I'm with you all - still weeping along with Ennis and Jack. I keep passing one of my extra DVDs on to friends to watch for the first or second times, and when they come back with stories of how it's affected them, I'm right back where I started, but just in a way. I feel like a sponsor, now - I feel their pain because I've felt it, but I've come to terms with my own. And yet I dream about them almost every night, now. Not Jake and Heath. Jack and Ennis. They are always dressed in their blue and plaid shirts and hats and they are always young. One way or another, they find their way in. But it's always in a positive way, and I always awake feeling refreshed and relieved. It must be the way my mind is working out the pain I feel for both of them. I have never in my life dreamed of fictional characters. I saw Shakespeare in Love 11 times in rapid succession years ago. Was over the moon for Will Shakespeare. Never once dreamed about him or Viola or any of them.
I was just talking with the first co-worker I lent the DVD to the week of April 4 who fell in love with Ennis and Jack like we all have. She and I were trying to encourage another co-worker to watch it who is afraid to because she's deeply sensitive and scared it will just wreck her. She just saw "Cold Mountain" for the first time and can't get *that* out of her head. My other co-worker said, "Well, the thing about this is you feel an emotional connection to the characters that I didn't feel seeing that movie. You feel like they're real, and you can't get them out of your head afterwards." Of course, this put her off it even more. I said, "But the thing is - that's a good thing. You can't get them out of your head mostly because you really don't want to. You love them like they're members of your own family." The co-worker who's seen it goes, "Yes, YES!"
What I finally said to her that I think has convinced her to put aside her fear and watch it is that my husband, who she knows pretty well, actually said that this movie changed the way he thinks about gay men. She knows him well enough to know that he is just about the most stubborn old mule that's ever walked the face of the Earth - you have to move mountains, so to speak, to change his mind about *anything*. She said, "Wow. OK. I'll watch it. But if it messes me up like it's messed you up, you're in big trouble."
