Girl, interrupted

 

 

Part of our psychosocial learning requirements is to acquaint ourselves with movies that have cognitive illnesses as an underlying topic. I found this an excellent idea as these movies give us a good idea of what people with cognitive illnesses go through. I watched 'Girl, interrupted' which I found mind boggling!

 

“Have you ever confused a dream with life?

Stolen something and have the cash?

Have you ever been blue?

Or thought your train was moving while sitting still?

Maybe I was just crazy

Maybe it was the 60’s

Maybe I was just a girl...interrupted”   

                                                                                        -          Susanna Kayson

The scene is set by taking the viewers into the torn thoughts of Susanna Kayson (protagonist) who is an eighteen year old girl, fresh out of  high school, in hospital, having her stomach emptied due to her having mixed a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka. On the hospital bed she voices the delusion of having no bones in her bruised wrist. She also gazes into the eyes of her class mate’s father’s eyes with whom she’d been having an affair. Once out of hospital, Dr James Watson (psychiatrist) who is a family friend, pushes Susanna into the admission to a private mental hospital called Claymoore. She is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.  

 

What Susanna learnt within these two years of her hospital stay was that she had to learn to show her mind ‘who is the boss’. This, as Dr Wicks put it could only be done together with a great deal of control. Susanna was yearning to feel alive which involves reflecting and owning up to your feelings which she struggled to do. This could be due to many factors including her context which I think may have played the lead role. She thrived on dreaming about dying which was quickly crushed by seeing death at face value. Susanna sums this up by saying, “When you do not want to feel, death can feel like a dream, but seeing death makes dreaming ridiculous.” Together with this emotional insight into her illness Susanna recovered and chose to go out into the unsheltered world to live rather than consume herself with her negative thoughts of death. “Maybe everyone is a liar and the world is stupid and ignorant, but I’d rather be in it.” (Susanna)

 The movie was great and Susanna's journey to recovery was tremendously wild yet I could relate to some of the feelings that she was encountering, especially the question of what is my role in the greater scheme of things.

“Was I ever crazy?

Maybe or maybe life is?

Crazy isn’t being broken or swallowing a dark secret,

It’s you or me amplified.”

-         Susanna