I really had a bad movie experience this last Sunday. I had a hard time dealing with my cerebral palsy while watching the movie “The Eye”.
I went with a group of friends to a local movie theater where I live, we all wanted to see “The Eye”. I really did not think anything about this movie being something I should not watch. I knew this was a “scary” movie but at the same time, I have watched scary movies in the past and though I knew I would be jumping a lot I had no clue it would be as bad as it ended up being.
I have Spastic Cerebral Palsy, and because of this, my reflexes are quite rough. It is very easy to get me to jump. If I am not expecting something, I get startled very easy and as such jump out of my skin quite often, I have lived with jumps my whole life and try my best to ignore them. When I jump, I usually just continue with whatever I was doing before a jump and this attitude has worked for me quite well for as long as I can remember. Moreover, all this is well and good because it is what my life is.
Nevertheless, here is the story…
I do not mind the jumps as long as they do not control my life. However, while trying to watch “The Eye” they started controlling my enjoyment of the movie, my enjoyment of the event as a whole, and there for my life. I hate when my CP controls my life, it means I not in control.
I do not know exactly why this particular movie affected my jumps so bad. I have an idea though: I cannot force myself not to jump. I can control my jumps a little by staying calm and not tensing up over a situation. (I was tensed this day) I can also control my jumps by concentrating on them, as in just telling myself what’s about to happen and reassuring myself I will not jump, this doesn’t help all that much but it’s something I can do in myself and anyone I’m with wouldn’t notice me acting anything different.
Alas this night my mind was not on my CP but on the movie and, more so, on the peoples I was hanging out with. Every little thing would cause me to jump and every time I would jump, they would look at me and ask if we needed to leave. This made me feel so bad that I was disturbing their enjoyment of the movie. I ended up asking them to stay and finish their move while I found something better for myself. I left and went to a different theater to wait on the group.
There is more to this story but I think I am done. I just needed to talk about it a little and get it off my mind.
Thanks for listening.
- Justin
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