To Feel
Do you ever feel empty? That your body is so glued to the ground and the place where your heart should be is missing. It’s just this cavern that lets air come in and out. You don’t feel anything but this sinking feeling of crumbling. Feeling things so incredibly deeply that everything shuts off. I feel that. I feel it when I’m on social media for too long or long for something so deeply it consumes me and forces me to shut off.
I watched Call Me By Your Name. I have never been so emotionally affected by a movie. The acting was breathtaking. Timothee Chalamet was so captivating, it took my breath away. The ending scene was just on him staring into a fire. The emotions that crossed his face in the couple of minutes it was focused on him just left me staring. I just keep thinking of it over and over. THat ending scene, constantly replaying over and over. The relationship between him and oliver warmed my heart so intensely I could feel it burning. And when the ending came, it felt the same as when my boyfriend and I broke up and I thought my heart was splitting as I was driven home by my mother. I think about the movie and tears start to well up. I could feel my heart starting to tear itself into two.
I want to feel that. I want to feel something. I have felt nothing for so long. I want to feel vulnerable with someone. I haven’t in so long. Even if it ends in heartbreak, at least I’ll feel something. It reminds me of the ending speech by Elio’s father, in how there’s beauty in feeling, that even if it hurts, you’re feeling something, and that in itself is beautiful.
“But I am not such a parent. In your place, if there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don’t snuff it out, don’t be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we’d want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of 30 and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything—what a waste!”
To feel something is so beautiful, and I feel as if people don’t want to feel anymore. That some things are too intense or too sad. Why would we not want to feel them? To feel is to be alive. To be alive and to feel is a gift that we should not take for granted. To shut off, to refuse to feel is doing a disgrace to ourselves and the world we have been given.
I want to act. I want to be someone new. I want to feel the emotions of characters that are brought to life from text written on a page conveyed into a person. I want to invoke emotion and bring people comfort through performance. I want to cry from the point of view of a different person. I want to show the pain and joys of someone other than myself. I want to learn from someone who is not myself, yet is at the same time. Watching movies and seeing the emotions the actors are able to convey make me realize that that is what will bring me joy. The ability to showcase someone’s world in such a way.