Twisters and Revisiting The Familiar

Movies you watch as a teenager become part of who you end up as an adult. It is not just the actors, the plot, and the words and music that you remember; it is the trauma of watching something that tugged at your heart or made you gag. And, when you have watched the movie several times over as a teenager, the not-so-good feeling starts to feel like muscle memory. And, after you watch the movie over and over again, that same feeling begins to turn in your mind. It is somehow sweeter. You wait to feel the heart twinge: you wait to feel what is familiar. This pain is no longer pain. It is who you are. You wait to connect with a tiny fragment of... you. 

Watching Twisters as an adult was all of this. It made me realise that my adult anxiety, and the symptoms of that anxiety, are all so very new to who I am. 

I usually step away from watching anything that gets the cortisol flowing. Don't I already have enough stress in my everyday? Why do I need to bring more stress upon myself by watching a movie that is filled with startling moments, violence, bloodshed, death, sadness, a bleak outlook to life? 

But, Twisters. This was different. 

The story of Twisters was centered around the character played by Daisy Edgar-Jones. Kate, a young woman, has big dreams of protecting the world from the havoc wreaked by powerful hurricanes. To achieve the dream, she needed to put herself on the path of hurricanes. She did that, only to lose her friends to the twister. This makes her stop wanting to get to the dream until, several years later, she is made to chase twisters again, and then she starts working on her dream again. 

The IMAX experience comes through in the build-up to the hurricane. The wind, the objects flying in the air, the whorls of violent air descending on you: I saw myself welcoming the adrenaline rush (not saying Glen Powell didn't make it easy. What is it about him and his effortless grins, sigh). But, I waited to feel the rush of anxiety. This anxiety didn't feel bad. It felt... sweet. It was the remembered sense of anticipation mixed with dread. It was knowing it will be bad before it gets better. I guess it is this acknowledgement of a happy ending that makes the cortisol spikes easier to bear. But, I would also think it is the muscle memory of seeing the whirlwind of a hurricane and knowing that it is familiar. It is known. It is bad, but it is known. 

Revisiting your childhood is really about this, isn't it. It is revisiting the silly things you remember from being a child, but it is also revisiting sadness and anger and brooding and dread.  The little girl you carry inside yourself becomes bigger and bigger inside you, until you are defenseless against the feelings that wash over you. But, because it is KNOWN, because it is not something new and, perhaps, therefore, not as frightening, you remember, almost as if it is muscle memory, how to deal with the onslaught of unpleasantness. And, you forge along, you trudge through the wave after wave of resistance, until you emerge into the state of feeling the liquid warmth of the sun flow down your body. It becomes mildly comfortable again: you have conquered yet another episode of anxiety, and it was not as bad as the "new" things that make you anxious. 

Oh, the joys of the familiar... anxieties.