe, controlled way. It’s my time, and my time means it’s time to be me.
And it’s like, if I’m not feeling, I’m not me.
And I don’t get the opportunity to feel at work. I’m not allowed.
Therefore, I’m not “me” at work.
Obviously, the more you feel, the more person you are. Right?
If I can slip my headphones in at the office and listen to an album or a novel that would get me fired if it were played aloud, then I can be a person again for just a little while.
It’s all I really have that’s consistent. That, and writing about the experience. As long as the filthy can make its way to me, I can feel and be while still trudging through the slough of society or whatever pretentious thing you want to call “normal life.”
It’s my manufactured danger, and it will keep me safe.
I really love this!! It deeply resonated with me and I wish to thank you for writing it! Such a warm feeling to see that there are more people who feel like this, finding comfort in discomfort. This intensity of human emotion making you feel alive.
I don't know what makes me, "me." I have come to the conclusion that there is no fixed me.
A person is a combination of what they bring to the table, what the table brings to them and - if you think free will actually exists - what choices they make. The basic person cannot change. I'm a straight, 5'9" male, with Asperger's and ADD, a weak eye and assorted other biological and genetic traits that ain't gonna change.
Everything else is negotiable. Sharp edges wear down over time. Interests wax and wane. Mind continues to develop - and then decay. Personality adapts to become more comfortable in an environment that won't change far more often than one can change one's environment.
Everything you learn along the way changes the real you. Everything you decide to do changes you. Over time these accumulate and modify the biologically determined you.
I wish the "real me" could change.
If I could trade 40 points of IQ to lose all the sensitivities and social dysfunction in my life I'd do it in a heartbeat. I'd happily trade away being who I was an am now for being "normal" but I cannot. Asperger's is biology; not learned and not chosen. It is a part of the real me that at best can be masked and at worst alienates.
I am stuck with who I am and I need to make the best of it. After 6 decades I still like to run around naked despite considerable opposition by the world, so it must be central to the "real me." Had it changed, it would not have been a part of the "real me." It is the only way I have of knowing the difference.