delacourtings | [challenge] snowflake challenge day oo6

DAY SIX
In your own space, share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life. Something that impacted on your consciousness in a way that left its mark on your soul.

I actually have one movie that's done this for me and I wrote about it for a college admissions essay. That movie was the 2005 movie adaption of RENT and I'm going to cheat and copy and paste my original essay.

525,600 minutes. These lyrics are part of the song Seasons of Love which is the introduction to the 2005 film adaption of a musical. This movie goes by the name of Rent. This is the movie which will save my life.

As I struggle through the trials and tribulations of adolescence, I begin to notice that everyone surrounding me goes through a constant wave of emotions; happy, sad, up, down, over and over again. Meanwhile, I don’t have any. My cheeks do not flame under the sound of laughter thrown towards my direction. My eyes do not have tears spring from them as slurs worm their ways from classmates’ mouths into my ears. My heart does not clench as I hear word after word, laugh after laugh, insult after insult, about me and my appearance, my personality, my being. Not at least, in these halls.

Only in the four walls of our tiny apartment bathroom do the tears spring in my eyes as I imagine the damage that can be done. Only in the four walls of my bedroom do my cheeks flush as I recall each taunt paired with my name. Only in these four walls do I think of the bottles of medication in the kitchen cabinet and the bottles of liquor on the counter.

And then, I watch a film. And it makes me fall in love with life again. It reaches into my chest and tears out my organs, seeping in the meaning of life with its melodies. It is the only thing to be the cause of my crying, and not hate it for doing so. It makes me fall in love.

It makes me fall in love with the characters, the plotlines, the writing, the scenery, the cinematography, the director, the actors. It makes me fall in love with film. It makes me fall in love with life. It’s essential message, to live each day as if it were your last, that you are lucky to be alive, that there is no day but today, cause me to realize that this is life I have been given.

This life I have been given is a gift. This gift should not be taken away from me, and especially not by my own hand.
This is not just a film. A simple film cannot change a person’s entire being, their entire ideology. This is not a film. This is a work of art. This is a piece of someone’s soul morphed into something even bigger, and better, and more wonderful. This is something that saved my life.