Sunday, May 17, 2015

how Girl, Interrupted completely wrecked me

 
So thanks to my friend's recommendation, I watched Girl, Interrupted (1999) over the weekend. She kept raving about Angelina Jolie's performance and told me that since I was so interested in psychological disorders I should watch the movie.

So I did and now I don't know if I'm still out of that funk. You know how some stories wreck you from inside you and stay inside you for days, maybe weeks or years? Girl, Interrupted messed me up and turned me into a complete emotional wreck.

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Speaking of Misha, he had a tiny role in the movie too. I couldn't help it - I burst out laughing when I saw him try to seduce Winona Ryder.

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Castiel, socially awkward since 1999.


What It's About

Susanna (played by the beautiful Winona Ryder) is admitted to Claymoore and diagnosed with borderline personality disorder after a failed suicide attempt.

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There, she is thrown into a contained, isolated world far removed from reality as she struggles to make sense of her emotional turmoil. She meets a host of patients each with their own diagnoses - a pathological liar (Clea DuVall), a bulimic cutter (Brittany Murphy), a burn victim who behaves like a child (Elisabeth Moss), an anorexic (Angela Bettis) ...

And then there's Lisa (Angelina Jolie), charming, manipulative, rebellious, "dead inside" Lisa, a sociopath who has been in and out of Claymoore for eight years.

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Lisa takes an interest in Susanna, who now lives in the ward vacated by Lisa's best friend who killed herself. Susanna finds Lisa exciting and magnetic, but is drawn into a downward spiral the more she hangs out with her.


How It Broke Me

The scene where ***spoiler alert (for the rare few who haven't watched it)*** Susanna found Daisy the bulimic cutter dead in the bathroom after she hung herself completely broke me. It just made me think about all the people out there who battle their inner demons daily, pushing away the voice in their head in an attempt to feel normal and be normal.

Some parts got close to the heart, because I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels alone or sad or like a failure sometimes. Some days, all you want to do is just curl up and be alone with your feelings, to cry yourself to sleep and let the debilitating self-doubt and sadness consume you. Other days, you just want them to go away and wish that you didn't feel anything.

But it's probably easier to give in to these emotions than dust them off and press on. The trick, I guess, is to keep moving and not stay stagnant with those feelings curdling around you and holding you back.


Favourite Quotes

"Crazy isn't being broken, or swallowing a dark secret. It's you, or me, amplified. If you ever told a lie, and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child, forever."

What Susanna wanted to say to Daisy (after Daisy killed herself):
"...I will never know what it was like to be her. But I know what it's like to want to die. How it hurts to smile. How you try to fit in but you can't. You hurt yourself on the outside to try to kill the thing on the inside."

Psychiatric nurse Valerie's advice to Susanna:
"I think what you've gotta do is put it down. Put it away. Put it in your notebook, but get it out of yourself. Away so you can't curl up with it anymore." 
I wanted to give Valerie a hug too after she said this!


Scene between Susanna and her psychiatrist:
Susanna: I'm ambivalent. In fact that's my new favorite word.
Dr. Wick: Do you know what that means, ambivalence?
Susanna: I don't care.
Dr. Wick: If it's your favorite word, I would've thought you would...
Susanna: It means I don't care. That's what it means.
Dr. Wick: On the contrary, Susanna. Ambivalence suggests strong feelings... in opposition. The prefix, as in "ambidextrous," means "both." The rest of it, in Latin, means "vigor." The word suggests that you are torn... between two opposing courses of action.
Susanna: Will I stay or will I go?
Dr. Wick: Am I sane... or, am I crazy?
Susanna: Those aren't courses of action.
Dr. Wick: They can be, dear - for some.
Susanna: Well, then - it's the wrong word.
Dr. Wick: No. I think it's perfect.
I love how this exchange shows how we are in control of what we think, what we allow ourselves to feel, and the reality we construct for ourselves.


Afterthoughts

Girl, Interrupted is the kind of story that you don't know whether to love or hate, like this little book called We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. On one hand, you love it because it is so well executed and emotional and moving; it opens up your eyes to the lives of mentally ill people and makes you see the blurred lines between what's real and what's in your head. On the other, it totally runs you over like a freight train and leaves you in pieces all over the ground; it worms a little too close into your heart for comfort, and I found myself sobbing during more than one scene towards the end.



I love stories that take you through a whole range of emotions. They make you feel so pathetically human, yet so wonderfully alive.

Okay, I think I've written my way out of this emotional fugue. Back to normal life!


Have you watched Girl, Interrupted? What are your thoughts about it, or of mental illnesses in general? I'd love to hear from you! Oh, and if you have any more recommendations on similar subject matter, feel free to share!

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

To-Read List for May!

It's a magical realism feast this month, in both contemporary and historical fiction. I'm liking this trend VERY MUCH.


Roald Dahl

Magical realism is such an unexplored genre (as compared to, say, crime and mystery) and I really love how it brings the fantastical into real life and stretches your imagination to accept the strange and the wondrous things that happen every day. That's probably why I wrote Until Morning - and now No Room in Neverland - because I wanted so badly to read something set in the real world that contained romance and magic.


Speaking of Until Morning, I've decided to go the crowd-source route and post it up on Swoon Reads (which published a lovely contemporary romance novel A Little Something Different by Sandy Hall). You can read it (and rate and share if you enjoyed it!) here. And if you need an idea of what it's about, here's a teaser:
Lexi Keen has found her soul-mate, although she has never met Night, the elusive street artist who leaves his paintings around the city.
Still, that doesn’t stop her from penning letters to him – until she finds herself living in his paintings after a car accident lands her in a coma. In her mind she is wandering through Night’s paintings. Her only companion: a boy who doesn’t understand why he is trapped there with her and wants to leave.
Sam Young is trying to make sense of the dreams he has been having of late, dreams in which he meets the irreverent, free-spirited Lexi. When his father’s latest development project involves taking over the inn that Lexi’s father owns, Sam has to choose between his loyalties to his father and staying with Lexi in the dream, safe from reality.

So anyway, I'm really looking forward to this month's haul. Yay for magical realism and contemporary fiction! That's not to say fantasy is a dying genre, but I think readers as a whole are now looking to take a break from all that supernatural good-versus-evil stuff for a while and go back to something closer to the heart. Even agents I've queried have told me they're not representing fantasy because the market's too saturated and people are veering away from the genre at the moment.


To Read:
 
1. Magonia, by Maria Dahvana Headley

2. Girl At Midnight, by Melissa Grey

3. Above Us Only Sky, by Michele Young-Stone

4. Bone Gap, by Laura Ruby

5. The Cost of All Things, by Maggie Lehrman

6. Love Letters to the Dead, by Ava Dellaira

7. Love Fortunes and Other Disasters, by Kimberly Karalius

I can't stop fangirling over these books. I mean, HAVE YOU READ THEIR BLURBS? ARE YOU NOT PROPERLY EXCITED ABOUT THEM ALREADY? Ships in the sky, memory erasure (coincidentally, I've been working on a short story about memory erasure too), Lithuanian bird-women, pickpockets in black markets and missing people. This is while I love reading and creating stories. There are so many exhilarating possibilities that set your mind on fire, so many stories that fill you with ideas and life.

And of course, there's LANGUAGE itself. Prose. The stringing of words to form beautiful, heart-breaking sentences with rhythm and music.

From Magonia:
"I'm dark matter. The universe inside of me is full of something, and science can't even shine a light on it. I feel like I'm mostly made of mysteries."
"I know everyone has dreams of flying, but this isn’t a dream of flying. It’s a dream of floating, and the ocean is not water but wind.
I call it a dream, but it feels realer than my life."

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Breathe, Joyce, breathe.


Currently Reading:

1. Red Queen, by Victoria Aveyard

SO GOOD. The execution, the plot (and plot twists), the prose - all skillfully done. If I HAD to nitpick, I'd say that my connection with the characters isn't as strong as the one with Alina and Mal from the Grisha trilogy by Leigh Bardugo. Those two (plus Nikolai Lantsov) got me swooning and dancing and grinning and spazzing. Red Queen, while nicely done, doesn't send me reeling. But this is probably subjective and different for every reader. This book is still HIGHLY recommended!

2. Before My Eyes, by Caroline Bock

Two words: mental illness. I'm a sucker for any story that deals with issues like this, especially anything creepy or disturbing or psychologically messed up and sheds some light on people dealing with the demons in their heads. Plus, it's told in alternative POV and it reminds me a lot of Charm and Strange by Stephanie Kuehn and *ahem* Lambs for Dinner by me.


Queued:

1. Saint Anything, by Sarah Dessen

2. Friday Brown, by Vikki Wakefield


What's on YOUR reading list this month? Recommendations always welcome! :0)

Wednesday, May 06, 2015

When Super Junior Came to Town

(Okay, I just need to get this out of my system before I get back to writing again. I'm experiencing what my friend Liz calls "concert withdrawals", so just let me indulge my inner fangirl before I return to Neverland. Promise I'll get the words out again!)

So I've been too busy fangirling this past week to blog, which I know is a very sorry excuse. 

Geddit? SORRY? Haha.



But Super Show 6 only comes by once! And pricey concert ticket aside, it was completely worth it. So I just had to drop everything and go catch Super Junior live (for one day only!) when they came to town last Saturday. SS6 Singapore is the second last show before they wrap up their world tour. Plus, it's the last before a couple of key members enlist (trying not to think about that because NOOOOOOO).

So this concert noob went to see SJ.




People selling official idol merchandise around the concert venue. I got the SS6 jersey and varsity jacket (because, you know, you always need clothes)!


The concert tickets for SS6 sold out in 10 minutes! I had to log in at noon sharp to snatch up mine. And here you can see why.


A sea of sapphire blue lights, the colour of the fandom


My bae.


Yes, they cosplayed Elsa in various forms - just one of the crazy thing this group does.

Everyone remembered to mount the rotating platform this time! *claps*

Hae was right in front of us!

(The following images are from SMTOWN's official website)



Baby looks nervous


It's so different watching them dance live. Hae's moves look a lot more powerful in real life than on the screen!








Forever rebel, Kim Heechul



I'm wearing this jersey to sleep, just so you know

Thanks for the memories, SJ! You completely SLAYED. I only wish the concert had been longer, because 3.5 hours with you guys just isn't enough!


What was YOUR first concert experience like?? :0)