Subject: Did "Carrie" ever cause you to have a breakdown?

Like, Hi, Fer Shurr,

I watched the second (half ?) of the 1976 movie "Carrie" (I'd never seen the movie before) on April 3, 2002 on T.V. (The movie review commentators were making fun of it, but I wasn't laughing much), and it scared me so badly that I had a mental breakdown that lasted for months on end.  I cried for days at a time, I panicked during a power outage (I usually just swore bloody blue devils if the power went out, but at that time, I cried as though I was scared to death), I took on a life-threatening, scary personality when talking at/to my family (My mother has since delighted in reminding me of the breakdown's impact upon my personality), my mother and I got into such a big fight that we began choking each other in the bathroom, I wrote reams and reams of pages about my vengeful thoughts (The file folder in which they rest hasn't been disturbed since April of 2002, for fear of a mental relaps), I acted out scenes of horror and such when nobody was in the house, I cried as though my life would end upon seeing a dead butterfly beside the mailbox, etc.

My hair was parted down the center at the time, but I became so afraid that I changed my hairstyle immediately.  Although I was frightened by my ability to replicate precisely Sissy Spacek's prom face, I did so repeatedly in the bathroom mirror.

Soon after that, "Coal Miner's Daughter" was on T.V., but I couldn't bear to so much as look at Sissy Spacek's face until much, much, much later.

Of course, at the time, my mother felt so sorry for me that she began buying me things, and when I wondered if she was buying me off, she destroyed some of the items that she'd bought for me, in a display which, quite frankly, would've made Mrs. White proud!

A few months after I'd seen the movie, I got a Skipper doll that had a center-parted hairstyle (I've been a Barbie fan for years), but soon, I was afraid of her, too, and so I gave her bangs, and then I gave her to the thrift store altogether.

Over a year and a half later, I had to have a surgery, and I prayed that I wouldn't see images from that movie beforehand.

Of course, that's not the FIRST brush that I ever had with media-induced breakdowns.  When I was about 10, or so (1989/1990), I was staying with my grandmother for about a week, and I was watching a show that I actually loved ("The New Gidget").  Well, I was watching the zombie episode, and, for some reason, I got into my head the idea that I was going to turn into a monster...and for an entire week, I cried, and cried, and cried.  Grandma didn't know what to do with me.  She got angry with me, and she locked me in her bathroom, ordering me to stop crying.  Later, she bought me some pop beads so that I'd stop crying, and I can still remember being in her business office bathroom, looking at the pop beads in the mirror, and crying, and thinking to myself Why are you crying?  The pop beads were supposed to make you happy!  Grandma will get angry with you if she finds that you've been crying.  About a week later, I was getting ready to take my shower, and Grandma likened my sensitivity to that of the main character from The Princess and the Pea.  For some reason, her analogy worked, and I stopped feeling sad and scared; to this day, she's always called me her princess.  Of course, I'm 34, and I STILL don't know if I could watch that "New Gidget" episode without feeling disturbed all over again.

Then there was that time during the summer of 1997; I was supposed to compete in a 4-H poultry contest the next morning, but my mother and I had gotten into a royal row, and so Dad had this brilliant idea about going to see "Event Horizon".  TOTAL MISTAKE!  I was scared during the entire movie, and Dad had to keep telling me, "They're only doing thus-and-such to keep adding stupid scares."  He was so disappointed by the movie, the horror factor of which HE'D made fun, and I was so scared that I completely forgot to bring my retainer in from the truck that night, and I don't even know HOW I was able to think logically during the 4-H contest.

I sometimes think that my being a congenital heart patient may have something to do with the fact that I can become so easily fascinated, and yet so insanely disturbed, by certain movies, images, etc.

For the record, I sought, and I received, absolutely NO therapy for ANY of the aforementioned instances, and yet, I don't consider myself to be a loose cannon.  I know what's legal and what's a crime, and I don't fancy myself wearing an orange jumpsuit during my lifetime.

With regards to the original "Carrie" movie, I can watch almost everything except for the prom scene.
:(