-Sonam Chhomo

I like this movie because it tells the love story between a pharmaceutical salesman and a woman suffering from phase 1 Parkinson’s disease, a rare disease for a young person.
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Could a normal, healthy man love someone like me? Is it sympathy or does he really love me? Would he get tired of me afterwards? Would he too leave? After all, no one wants to be someone’s dependent, you know? In order to avoid all of this, why not be a little defensive from the start so that you don’t feel hurt for longer. But hurt and pain are inevitable when it comes to love. We become vulnerable sometimes because trust is also built on how much you disclose your secret side to them. The more weaknesses you share, the closer you connect emotionally… And the more susceptible you become to pain because what if he doesn’t reciprocate to your emotional side. What if he remains emotionally unresponsive or worse pretends to act nice to you.
What if your world crumbles down again? .
When Maggie expressed her emotions about how he stayed with her even after knowing about her health, I could feel her, understand her every expression and maybe relate this to my past experience. Maybe she did that to herself and to him in order to unconsciously remove the guilt of ruining someone’s career or life. She feels vulnerable every time he says ‘I love you’ as if it was such an easy thing to say. I understand why she runs away from relationships and love particularly; because in some ways she wants to lessen the pain that she could receive after a breakup. It’s better to stay casual from the start, she must have thought. But she anyway falls in love with him, they both fall in fact. It ends with a happy ending. It stays true to its romantic comedy genre.
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I don’t remember when I first experienced pain in my knee, my arm, my wrist, my fingers. I
felt like I was truly aging. I became more tired than usual and I became more nervous about myself overtime. I think that’s when my social anxiety also started taking shape. My memory seems to be blurry, now that it’s already been 5 years since I had this attack. I remember going to many hospitals and doctors from different branches of medicine, all the doctors explained the cause differently but none knew the exact explanation.
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Doctors from Ayurveda said it was a form of rheumatism, our local Amchi said it was chhooser, homeopathy experts did not speak the specifics but were still ready to put me on their pills, the allopathy doctors were confused because the symptoms matched but the blood test reported negative, some even diagnosed it as hypermobility which was a little unbelievable due to my inflexibility, which can be very well seen in yoga and dance classes. I soon started taking medication for it, to relieve myself of the tremendous pain that I felt.

But as fate took a twist, those medicines reacted negatively. During my ninth grade final exams, I experienced side-effects which later turned out to be side-effects of steroid medicines. I was devastated. For a person who considered studies and marks as the reason for their existence, this whatever-named disease just shattered me in a blink of an eye. My condition worsened as I entered into 10th grade, as the fear of board exams came nearer each passing day. Eventually as stress became a looming factor which I couldn’t ignore, my hands started failing my expectations. As it was natural for it to get worse, I felt disconnected from everything.
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When Maggie was listing out her list of prescriptions and the number of medical diagnoses she underwent until Parkinson’s, I was literally transported to my past in those few seconds. That’s why I watched it till the end. I wanted to know her story as I irrationally started to look for answers which maybe Maggie could relate and understand. Although the movie focused more on their relationship and their healing, I wish they could have added more scenes related to her health. Maybe I desperately wanted to know whether she could continue in a happier state of mind and being. I saw our stories merging into one, not all but a few important ones.
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It feels immensely great to see that there are other people doing positively irrespective of their fatal diseases and syndromes. And movies like these instil hope in me. As silly as it may sound to most people, but such movies, biographies of such people or simple acknowledgment from peers really stirs us from within, for good reasons. It motivates us and makes us feel as if we are finally understood by someone. In this world, it is an honor to feel this way, to feel alive once in a while.
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When people ask me why I follow my sleep and itinerary schedule so strictly, or don’t indulge in junk food like other college students, or why I take my time to walk instead of run for classes or let go of some activity just because of tiredness, or why I refrain myself from taking any potential stress-causing risk, I don’t know how to tell them my story.
With all the medical history and psychological past, my usual answer gets limited to a sweet smile and a few random lines. It is not that I do not want to share these things, it definitely doesn’t mean that they are unworthy of being trusted with such information, it’s just that the retelling of our past sometimes leads us to think of our past history or trauma. Sometimes if the trauma has not healed, we start reliving that trauma in our head. Such narratives also bring sad energy in our surroundings, so not speaking about it, then becomes a reasonable choice. As a conversation starter, it obviously looks as a sad and boring subject to dwell upon. No, I would not like the other person to think of me as someone who has suffered a lot or someone who is victimized. Instead I would like to maintain myself as a healthy, normal being with some slight self-esteem and health issues. That’s it. I think you can add social awkwardness too in the list. But only this much. No less, no more. Just the adequate.

-Sonam Chhomo