Okay... so about that whole "I'm not a crier entry," thanks to the Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice season finales I may need to edit that a bit. I don't have tv but I have followed those two shows online forever and even through some questionable seasons where they managed to put out like 8 episodes in a row when nothing happens (which is a writing feat in itself), I keep coming back. It's a good thing too because I guess the writers saved up all the drama they haven't been using and crammed it all in at the last minute.
Another one of my favorite photos from my childhood is me on the floor of my bedroom kneeling in front of a naked baby doll on her baby blanket, wearing jeans, and an arts and crafts smock. You know how grown ups made you wear old button downs backwards with the buttons up the back? Why they didn't just button them up the front, I really don't understand; it was so uncomfortable and is a little paint on the clavicle such a big deal? For accessories I have on a paper surgeons mask that I stole from the dress-up box at school. My hair is pulled back in a pony tail and I am looking down at this fragile life, ready to save it with: pasta tongs, a turkey baster and a jar of vaseline. I was super serious. Not your typical baby doll behavior, I think most girls hold them or coo at them or sing to them or something? That clearly got old really fast for me, but they made for the most dramatic imaginary surgeries because what is more intense and badass than saving babies? Nothing, ask Addison Montgomery.
That picture was taken when I was about 9 and even before that I remember some other unusual make believe scenarios. Of course there were the typical days of being a fairy-princess-queen-ballerina, that goes without saying. However, one of the other major motifs was 'playing homeless,' as one of my good friends calls it. Playing homeless usually involved pretending I was 16, that was the golden magical year when I imagined myself being super mature and beautiful and knowing everything about the world, and also anything over 17 just seemed rreeeeaaaaalllllyyyy old. So I was 16, and I had to take care of my baby sister (something I ALWAYS wished I had) because our parents had died in a car accident and we were orphans and homeless. Usually we lived in an alleyway somewhere that I kind of pictured like Agraba. There were elaborate plots in my head of me trying desperately to figure out what I would do when it became nighttime and how I had to hide from the police (usually under coffee tables or in the linen closet). The whole thing was very dramatic, and very serious.
I always thought it was so weird that I used to do that until one of my best friends in college told me she did the same thing. I was not alone. I was not the only upper-middle class white kid in America pretending to live in squalor. Which then rapidly lead to the question... WHY do kids do this? Pretending to be fairy-princess-queen-ballerinas, sure, that makes sense, but homeless orphans in alleys in someplace kind of like the Middle East, it seems to me like if you have the incredible super power of imagination that kids have, why spend it one something like that?
I've stopped playing homeless, and I've stopped creating high pressure surgical scenes on my bedroom floor, but here I am crying to my computer screen watching these medical dramas. They are upsetting, they really are! People almost die, people seem fine and then die, people are kidnapped, kids die, parents die, miscarriages happen, families are torn apart and if that wasn't enough there are layers of tangled relationship issues on top of it all. It actually stresses me out to write about it, so WHY do I spend my free time 'relaxing' in bed watching this stuff?
There are a lot of theories over why we watch what we watch. Some people think we watch scary movies as social rights of passage, to feel pride that we sustained something that gruesome and painful to endure. Some people think it is a group bonding experience, that it creates a tie between the individuals sharing this collective emotional reaction and if you ask anyone who watches Lost they'd probably agree. Some think we watch sad movies because it trains us to go through the response of grieving which helps us not only release grief in our own lives on a small unconscious level, but that it prepares us for grief in the future if we practice that reaction now. This makes the most sense to me.
I can't even count the number of times I have heard people on these shows say "I'm sorry for your loss." I had to say that for the first time the other day in a clinical setting. I've said it only a handful of times in my personal life (knocking on wood) but I have been lucky enough that even after working in a psychiatric hospital for 2 years and in a research hospital for 1, I have never had to say that to anyone until last week. The way my job works now, I talk to people all over the country, it's all over the phone so I have never met these people face to face, it's more detached which has it's pros and cons. I talked to this person exactly one week before he/she died. One week. I called a month later to do the follow-up, I asked to speak with X and the little girl who answered the phone paused and I heard her shuffle around and give the phone to an adult. I asked again to speak with X and an older woman told me X had died a month ago and asked what it was I was calling about. We are not allowed to say because it is confidential but not wanting to disturb her by letting her know her loved one was in a study for something I could not disclose I said, without even a second thought, "I'm so sorry for your loss, it's not important, don't worry about it."
After I got off the phone the shock set in a bit. I have no idea what X looked like and I had to look up his/her information to recall the details of our interview which pointed to numerous possible causes of death, but then again it could have been a car accident, it could have been anything.
I used to want to be a pediatrician but then I decided I couldn't because I couldn't bear it if a kid died. I think I want to go into medicine and I watch these shows and I think I could do that. Mental health is obviously a different can of worms but for anyone who thinks it's easier, give me a call after your psych rotation. I'm usually really good in a crisis and I've dealt with people cutting themselves in front of me, threatening to kill themselves or someone else, chewing through their lips, smearing feces on the walls, hurling furniture across rooms and just sitting there staring and refusing to do anything at all for days. I've been fine, I mean really I've been great in all of those situations and that made me feel even more confident that I could go into this field and all that it entails, until I had to say that. Saying that sucked. I don't know if he/she died from drugs or from drug complications but I hope not. They tell you if someone commits suicide it's not your fault. It's the patient's choice. That seems like an easy out to me but I get it, because otherwise it's your fault as a failed clinical case and that would make everyone quit the field. So we need a little denial, a little removal, but come on, isn't that just making it a bit too easy?
With surgery you can say "we did all we could," they say that on those shows all the time too, usually right before the "I'm sorry for your loss part." However, with mental health, if someone doesn't get better, if someone hurts themselves or someone else it's a lot blurrier. We like to think we do all we can but do we ever know? It probably gets easier to deal with that stuff the longer one is in the field, I'm sure it does, it has to. Or maybe we just keep watching these medical dramas trying to desensitize ourselves so that when it crops up in real life it's not as shocking. We don't play homeless anymore, but we keep imagining these sad and difficult scenes, well someone imagines them, and writes them down and then people act them out, and we watch, and we imagine ourselves in those roles and are we all masochists or are we just trying to prepare ourselves?
I think there should be more shows about fairy-princess-queen-ballerinas, but I don't think the ratings would be very high.
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