Perception

I watched a movie today called Perception made in 2005 by Irving Schwartz.

It seems to be a low budget film. It's not very well made, and could have even been written a bit better, but I connected with it nonetheless.

It's about a girl trying to find herself.

She has a ridiculously messed up family. Her parents are pretty much insane.

She moved away, and wound up having to come home to help care for them. Her girlfriend from a detention center followed her back to Brooklyn, but she was trying to leave that life behind. Meanwhile an old boyfriend keeps trying to pursue her that she's not interested in.

In the midst of an argument with her girlfriend outside, she gets hit by a truck. It fucked her up bad and put her in a wheelchair.

The movie captures well the frustrations of the limitations and trauma from an accident. No one understands, not even herself. She's helpless in a household of people that can't even take care of themselves.

Her friends, jaded by her limitations abandon her.

She goes through frustrated angry outbursts trying to do things on her own and be as normal as possible. She also goes through moments of suicidal mentality.

Meanwhile, life goes on around her. The chaos doesn't end or have mercy for her situation. Her father dies upstairs while her mother panics, and she can't do anything to help because she can't go the stairs. Her mother later commits suicide. What was her girlfriend gets knocked up by a neighbor who goes to move back to Pakistan. Her old girlfriend kills him in her house. Two of her other friends dip into her pain meds and get hooked, moving on to heroin and wind up getting AIDS from dirty needles.

While all of this is going on she struggles in physical therapy and learns how to walk again, but still suffers from pain and limitations. Eventually it all gets to her and she takes the gun that her old girlfriend used and tries to kill herself, and botches it. The movie ends there, which is a shitty ending indeed.

It sounds like a crazy movie, and it really is. I think it really captured well the frustrations physically and mentally of a sudden disability though and how important it is to reach out for help. I suggest giving it a watch.