IT'S TRAUMA MOMMA

I watched Godzilla: King Of The Monsters this morning. Or part of it. Don't judge me. I like something loud in the background when I'm exercising.

Aaaaanyyyywaaaaay! There's a major spoiler coming up, so If you are still intending to watch this movie, then maybe look away.

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Okay. So, the "baddie", as far as I can make out, is someone who was a "goodie" in a previous Godzilla movie.

It seems like Dr Emma Russell lost someone close to her in that adventure; a son, perhaps?

Her husband responds to this by drinking and going all "dances with wolves". She responds by carrying on as usual, as we are so often expected to do. But, she lost a child(?) and, according to her every expectation) that shouldn't happen. So, she begins to re-think the world. She even trains her daughter to survive in her new understanding.

Even when she finds those closest to her staring at her in disbelief, she still can't imagine that she is wrong. And in her "eyes-opened" version of the world, she isn't wrong.

But that new reality was born in trauma, and the psychological "wrongness" of events like that so often dismisses the "rightness" of everything that went before.

Hollywood action heroes dismiss the concept. They can be pierced by spikes, fall off skyscrapers, and still go out for a game of catch or a beer with their buddies, as if nothing happened. They will often be completely re-set in time for the sequel.

The Falcon and the Winter soldier addressed it by having the eponymous heroes attend count-mandated therapy. Of course, they were too tough to do anything other than play it for laughs.

Who knows, perhaps in King Of The Monsters, love will save the day as it so often does?

But, remember, trauma takes its toll. And it doesn't have to something as dramatic as a clash of the titans.

If, a story (a longer story, a novel) is worth telling, the main character/s should be changed in some way by the events.

EXERCISE

Take a character from popular fiction and, as darkly or as comedically as you like, write them a therapy session.