Let's just get the hard part out of the way up front: If you don't know this already, my little sister killed herself five years ago. (Happily remarried now.) My father died fourteen years ago of a sudden stroke. I'm a divorced child of divorce. The same father whose death devastates me to this day was physically and emotionally abusive (with my mom and me--but not so much my siblings...he just neglected them) when I was kid--doesn't stop me from having loved him. My sister had HUGE problems in her life that weighed heavily on the family, my mother especially.
I've been through my shit, more than some, less than a great many. I also consume a lot of media, much of which leans on death and divorce and violence to provide drama. Some might say that I have a lot of opportunities to be emotionally triggered--and it does happen on rare occasion.
I assume that a part of why those occasions are rare is my age--I'm squarely a part of Generation X. I know that we like to act tough and independent on social media...but there's a lot of truth to the act. Our parents left us to our own devices at an early age. We have always expected to have to carry our own water. So I know that I'm going to be confronted by things that hurt me on the fairly regular basis. Some of it I can handle, some I avoid.
I've NEVER been able to handle depictions of domestic violence against women. That shit scarred me as a kid and seeing it onscreen rips those scars open. It has to be specifically a depiction of domestic violence, though--seeing women in fight scenes, even against men, are something else altogether. They lack the emotional gut-punch, thankfully. Maybe that's why I love tough chicks in fiction so much. No parent or husband would ever lay a hand on them.
The word "suicide" isn't triggering...neither is a heroic sacrifice. Context is everything when it comes to depictions of suicide in media. A character that shoots or hangs themselves probably won't affect me too much, although the reactions of their loved ones might. But even the word "Tylenol" is enough to get me in my feelings. Not so much that I can't watch, but it'll put me into a kind of funk. (Just my luck that my doctor would rather I took acetaminophen than ibuprofen or aspirin.)
I just watched the season two finale of Shrinking (actually a few days ago), wherein a character contemplates suicide. It's a very authentic depiction of self-loathing and hopelessness, or at least it feels authentic to me. The manner in which they were going to do it had absolutely nothing to do with Tylenol but the character's emotional state was very much what I imagine my sister's to have been. It was very painful to watch.
I don't think that was a bad thing, though. Many people consume media to escape, and it's often so with me...but I also watch and read and listen in order to feel. I want to feel bad that my sister is gone and I want to empathize with what she must have been feeling. My sister and I weren't especially close, but I loved her.
Death and loss are very much on my mind. A buddy of mine died the other day in a tragic traffic accident. My oldest friend just lost her husband. One of my very close friends has dealt with more loss in the last few years than I can even comprehend. We can't bottle this stuff up too much. We have to have the grace to feel when we need to--but we're Gen X. We can't just lose our shit at an inopportune moment.
The stuff we watch--those give us our opportune moments, and we shouldn't avoid them. (I'm not speaking for everyone; we all have our limits, our boundaries, and we should respect them. I'm still not watching any movies about some dude beating his wife.) Shrinking gave me that opportune moment, and I'm grateful for it.
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