"Life is great. Without it, you'd be dead."

This is a movie I really like. If there's any piece of media that can palpably emulate the emotions of a certain experience I've had, It's Gummo. Growing up in the middle of nowhere, embedded in a rotting culture, invisible, alienated and admiring perhaps only survivalistic self-indulgence--among what few things one knows--Gummo is the image of the experience at its most dismal, the dark place shown in everything that I existed in.

The depiction is exagerrated, definitely, yet these images still bear close resemblance to what fragments I recall: yellow stains burnt into the basement's checkerboard tile; waxy furniture, splattered with crumbs and animal hair; in the backyard, piles of cardboard immersed in pale flames; perpetual aroma of lukewarm beer, many empty cans; violent anxiety, too many animals, confined, neglected; people who wish to escape themselves; some kids that don't know any better; my Gummo, growing up.

It makes me feel less alone, watching something like this. I wasn't the only one facing paternal neglect. I wasn't the only member of the lower-middle class. I wasn't the only one with confusing, vulgar apathy, and I wasn't wrong for feeling that way.

Going from the white-trash experience into something more sustainable has made me feel like an outsider in some social circumstances, but Gummo holds a sense of empathy--albeit sideways--something that makes me feel seen, even if it can't offer any reassurance that my concerns are negligable, that I haven't been affected in ways I still ponder.

It's a question how I can adequately and fairly articulate such a subjective, incomplete experience. Really, how did I feel about it then, and how do I feel about it now, and where is the truth within that? And how can I fit that into a digestible, coherent and accurate format? Maybe Gummo's the uniting factor, the thing that connects broken childhood innocence with an encroaching adulthood that is partly made of that.