Dealing With The Covid Year

"Trauma is not a flaw or a weakness. It is a highly effective tool of safety and survival. Trauma is also not an event. Trauma is the body's protective response to an event - or a series of events - that it perceives as potentially dangerous."

- Resmaa Menakem

I've been watching a lot of movies lately. Partly because I have the time after work to do so, partly because I wanted to see as many of the Oscar nominated movies as I could, partly because it's a pretty good escape mechanism to not deal with the craziness that is happening in our country right now. There's a new movie on one of my favorite unknown to most streaming services (Mubi) called Grand Theft Hamlet. It's a documentary of two British actors who were struggling during the Covid lockdown and decided to attempt to put on the Shakespeare play Hamlet inside the world of Grand Theft Auto online. It's amusing - as you can probably surmise, a lot of people in that world just want to cause mayhem and violence, which means a lot of these two guys asking people if they want to be part of the play only to get killed in the game. There are also some pretty powerful moments. It's an interesting movie and it's a reminder of how insane the lockdown year during Covid actually was.

As the year that Covid took over our lives gets further and further away, I think most of us think that we have left that virus behind us. I follow a very good account on threads and instagram that provides up to date information on pandemics and epidemics that are still happening and are possible. (email me at young [dot] adam7 [at] gmail [dot] com if you would like to follow this account as well) The other day, this account informed me that Covid19 has not only not disappeared; it's at one of its peaks. More than 3 million new cases of Covid-19 has happened this week and transmission rates are now higher than at any point during 43.3% of the pandemic.

A year ago I remember talking to someone about that year of Covid and I said something to the effect of "you know, someday we are each individually going to have to deal with what happened that year. Some of us are in deep denial; some of us have turned to pretending that the threat was never real; and a lot of us never really dealt with what took place. The body doesn't forget. At some point we will have to deal with it."

I've spent the last couple of weeks during my free time - especially as I have finally gotten my hot tub up and working again! - trying to process what happened four years ago. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, as I said above, we all need to deal with what took place. For some, it was really no big deal; for others, major changes happened in their lives - deaths of people close to them, health scares, dealing with the effects of long Covid. This is a process for me that is continuing to happen, but part of my attempt to dig deep and come to terms with that year is writing this blog post.

Personally, for me, as I think about it, there are a couple of things that really affected me about Covid. Before I go into them, let me say that according to medical professionals, I never actually got the virus. Now at the very beginning, before the lockdown and before it started really spreading, I contracted some kind of illness. It was hard to breathe, I felt like there was an elephant on my chest at all times, I couldn't sleep. However, I went and got a Covid test at a health clinic, paid my hundred bucks, and was informed that I tested negative. Part of me thinks that I did have it, that the test was wrong; but the other part of me thinks I may have just had some weird illness that wasn't Covid.

Here are two things I'm processing right now.

First, I am a mail carrier (I joke and say I'm a mail escort but no one thinks that's very funny). Therefore, I was an "essential worker" during the pandemic. Whereas other people were sidelined from their work - either they were furloughed or they were able to work from home - mail carriers had to continue working and interacting with people. The drive to and from work was great when the lockdown happened, and at the time I was doing Uber Eats delivery as a second job and there was a lot of demand for that service, but the rest of it sucked. In the early days of Covid, no one knew how it was spreading and for awhile scientists thought it could live on the surfaces of objects, which meant that we were delivering mail and packages not knowing if we were going to get infected at some point. Later on, we discovered that wasn't the case but the fear that we all had in being a hands on worker was palpable and real. I was an early adopter when it came to wearing a mask, and I continued wearing one all the way through that year even though most of my fellow workers stopped doing it long before me. Every time a customer without a mask walked out of their house because they wanted to take the mail from me, it took everything within me to not scream "GET AWAY. I DON'T WANT YOUR GERMS. JUST LET ME DO MY JOB AND YOU CAN GRAB IT OUT OF THE MAILBOX WHEN I LEAVE!" The body is pretty good at inuring itself from past fear and trauma, but I do remember those days. I remember every time I felt a little sick if it was finally my time to get it. That year was crazy from a work perspective.

The second thing I'm processing is a relationship that took place during Covid. Right before the pandemic and the lockdown hit, my partner of a year and a half decided that she didn't want to be in a relationship with me anymore. But then because of what was happening around the world, she postponed the decision and we were still together through that year. 

Big mistake.

Because she was romantically and emotionally detaching from me, I was caught in a limbo world where there were times where I felt like someone cared for me; but other times where I was being emotionally and psychologically abused. And because I didn't know she had planned on leaving me, it was a very confusing time where I blamed myself, that perhaps my actions weren't doing enough. I started starving for connection and intimacy, and was only being given breadcrumbs that would satiate me less and less the longer it went. This relationship has been over for awhile now, and it's only recently that I can look back and see all the signs. She finally did tell me what she had planned early 2000; however it was two years after the fact. I felt constantly like I was walking on eggshells during that time and no matter what I did, it was never enough nor was it appreciated. I recently came across this quote:

"Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives." - Bessel van der Kolk

I hope that if you haven't started your processing journey through the things that happened with Covid, that you do so as soon as you can. Why? Well, there's a chance that we may have another pandemic on our hands with the bird flu and you don't want to have to deal with two past crazy situations at the same time. As van der Kolk says:

"We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present. Trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of the way mind and brain manage perceptions. It not only changes how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think."

Top Ten Movies of 2024, part deux

 Before I describe in detail my top five movies of last year, I need to throw in a movie I saw a couple of days ago that I've been thinking about ever since. This would have definitely made my list, but I'll just include it here as an addendum to the list.

Would have made my top ten: Red Rooms

Red Rooms is a psychological thriller about a man who is on trial for brutally assaulting and murdering three young girls and showing it on a webcam on the dark web. There's a strange beautiful woman who keeps showing up to the trial and the movie is ultimately about her obsession with the trial and how that obsession can change a person for good and for bad. Incredibly well acted, it's a brooding and sinister look at the dark places in a person's soul. There is one specific scene at the trial that I won't be able to get out of my head for a long time. Highly recommend.

5. Heretic

Another surprising horror movie/psychological thriller on my list. In this movie, two Mormons show up at a house to try and make converts of the houseowners but the husband knows quite a bit about their religion as well as others and lures them into a twisted game to truly test their belief. Hugh Grant is phenomenal in the lead role, and the two Mormon women are excellent as well. Some of his arguments I thought were really well done, and you will never look at Blueberry pie the same way ever again.

4. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

No one believed that George Miller could ever top his masterpiece "Mad Max: Fury Road" but still the expectations were super high when it was announced that the next movie in the Mad Max franchise was going to be a prequel focusing on Imperator Furiosa from Fury Road. It's true that we didn't get the completely batshit crazy non-stop action that we got from that movie. What we did get was a really good backstory, an actual plot, some world building (something new to this franchise to be honest; usually you had to fill in yourself what this world was about), and a tremendously flawed villain, with Chris Hemsworth playing the true to his name Dementus. I can't believe this flopped at the box office. The action was still there (there's one setpiece that might rival Fury Road in how epic it is), Anya Taylor-Joy did a great job stepping into the role of Furiosa, and there is some stunning stunt work here. I'm sad that Miller will probably never be able to return to Mad Max ever again; these type of movies just don't get made anymore.

Note: I have changed the order of my top three movies after thinking long and hard about in what order these movies really moved me.

3. Conclave

I was mostly free of religion up until my junior high years; however what religious experiences I did have in those early years was due to my grandmother, who was a devout Catholic. I remember going to Mass at a church near her house; and it was confusing but it was always interesting. The priest of that church was an incredible man - funny thing is that a couple of months ago my brother asked me if I knew his name and it came to me immediately.

This movie was way better than I thought it was going to be; after all, a movie about cardinals gathering together to choose the next pope sounds like a dreadful snore. However, it was riveting and I will give anyone a hundred dollars who can guess correctly what happens at the end. You think you know, and even if you get one part of it right, the reasons behind the ending is something no one could possibly predict. A large group of Catholics are up-in-arms about the ending; I thought it was beautiful and inspiring and hopefully the direction the Catholic Church will steer towards. I'm not holding my breath though.

2. Civil War

This Alex Garland written and directed movie has been my number one movie of the year from the moment I saw it. I only changed it number two literally as I wrote these out because I revisited my number one, formerly number two movie and I have to give it a slight nod over this one because the themes of that movie, although different from my personal experience as a straight white man, are themes I have only realized recently that I have been wrestling with my whole life.

Many people found this movie disappointing because of several reasons. For one, this movie is not one that deals with a black and white worldview. The normal good guys might not actually be the good guys. The normal bad guys might not actually be the bad guys. Florida and Texas according to this movie have seceded from America and are fighting against...a fascist right wing president? For most people this made no sense. However, if you take your focus off of the backstory details of this world Garland has created, and live in the uncomfortable chaotic tension of a country in the middle of a civil war, I think you will understand what a masterpiece this is.

There are so many themes that are applicable to today's time: the role of truth telling and cold observance by our media; the horror of not only the machinations of war but also the unflinching acceptance of what happens to normal life during war; it's a movie that will challenge your idea of what America would be like if we continue down the path we're going on. There are so many scenes that I can't get out of my head. One in particular involves Jesse Plemons as a white supremacist so cold and calculating - and yet a character that totally makes sense in the context of today's time - that I've revisited it at least five times. 

Alex Garland in my opinion never disappoints - even his movie Men, although very flawed, made me think about its themes for months. I only wish I would have seen this in IMAX; the sound design in the last twenty minutes must have been both super impressive and nightmarish.

1. I Saw The TV Glow

This is a movie that I would have never watched ten years ago. Back then, I was definitely on the side of supporting and affirming the "gay lifestyle" but I never felt a desire to actually inhabit that world. It was foreign to me and I honestly would have felt like an intruder. I think this started to change when I was listening to a podcast and a friend of mine from college shared his story of coming out and the amount of pain yet hope he experienced. And it made me realize that to a certain degree, almost all of us can relate to feeling like a stranger in a foreign land, living in a world where you feel like no one truly understands who you are, and fighting constantly the societal pressures of conforming to a life of similitude. At what point do you give up and give in and just become another cog in the normality machine?

I am not a gay person. But I can relate to the themes of this movie because for thirty plus years I felt like an alien in a world that felt familiar and that I could take comfort in at certain times but ultimately the box that that world kept trying to keep me in could not contain my struggles, my doubts, my differences. That world was religion.

I Saw The TV Glow is about two people growing up who never fit the typical teenager mold and who take solace and togetherness in a shared experience of a TV show called The Pink Opaque. (it felt kind of like a Buffy the Vampire Slayer vibe) They both desire to escape the constrictive nature of their upbringing. One ultimately gets out; the other one resigns themselves to slowly conforming to the banality of their existence. A review of this movie puts it very well:

There are plenty of films that feature queer misery. There are even more fandoms that feature it. These works, whether they intend to or not, can betray our desire for affirmation and lead us to despair, but they are still valuable. In recalling them, we learn the limitations of searching for oneself in media. The difference is that I Saw the TV Glow doesn’t just feature queer misery, it’s specifically about it—the brutality is a feature, not a bug. It’s playing with the same tropes as bad faith queer films and fandom media, often with a bit of a wicked grin, but it’s a controlled environment. This is an exploration of what a ‘darkest timeline’ version of adolescent development might have looked like for a trans kid in the 90s. A timeline where development was stymied constantly, and in the place where identity and relationships were supposed to form, a dependency on a TV show emerged instead. It walks you right up to the brink of despair, but never forces you over it. 

I highly recommend this movie. It is different than anything I've ever seen and the fourth wall breaking feels transgressive at times, but give it a chance. It may make you think about your life and upbringing and what could have been different if you only had the courage to make a choice instead of letting that choice be made for you (something I have struggled with my whole life).

Top Ten Movies of 2024, part 1

 2024 feels like a year where there weren't that many great movies, but looking at my list, I realize that some of them on here are some of my favorites of the last few years. It seems like every year, there is somewhat of a central theme that runs through my viewing adventure of that year, whether it be movies or TV shows. For example, the year where Parasite was my favorite movie, the theme of rich vs. poor was prevalent throughout my media consumption.

This year is no exception. It seems like a common thread for this year has been identity. Who are we really? As individuals? As a country? Are we truly living our authentic self, or are we hiding who we really are because society tells us we have to? This is something I've been thinking about all year, and it was interesting to see it also reflect in my media consumption.

First, let's do my honorable mentions. There is one that I didn't include in my original list so I'll mention it briefly: The Substance. I am not a big body horror fan so this movie made me squirm the entire time. However, Demi Moore puts on an incredible performance and Margaret Qualley - who I've liked ever since The Leftovers - shines as well. The reason it's not in my top ten besides the body horror aspect is that it seems to deliver its metaphor about aging and how women are treated in society as they get older with the largest hammer ever. This movie is certainly not subtle.

Honorable Mention: Hundreds Of Beavers

A delightfully crazy romp of a movie that feels like a Looney Tunes cartoon come to life. Creative and expressive with little dialogue and a lot of people in mascot suits running around causing mayhem.

Honorable Mention: Late Night With The Devil

I don't know why this year I gravitated towards a genre I often overlook: horror. If I was a therapist, I would probably tell myself that it's because watching horror movies helps me escape the horror of living on this earth during this time of existence, but I'm not so I'll just say that this year had some great horror movies, this one being one of the best ones. It reminded me of the Satanic Panic of the 1970's and some of the effects in this movie were truly jaw dropping. 

Honorable Mention: A Quiet Place: Day One

I agree with a couple of the hosts at the filmcast podcast that the title of this movie definitely doesn't pay off and was marketed wrong. We were told that we were going to get a movie that explained how everything began and how humanity discovered that silence was the key to survival against the horrifying aliens. We didn't get that. What we did get though was a beautiful story about a woman coming to terms with her mortality. Lupita Nyong'o is fantastic in this. And so is the cat. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time worried about that damn cat.

Ok, now here is my top ten, from ten to number one.

10. Challengers

Not very many people know this, but I was a huge tennis fan in the mid to late eighties. I didn't play the sport much, but the first time I saw Andre Agassi play on TV I was hooked. This is a tennis movie; but more than that it is a movie about friendship, the cost of obsession, and how thruples are super sexy and super impossible. The tennis is great, but the three main performances are even greater. I had a really great time watching this movie.

9. The Wild Robot

Another Nyong'o performance that was outstanding this year; this one being the voice of a futuristic robot sent to a land full of animals. It's main theme is about adoption, but there is so much more going for this film. I cried a few times, and although it seems like animated films are designed to do just that these days, it wasn't forced. I only wish I could have seen the animated movie Flow before deciding this was my favorite animated movie of the year.

8. Will And Harper

I try to include at least one documentary every year that challenged me and made me see the world in a different light. This is a movie about a road trip by Will Ferrell - the comedian, SNL standout and comedic movie star - and his long time friend, Harper. Harper was a writer on SNL during Ferrell's tenure. One day she told Will that she was a trans woman, and they agreed to go on a road trip to some of Harper's favorite parts of America. Such a fascinating look at friendship, the way trans people are treated in different parts of the USA, and the fears and challenges of finally accepting who you are vs. who others think you are.

7. It's What's Inside

Oh man, what a fun movie this was. I don't remember who recommended this to me; I was a bit skeptical about it but having loved Bodies Bodies Bodies even though the gen Z-ness of it kind of irritated me, I gave this movie full of gen z actors a chance and I'm so glad I did. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, so the basic detail is that a group of friends are getting together and one of them brings a tech machine that allows you to swap bodies with others. Hilarity and horror ensue and the director does such an amazing job of helping you keep track of who is in who's body. So much fun.

6. Dune Part Two

Another little known fact about me: I grew up devouring the Dune books. I brought one of them to a trip with my best friend when I went with him and his family to Alaska, and because it was summer and there was twenty hours of sunlight, I read it over and over again over those two weeks. I remember the David Lynch movie when it came out; it was strange and crazy and could have been good but the technology just wasn't ready in the eighties to really make it work. Denis Villaneuve is one of my favorite directors of the last decade and he got this story right. I did miss Patrick Stewart as Gurney Halleck holding a pug in one hand and a blaster in the other leading the charge of the Atreides against the Harkonnens and the Sarduakar, but everything else was perfect. And he made the right call with the ending of this movie, changing the triumph of Paul Atreides as not a good thing but rather an ominously bad thing.

Next Post: Top Ten Movies of 2024 (5-1)