Hi everybody. I just wanted to introduce myself, as I was just sent this link by a friend, and I'm thrilled to be here among you all.
I am, of course, a HUGE Brokeback Mountain junkie (eight viewings so far: five in the theatre and three on the DVD).
I also want to say, odd as it sounds, that this film and short story have changed my life. I was just reading something in this site that ended with: "The movie may be over, but your new life is just beginning," and my jaw dropped. I have been telling people for weeks now that I feel like I have come out of a years-long coma.
The first time I saw Brokeback Mountain (in January), it hit me like a Mack truck. I was almost uncontrollably sobbing in the theatre, and had to wait beyond the end credits before I had composed myself enough to go back out into the real world and face people. Over the next few weeks, my emotions were very surface. It was hard to get through work, or to focus on anything at all. I felt like I was experiencing honest-to-goodness, genuine grief: I was in mourning. But beyond that, I was affected in a way that I have never been affected by any film (or any other work of art, for that matter), and I couldn't figure it out. If not for the message boards where people shared stories of having been moved in the same way, I would have thought I was losing my mind. It was that powerful, that real. Like a punch in the gut, over and over. I cried in my car, I cried in the shower, I cried while I was making dinner at home.....It was all overwhelming. Subsequent viewings I found of a healing nature, but the sense of loss, regret (for what, I had yet to figure out), and indescribable longing haunted me mercilessly. I would awake from sleep, in tears, and then spend several minutes (sometimes longer) finding solace in the imdb message boards, because that would give me enough comfort to get back to sleep.
I finally figured out that one reason this amazing film affected me so deeply was that I just wasn't happy with certain choices I'd made in my life, and felt lost as to the direction I was going (mid-life crisis, perhaps?). I'm almost 40 and was feeling very down about myself, my job (I'm one of those overly-educated people, the unfortunates, who works a demeaning, unchallenging job in order to put food on my table, when my real joy is the part-time teaching gig I have in the fall semesters at a local college), and my life in general. I decided that it was time I make a few changes in my life, just to see what would happen.
So, I began working out more often (four times a week now), I signed up for a creative writing class (which I LOVE and is making me tap into all kinds of things that lay dormant in me for years), and I have "met" (in quotes because we communicate on-line but have yet to actually meet) a wonderful person in France who lives very close to the town where I lived with a host family when I was in college. My partner and I are going to visit her next year, and she is coming to the States in the fall, through school (she's a teacher), where we will actually meet for the first time. Additionally, we will set up an e-mail exchange between our students in the fall, which may lead to all kinds of wonderful opportunities for them (friendships, relationships, travel...). Plus (it just seems to keep getting better) I am now writing a short story centered on fictional students who meet as a result of this real (and future) e-mail exchange, and the journey that that takes them on. On top of all of these positive life changes and wonderful new adventures I find I am embarking on, my relationship with my partner of eight years has never been better.
I feel more hope for myself and my future than I have probably ever felt, and the catalyst for all of this is Brokeback Mountain. I wish that I could personally thank Annie, Ang, Heath, Jake, Michelle, Anne and every other person who was involved in the creation of this masterpiece, for bringing this amazing, magnificent story into my life, and helping me achieve a self-awareness and sense of fulfillment that I long-ago stopped believing were even possible. I have never been so moved, and I will treasure this beautiful film as long as I live.
And now I have found this forum, where I can gush about my beloved Brokeback Mountain to my heart's content, knowing that I won't be derided by trolls, and that you understand. Thanks for reading; I look forward to our communications.
Peace,
Tom
