Lab is in quotes because I never set foot in one writing the paper. My personal history, my relationship dynamics, my mind & heart - all those served as the lab for that long ago paper, written as I crossed over into my twenties.
It's been many years since I gave serious thought to that ancient assignment. Came to mind reading Jeff Johnson's so far excellent book, Everything I'm Not Made Me Everything I am: Discovering Your Personal Best. Read the story of someone who went to four or more movies every week, shelling out for a ticket & a bucket of popcorn. In time, he thought about all the money he was shelling out for something that basically had no return on his dollar, stopped his movie mania, started watching flicks at home, saved himself a bundle.
Interesting story, good example of someone recognizing a drain on his budget & figuring out an acceptable substitute. Interesting, except it didn't go where I expected it to, knowing my own history. Jeff didn't give any weight to the time the man was wasting - it was all about the money. And he didn't ask the biggest question - what was the fellow getting out of it? Aside from being in the know about the latest releases.
There is a world of difference between watching a movie in a theater, bucket of popcorn balanced on your lap, and viewing them in the privacy of your home. The first provides a semblance of social interchange, even if you never talk to anyone in the theater. Others are around you, they're doing the same thing, maybe even eating & drinking the same popcorn & soda. Thinking that watching films at home is a reasonable substitute voids any semblance of pseudo social connection, which could have been the actual driving force for the movie buff. Replacing films available via netflix for just-released movies wouldn't enable him to talk about what's hot around the water cooler. And instead of replacing the time he was using watching flicks with something substantial, the story simply flips the place he's watching from a costly movie theater to the privacy of his home.
The story got me thinking about my own experience with substituting watching something - albeit on a way small screen - for hard-edged reality. With me, it was watching television. Lots of it.
The title of my psych paper referred to the fact that even when I wrote it, even well into my marriage, a cast of fictional characters kept me company throughout a typical day. What would naturally look to others like an astonishing misuse of time & almost every type of energy was essential in keeping me grounded until my psyche became strong enough to actually deal with reality. And, yes - it took until well into my marriage to get there.
I didn't feel a sense of place in school or in my community & most certainly not in my family. But slipping into a fantasy life spun out of television viewing with a bit of reading thrown in provided the sense of belonging that every human needs. Not craves - needs. Reading the story about the movie-going man brought back to me all that those years of t.v. watching provided my communion-starved soul. It was pure fantasy, I knew it was pure fantasy, got an A writing about it decades before it ended. But it served a very real purpose. It gave me a place when nothing else did.
It's been years since my life was grounded enough I could stand on its terra firma without the use of fantastical aid. And wondering just what the fellow who watched four or more movies a week got out of his viewing. Wondering why Jeff Johnson gave full attention to the money being spent, not the time, not the energies. Because it might have been worth the money if it filled a void.
No one could have turned around my own dependency on imagined others to provide the intimacy lacking in my life. Getting married merely marginalized it. Maybe what it took to finally flick it away was having total trust in that intimate (as in spirit, not sex) connection, that it was real & lasting.
I find myself wanting to know more about the man in the movie theater, about his actual whys. And to assure him that there can be a life that lets fantasy take its proper place. I always believed better was possible. Maybe that's what it takes. Maybe that's what it takes for anyone who finds a way to handle frustration. Believing better is possible; leaving open a space for it.
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