Obsessed With "the Martian"

[Venusian]

I have been obsessed with the movie "The Martian" since it was released on DVD two months ago. I have watched it at least ten times and I am reading the book for the third time. It has always been a fantasy of mine to be completely alone somewhere for as long as I can remember and waiting for someone to rescue me.

I have always been a science geek and fascinated with astronomy but that is only a part of what drives me with this movie. Most of the science in the book, if it already hasn't been proven is theoretically sound and other things, like the power of the storms on Mars, were deliberate mistakes using dramatic license just to create the story scenario and move things along.

I have been trying to understand the link this movie has to me with the flashbacks I have been having and not being able to sleep. I think I am beginning to understand. Throughout the worst part of my trauma, when I was being deliberately hurt, I was also being told that I would be left alone somewhere in the mountains where no one was ever going to find me. I was going to be left for dead there. For whatever reason he didn't do it but that is what I thought was going to happen as I was being driven away right up until the time he stopped the car, released the seat belt and opened the door and told me to get out. But the thought is still there, it won't ever go away.

I think that this movie hit a few things in me that give me strength, space travel, science, and the validation that it is possible to survive in impossible situations and that if you are smart and resourceful you can survive. If you hold out long enough people will notice that you need help and that they will help. I also have to admit to some envy, I feel safest and most comfortable when there is no one around. I am also envious of the fact that there were heroes that pulled together to save him. No one saved me, he let me go and no one ever knew what happened to me. If he had taken me out of the city, or kept me even an hour longer, people would have realized I had disappeared.

I am not sure why I am putting this in this forum instead of in my diary but has anyone else experienced a movie that affected you in ways that were unexpected and gave you insight into how PTSD affects you?

 

[Sideways]

There's a tonne of films about 'insane' people, & mostly when I watch them I either giggle ("it's sooo not like that") or just feel plain relieved ("thank god we don't treat mental illness like that now").

But there's a movie, Don't Say A Word, that I've watched countless times & I still watch it every now and then. There's a chick who watched her dad get hit by a train, and throughtout the movie, whenever she starts thinking about it, she sticks out her right hand and starts tracing out in the air the number that was carved into his casket.

I (frequently) space out and do something really similar. I stick my right hand out to the side and start tapping the air. People gawk and I've been asked a few times if I play the piano because it kinda looks like that's what my right hand is doing! Actually I'm checking to make sure I can't feel the arm of the couch there - the couch I used to sit on at the start of each 'lesson' when I was abused. The 12 year old part of my head feels safer reassuring herself that the arm of the couch isn't there and I'm not about to have another 'lesson'.

Watching the chick in the movie do that is one of the few times that I feel a connection to the tragedy of what happened to me and the damage it's caused, and being able to feel sorry for the chick in the movie is about as close as I ever get to being able to feel sorry for myself.

Weird. A little bit goofy. But it's a release in some way - a safe way for me to touch on emotions that I don't usually let myself feel.