Content Warning: mental health, suicide, death

Sorry for Ruining Movie Night, But

All my life I’ve felt like Nicole Kidman

in The Others. How she spends the entire movie

waiting. Waiting for a new housekeeper, 

then for a priest. For her daughter to love her.

Mainly, though, she is waiting for her husband,

Christopher Eccleston, to return from war.

Even when he comes home she’s waiting

and when he leaves it’s like she never stopped.

Light enters the skin of her two devout children

like a seam-ripper. She teaches her children

about Hell because she loves them.

She makes unsubstantiated claims.

She explains light must be contained –

imagine a ship trying to control water

by compartmentalising the blunt-force trauma

of a tear in the steel. She dedicates herself to chasing light

around the house, desperately trying to minimise

how much of their lives her children will waste waiting.

How dreadful, to look down into your own daughter’s face

and see nothing but potential’s open wound.

The priest does not come. She is so busy waiting

she doesn’t even realise that she’s dead,

her children are dead, she killed them,

and light doesn’t hurt anyone,

not like a mother can. Also, she held off the Nazis.

There’s a lot going on. I hope I haven’t spoilt the movie,

but I need you to understand

that this is who I am.

Note: The Others is a 2001 English-language Spanish horror film, written, directed and scored by Alejandro Amenábar. Grace, played by Nicole Kidman, believes that both of her young children are highly photosensitive, meaning that any light stronger than a dimmed lamp would maim or even kill them.