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Inside Out: Turned Me Inside Out.

I wouldn't classify myself as an overly emotional human.
Some might even say unemotional.

But Me? I say that's not true. I tend to show happiness and anger (very well) on a consistent basis.

Well, this girl went to a children's movie called Inside Out (Warning there are spoilers throughout)
Anyways, there I was sitting with my pop and popcorn and was expecting to be entertained. Instead I had my heart pulled out of my chest and placed nicely in my hands, making me feel as if this movie was about my life, and that I needed to examine it.  Needless to say this unemotional girl held back tears in a pixar movie.


This is why.

Grief.

It's a hard emotion to wrap around. This film is about a girl who at the age of 12 gets uprooted from her life, moves across the country, losing relationships with all old friends, and barely being able to see her father. Basically all sense of stability is stolen from her.

How the film continues is through the 'lives' of the emotions inside her brain. Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust. Joy and Sadness get separated from the 'control board' and have to find their way back together to help the girl overcome her trials and return to herself. But complications arise as Joy and Sadness are always fighting. Eventually Joy tries to leave Sadness and she gets dropped into the 'Forgotten area' Joy then has to get out, but the Childs brain is no longer herself and she sinks into depression losing so many things in her life.


Here's what got me.
1) In order for Joy and Sadness to return to the control board, they had to come together. They had to work together. You couldn't have one without the other.

2) When you shut off certain emotions you cannot be yourself. You tend to lose bits of you when you do.

3) It's okay to not be okay, but you have to fight to one day be okay again.


This is how it hit my feels. When Riley (the child) lost Joy and Sadness other parts of her life started to fall apart and at one point she basically turned off all emotion and wouldn't listen. She became cold and hard. The other emotions caused nothing but problems. She was angry, fearful, and full of disgust towards life. This is grief. This is what happens when we no longer want to feel sadness, but because of that we can't feel joy either. It was a fight for Joy and Sadness to surface in order to balance her life.

How do we embrace sadness? How do we accept that it's part of our lives? That it creeps in and taints our days?

The movie suggests to accept it and allow ourselves to see the sadness and remember the joy that comes from those memories as well. This is not an easy topic to apply into my life, I guess because I didn't want to hear it. They say grief comes in stages and eventually you hit acceptance. I guess for me that's just a little out of reach right now. However, can I choose to see the sadness then choose to remember the joy in memories? Yes, that seems a bit less daunting of a task.





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