W;t

I watched HBO's production of Margaret Edson's W;t again last night. I'd seen it once before and read the play, so I wasn't unfamiliar with it. This is the first time that I've figured out why I'm so strongly affected by it, though.

It's about an English professor, Vivian Bearing (played by the talented Emma Thompson), who is diagnosed with cancer and becomes a test subject for the residents at the university hospital. She's an expert in John Donne, so she's spent her life thinking about life and death from an intellectual standpoint, but now she's forced to look at it from a very personal point of view. For the first time in her life, she can't solve a problem by understanding the vocabulary, by analyzing, by using her wit. The thematic climax of the movie comes when an old professor of Vivian's visits her in the hospital (her first and only visitor), and while Vivian lies in bed, speechless and drooling, the elder professor reads to her from The Runaway Bunny. "Ah," the professor concludes (and I paraphrase), "how darling. A little allegory of the soul. Wherever it may hide, God will find it."

When I was seeing a counselor at the BYU Counseling Center last year, he pointed out that I'm great at verbalizing my thoughts about life and philosophizing with him about homosexuality and religion, but getting me to actually express any kind of emotion was like pulling teeth with his bare hands (sorry for the cliche simile--Tolkien Boy, help me out here). The problem is that whenever I feel anything, I don't know how to interpret it except through words, and when I use words I use logic, which means if I can't explain it then I don't know how to feel it. So when I have this hungry pit gnawing away at my insides, I ask myself "Why?" and either I come up with an answer and take care of the problem, or I don't have an answer and I tell myself to buck up and deal with life. This is quite useful for continuing to function as a librarian, teacher, husband, or father when I'd much rather curl up in a ball and hide from the world, but I'm not sure how healthy it is in the long run. Sometimes I secretly wish that I could get in an accident or come down with a hospitalizing illness or have something else horrible happen just so I can have a reason to stop forcing myself to function, to have something visible for people to gather around me and sympathize over. This is certainly not a rational desire, though, so I ignore it and keep going.

When I watch Vivian Bearing forced to stop thinking and just feel, even though that feeling is excruciating pain, I'm jealous of her. When I read the play and both times I've watched it I've ended up on the verge of crying. I don't cry--even when my brother-in-law died, it took me two days to actually cry--but I get really close. My gut crawls up toward my throat, which twists and tightens and makes my mouth dry up and my eyelids quiver. It's not an entirely logical reaction, but that's okay, I think.