So I’m not the only one? I remember I spent a couple of horrible months plagued at night by my very vivid imagination reliving over and over again what it might be like to be burned alive. I’ve done the same thing with being operated on without anesthesia and all manner of wretched things. This is one case where a creative mind is not an advantage.
I even have a little saying: ‘‘Oh, I’m thinking about the Holocaust. It must be ten o’clock.’’
It’s kind of funny, I’m friends with some older guys who have been having some sort of existential crisis because they are suddenly contemplating their mortality. Like, I contemplate my mortality every damned day. That’s not a thing people just do all the time???
Supernatural stuff hardly scares me at all. It’s the real parts of the movies that get me. Pan’s Labyrinth is a beautiful fantasy horror film about Franco’s fascism during the Spanish Civil War. Creepy-ass cannibalistic creatures with removable eyeballs? No problem. Guy about to get tortured with a shard of broken glass? I’m out. (I left the theater twice during that film, but I saw it through to the end.)
I have so many problems ingrained in my insomnia. For one thing, not only can I not shut my mind off when I go to bed, my mind actually kicks my thoughts into overdrive. And it’s a particular type of thought too; worrying about things that I simply don’t have the opportunity/time to ruminate over during the day. I obsess over loose ends I have in my life, whether they be personal/financial/physical issues. And I have a potent imagination as well, so of course I am convinced of the worst case scenarios.
This is in addition to things like knowing I have to be up at a certain time will cause me to never really able to get to sleep, as I am constantly looking at the clock to see how much time I have left. Even if I doze off, I’ll wake up and stress out about getting back to sleep. And of course when you try to go to sleep, you’ve already lost the battle. I have been on just about every medicine available for insomnia, as well as being familiar with all of the non-drug methods of improving sleep. “Sleep hygiene” is something I have been very familiar with for years. When I am talking to a health professional about my insomnia and they start the “sleep hygiene” lecture, I get stabby.
Birth scenes, especially ones under duress or against the odds. Like in Children of Men or when Stabler’s wife gives birth after a car crash in Law and Order SVU.
The first songs at some concerts when there’s a female singer. The power of the sound system, the beautiful voice, I usually spend it sniffling and gulping air.
AIUI, people who dwell on morbid things often have high intelligence, or high empathy, or both. It can make people dwell on awful things that happened to others, and then put themselves in their shoes, or, at least, relate to the suffering. It makes sense also that something unrealistic (the creepy eyeball-in-hands creature) doesn’t affect you but something entirely realistic would be unnerving, since the plausibility of it is what makes it register with that kind of mind.
As for the pondering-one’s-mortality thing, that may be forward looking, a planning-in-advance or take-all-things-into-consideration brain.
I find people who have children tend to be more disturbed by the ‘‘children in peril’’ thing. It’s not fair to say I don’t respond emotionally to children in peril, because I respond to everything, but I don’t respond to it any more so.
The haka is a traditional Maori dance/chant ceremony, typically performed by warriors/competitors. If you’re a fan of international rugby, you may have seen the New Zealand team perform this at their matches.
It’s also performed at funerals for fallen soldiers. Here is one in particular, performed by a New Zealand army unit at a funeral for one of their own. From the perspective of someone raised in a quiet white-bread Midwestern household, it seems frat-boyish, macho and indecorous behavior for such an occasion; seeing the full-volume chants, coarse gestures and grotesque facial expressions, one expects them to finish with cheers of upbeat celebration, patting each other on the back. It’s a shock, then, when the haka suddenly ends and this massive crowd of soldiers suddenly falls to complete and utter silence; the jarring change of conduct is unsettling, making the silence so much more powerful: this is not some bullshit frat-boy chant, this is how they honor their dead - and it’s difficult not to cry at that point.
To the OP: I’m Canadian and feel the same way about our Snowbirds.
The strangest thing I’ve ever cried over was a scene in the movie “Look Who’s Talking Too” - it was a montage from the point of view of the older child watching the younger child get all the attention, and the song “Jealous Guy” was playing. I have no brothers or sisters and no close family and even though I was only 18 years old I knew I was never going to have children, and for some reason that scene just got to me and I felt so lonely.
The end of 1776 where they’re calling the roll to sign the Declaration of Independence and McNair rings the Liberty Bell (ahistorical, but it still gets me).
The Paul Simon song gets me “there will never be a father who loves his daughter more than I love you”. I get along with my father, and we are a lot alike, and I know he loves me, but he could never express emotions like that. Then I feel even worse for people who don’t have fathers who love them.
There was an Anheuser-Busch commercial during the Super Bowl one year.
Opening shot is just an airport - various people waiting for their planes, looking at their phones. And then you hear one person clapping.
Everybody looks up, and one by one, people start clapping and standing up, at the sight of soldiers coming off the plane. Then everyone is clapping and cheering and standing up.
I have no immunity to tearjerkers. Another Anheuser-Busch commercial. The one where the trainer goes to see his horse all grown up in the parade, and the horse recognizes him in the crowd and runs to meet up with him. Husband claimed I was glued to it whenever it came on, and got me a vintage Anheuser Busch pendant that year for no apparent reason.
Some other foolish thing got to me over and over again, from when the kids were younger:
Military coming home always gets me too, especially with kids.
Also shows like Extreme Home Makeover, where people going through hard times get cut a break. I know it’s a lot of BS and things never turn out as rosy as they make it look in the show. Just let me live in my nonreality bubble where people going through hard times get breaks.
Similarly, Undercover Boss where someone gets recognized for their hard work and good atttitude, often at jobs that don’t always attract that kind of employee.
