#flex post

1. It Follows (2014) Dir. David Robert Mitchell

Following a group of young teenagers and gently tackling the topic of sexually transmitted diseases through the lens of horror, It Follows makes you care quickly through the little details. The little game Jay plays with her sister, the long shots of her getting ready for her date, and the persistent lack of adult interception as the group rallies to help Jay escape her pursuant all lend itself to a connection between the characters and the audience. They feel human. Awkward. Stuttering. Giggling into the night. What’s important, too, is that despite their age, they feel isolated from any options beyond dealing with the issue alone. That, in combination with the fact that we’ve already seen a teenage body left behind by this horror, and you’ve got high tension and high heart. We care. We care. We can’t help but care.

This one’s a winner for the group dynamic, the quiet, almost soft horror, and the world which feels simultaneously outdated and futuristic and impossible to place.

2. A Quiet Place (2018) Dir. John Krasinski

It’s obvious immediately that A Quiet Place is about family. Learning to live within a world where you can’t make a sound lends itself to questioning the obligations of parents and their children’s future. How do you bring a child into a world where they cannot make a sound, and should you? These questions are rocketed to the forefront of the narrative as we watch Emily Blunt’s character near her due date amidst the mayhem. With their inventive workarounds to the world, the earphone-tied dance scene, and the preestablished loss of their third child, I was enraptured by their family, persisting as they did. You wonder, how is it practical, bringing children into a soundless world? But, it’s not about practicality. It’s about hope. Sacrifice. Family and love, surviving.

This one is a winner for the family dynamic, for the inventive play with sound, and for the fact that it wastes no time, clocking in at 90 minutes, and giving you the rules immediately and without elaboration.

3. Let the Right One In (2008) Dir. Tomas Alfredson

This Swedish flick reads more fairy tale than horror film at first, as young Oskar deals with bullying and isolation. Then, meets new-neighbor Eli, a twelve-year-old he makes a connection with in the snow-covered playground outside their apartment building. Amongst dreams of revenge against his bullies, we discover Eli’s eternal existence alongside Oskar. Slow-building and eerie, this film feels innocent and magic-threaded as Oskar finds his voice. Hitting all the plot points of both fairy tale and horror film, Let the Right One In, falls somewhere in between.

For those bullied and looking for catharsis or searching for a new take on a vampire flick, Let the Right One In, is the right one for you.

4. Train to Busan (2016) Dir. Yeon Sang-ho

A train-stuck businessman quickly establishes his prioritizing of his career over his family just before the zombie apocalypse takes over his train. As he fights his way out, those around him showing their humanity through both kind acts and heart-wrenching selfishness, Seok-woo flashes back to his daughter’s childhood. As he learns to find his heart again, he and a growing-smaller group have to fight their way to safety from a pack of zombies like no other I’ve ever seen before. The most heart-wrenching part? The regret Seok-woo feels as he realizes all he’s missed, and his desperation to make it out alive to make amends to his daughter. Drenched in emotion, Train to Busan centers on what happens when we forget to put our families first when zombies take over.

Listen to happy music. I know that right now I want to wallow in Melodrama or go to the Badlands, but at the moment I’m listening to one of our playlists, About A Girl, because it’s about happy love and that’s what I need right now.

Watch a kids movie. I usually pick something I can sing along to like Mulan or Moana. Often times it’s the happiest movie of all: Tangled.

Brush your teeth. It makes you feel clean but doesn’t take as much energy as taking a shower. 

Cry. Hey, I’m gonna do it anyways, sometimes it helps just to let it out.

Go for a walk. Sometimes I take a short walk by myself or with my dog. It gets me out of my sadness zone and gets me in the fresh air. Sometimes this improves my mood immediately, because it helps me get a grip on reality.

Watch a stand up comedy special. Laughter always helps my mood. John Mulaney is a good one, because some of his content is about depression and it’s nice to laugh at the thing that’s hurting you.

Read whatever book that makes you feel at home. For me, reading gets me out of my world and into someone else’s. I usually pick something I’ve already read, because I know it’s happy. Sometimes it’s a humor book, sometimes it’s children’s literature.

this morning, I woke up in a pool of my own blood. 

at a friend’s house, on the floor, sleeping on a borrowed blanket that I’m seconds away from ruining. it’s the amount of time I spend in the bathroom, and the running water, that alerts someone. suddenly there’s a quiet knock on the door, and I’m crying to my best friend’s mom, all of 12 years old, that I’ve ruined my underwear and my sleeping pants and I was so sorry for potentially ruining the blankets. and the look in this women’s eyes, the comprehension that I was not like her; I was still a child dealing with something that had not been adequately explained to me. I was not a woman but a girl; a girl who’s mother hadn’t taken the time to explain what might happen, and how to handle this situation. and this woman closed the door, rubbed my back, and told me what ‘every girl should know’.

this morning, I woke up in a pool of my own blood. 

I stopped getting light colors sheet’s years ago, the knowledge that blood stains don’t come out easily stuck in my mind as I pick out progressively darker colors. but this morning is more of a puddle, and after five years, I know what to do. it’s sad to see another pair of relatively clean underwear become ‘period panties’, but that’s how life goes. my mom finds me in the bathroom, running cold water over the fabric, unperturbed by the blood on my hands and legs. she looks at what I’m doing, the calm on my face, and offers her condolences on the underwear. she mentions that we’ll go shopping soon and I can get some new ones. she understands my need for discretion, and allows me to finish my business and shower, delaying her departure for work, but letting me have my peace. 

this morning, I woke up in a pool of my own blood. 

college is cruel enough, without an added reminder that you’re life is a complete mess and things just can’t go your way. but I have class at nine, which gives me plenty of time to get clean in the shower, maybe cry for a few minutes so my mom won’t hear and come asking questions. and that very moment, waking up that way, ruins the whole day, putting me in a cranky mood that doesn’t go away through two classes and work. I discover there’s a pimple growing on my face around the time I’m heading home and it barely phases me, that special kind of defeat that washes over someone when their day started with a loss. it just makes sense for the day to end with one. 

this morning, I woke up in a pool of my own blood. 

but I don’t realize it at first. inconsistent sleep is something I’ve been dealing with for years, so I grab my phone to check the time and then I realize what’s going on. awkwardly, I shuffle to my bathroom and nearly begin to cry, the realization that it’s 1 am, I work at 4 am, and I’m absolutely covered in blood. there’s something undignified about the act of cleaning soil off your body, trying not to cry or freak out at the fact that it looks like a murder scene. it doesn’t help that I’ve had a migraine for five days, or that I’ve barely any sleep. but that’s the thing; my body doesn’t know or care about that. the timing of my period is inconsequential, has been since I was nine years old, sitting on the toilet thinking I was dying. if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that coincidences happen.

this morning, I woke up in a pool of my own blood. 

First, the medical assistant took me into a room and told me to lose my bottoms and lay back with my feet in stirrups. Before they left, they said I needed a pelvic exam and that I was getting an internal ultrasound. I had no idea what either of those were but I did as I was told and waited a few minutes for her to come back. She was back quickly and gave me the pelvic exam, which is just gloved hand feeling your uterine walls and involves a few pushes on and around your tummy. You feel like you’re going to pee on them. She told me I had a small uterus and that the ultrasound technician would be in soon.

An internal ultrasound is very similar to the regular ultrasounds you see on TV or movies, except they take the readings from inside of you. They take a large rod, put some very cold jelly on it, and stick it right up in there without really telling you what’s going on. Probably because she expected a smart girl like me to do my research.

She asked a bunch of questions while moving the rod around getting the necessary readings. “Do you want to know if there are multiples?” Does that mean there are multiples? “Do you want to know?” No. “Is anyone making you do this?” Of course not. “Did you know you have a small uterus?” People keep telling me. “You’re about eight weeks along.” Huh.

She got all she needed and left me to redress. She instructed me to sit on a waiting couch outside the doctor’s office. A different medical assistant asked if I had anyone in the waiting room, and that they could go get them if I wanted. They got my boyfriend and he sat with me for about thirty minutes. I think we watched cute animal videos. We got called into the doctor’s office and he gave me a highlighted packet with instructions and a brown paper bag with three color coded pill bottles inside; an anti-nausea medicine, a bottle with nine Vicodin, and the four pills that would force a miscarriage. He told me that it would be painful and that I might need to take a day or two off from work.

He gave me one more pill. This got the process started, but it was often purged. So I’d have to wait in the waiting room for thirty minutes in case I puked. If I did, I’d just take another one and wait again. I didn’t vomit up the first one, so we headed home.

The at-home instructions were simple. First, I was to take a Vicodin, as it was about to get painful. Then I needed to put two dissolving pills on each side of my mouth between my top gums and my cheeks for an hour. I fell asleep for three hours and woke up with a powdery taste in my mouth. I washed it down with cran-grape juice.