In my opinion, all mental illnesses, except those caused by pure nerves, have the same essence, but show different forms: There's an invisible line in front of you but you just can't get to across it. Dieting is indeed a modern social culture, but instead of discussing how this modern social culture is produced or how to eliminate its negative effects on women, in particular, I want to discuss emotional processing and cognitive impairment. My instructor of the introductory psychology course said that all psychological problems are essentially cognitive problems. When your cognitive "bias" reaches the point that those emotions that cannot be expressed or processed will blow you into a balloon that will explode after another breath, there must be an exit, whether it is depression or manic depression, anxiety or anorexia. Whether it’s binge eating or self-mutilation, it’s ridiculous that these things make the indigestible emotions come out, and they are even the way for patients to survive in the first place. After that, the survivors continued to struggle with themselves to find the next way to survive. Eli finally swallowed the first small piece of coal and woke up from the barren mountain, not dead, and decided to live. My understanding of this paragraph is like this, just as I said at the beginning that the essence of mental illness is an invisiable line that you don't get to across, Eli drew another line for himself, and leave it to destiny. To live, just muster the courage to live a little bit.
I like Anne Sexton's poems in the film very much. The most subtle language is in the poems, and my understanding is limited. I translated it and posted it here:
Courage
It is in the small things we see it.
We saw it bit by bit
The child's first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first step taken by young children is equivalent to a major earthquake tremor
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
It’s the first time you ride a bike winding along the side road
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
The first slap at birth makes a heart embark on a lonely journey
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.
They call you crying, poor, chubby, lunatic, and treat you as an alien
You swallow all the suffering and hide the pain
Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
Later
Facing death threats from guns and cannons
You don’t have a flag in your hand, you only have a hat to cover your heart
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
You don’t intend to take care of your weakness, even though it’s always there
Your courage is the little coal you keep swallowing
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.
If your partner died to save you
Then his courage is not courage
It's love, it's simple love like shaving soap
Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Later
You endured grand despair alone
Reborn in the fire, tear off the scab on the heart. Wring out despair, like twisting a sock
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.
After that, my people, you crush your sorrow
Rub its back
You wrap it in a blanket and let it sleep for a while
Waiting for it to wake up from the rose's wings
evolution
Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you'll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you'll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.
finally
When you face old age and the conclusion of the coffin, your courage remains undiminished
You sharpen every spring just like sharpen your saber
You give a strong love to the one you love
You even bargain with time
At the last moment of life, when death opens its back door
You will put on your comfortable slippers
Stride out
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