I watched a movie called “Away From Her” yesterday, which is about an old couple and what happens to their lives when she gives in to Alzheimer’s. Although there have been a number of movies on this theme, this one has just something about it. The actors have done a wonderful job of conveying the pain in the most subtle manner without any emotional melodrama. I didn’t have the heart to watch it completely because my eyes kept welling up.
One scene which particularly caught my attention was the one where she is on her way to the home for patients like her. She says she’s not “all gone” yet; but some things which she wishes would get erased off her mind are still there, very much in tact.
When I think of it, it is so true. We try to sit down and think of all the good things in our life. I, for one, am a lucky person at that because I’ve got a lot of beautiful people and beautiful memories in my life. But we keep stumbling back to the one point where we got stuck. Even when there are hundreds and thousands of moments literally flooding us and could make us laugh, we are still stuck to the one which could make us cry out in frustration and make us want to grab anything we can get hold of and throw them against the wall with all our might. Of course, some of us would definitely keep ourselves from doing that.
If we look at it rationally, it is all too simple. The question we encounter the most from ourselves mainly is, “Why don’t you stop thinking about if? Why don’t you just forget it?” Yeah, think of something else, keep ourselves engaged, and just forget it. I mean, why keep thinking of it when there is absolutely no point in it.
The truth is that, all this strategy for keeping ourselves sane is nothing but bullshit! Because if there was a shortcut formula like the flash gun in “Men In Black” with which we could wipe off our memories, it would have been damn easy. But let’s face it; life is not all that easy, especially when there are things which we are forcing ourselves to forget. Even when we try our best to keep those away, we still have no control over our ‘insane reveries’ and our dreams. It’s bad, it’s sickening, yet it’s still special. And that is what makes it even more difficult. There is nothing like we decide one fine morning that we are not going to think of those anymore and there, we have forgotten those. No matter how much we try they just won’t go away because it’s all still there, very much in our minds.
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