I Need to be Sad

I watched another sad movie, you guys. Another sad movie with “boy” in the title, no less. Beautiful Boy, this one’s called. It came out last year, and it stars Steve Carell and Amy Ryan and Timothée Chalamet, aka three of my absolute favorite actors.

It wrecked me. Ruined me. I don’t have WiFi at my apartment, so I streamed it at a Starbucks and undoubtedly looked like a puppy in the rain sitting there in the corner with my earbuds, eyes glued to the screen, tears clawing their way out from the abyss inside me.

“Why do you do this to yourself?” you may be wondering. I was texting a friend about the movie in the aftermath, and I got the sense that that was his impression, anyway. Why watch anything sad — especially when one already feels sad? Why add more sad?

To some degree, it’s masochistic. I’ve written about my masochistic tendencies before. I like to suffer. It feels natural. It feels right.

But suffering feels more like acknowledging reality more than inflicting anything extra upon myself.

Reality is already broken without my help. Reality hurts, reality sucks. My watching a sad movie isn’t really adding to the sadness that’s already there so much as it is helping remind me of it.

And you know what? I need reminding. Regularly. Because the opposite of this sadness isn’t gladness. It isn’t happiness. It isn’t joy.

It’s nothing at all. Ignorance. Numbness.

When I’m not actively sad, when I don’t acknowledge and feel, really feel the brokenness inside me and the brokenness all around me, I start to numb it. Numb it all.

Numb it with porn, numb it with false digital connections, numb it with oversleeping, numb it with overdrinking, numb it, numb it, fucking numb it.

Beautiful Boy follows the perilous journey of a father and a son, the latter of whom experiences drug and alcohol addiction. The film resonated with me for all the students in recovery I once worked with for years, but it held a giant mirror to my own face in ways no other movie has. Showed me that I’m just as much an addict as young Nic Sheff.

My addictions just don’t materialize as obviously as a needle-pricked arm or drug overdose on a public bathroom floor. Not yet, anyway. My addictions take place in the dark bedrooms or the back corners of coffee shops in front of glowing screens, and for the dozens of times I’ve spiraled and said “never again” … there’s always another again.

It terrifies me, even typing that out. That if my addition and history is any indicator. There will be another again.

That all it takes is for the right combination of loneliness and boredom and any wild cards of emotional conflict with loved ones for all the right buttons to be pushed, for the code to unlock, for me to binge and binge and binge and make up for lost time, embracing the escape, the fantasy, the manipulation, the monster within.

It’s no joke. Addiction is no joke. Seeing Nic fail, again and again, just when you think he’s turning the corner — I honestly felt like I was looking at myself for two hours.

Walking away from Starbucks, I felt sadness, and I felt hopelessness.

And yet I also felt resolve. Resolve not to let my addiction win. A renewed look at its dark ugly face.

I blogged this month at YOB about fasting from masturbation, and that’s always been the entry point to my addiction. A way to let loose and let down my guard. One drink, one hit, one drag, so to speak. The compromise.

It’s then only been a matter of time before metaphorically writhing on tiled bathroom floors.

Being sad, watching sad things, listening to sad things, talking about sad things — it’s a reality check, an antidote, an elixir that I need to drink, over and over, again and again.

One sad movie every few weeks isn’t enough.

I need to be bathing in sadness daily.

Maybe that makes sense to you. Or only to fellow Fours.

Or maybe I sound like a crazy person.

Don’t worry. I’ll bring this up in therapy this week.

That’s not to say I can’t ever experience gladness. Or happiness. Or joy. Certainly, I can, and I do. Finding those outlets and expressions is indeed vital to my continuing health, emotional or otherwise.

But even so, the sadness. I can’t ever let myself forget how sad and broken everything is. From the inside out. I can’t, or I go on autopilot. I become a monster of a human I’d never want any of you to see.

I’m already making it my aim to watch a sad movie every month or even every week. Maybe “Sad Sunday” is a new necessary thing.

Maybe the monster within can never be destroyed.

But maybe he can be starved.