Once when Melody was only a few months old, Jay and I reluctantly left off our first watching of Seabiscuit as soon as she fell asleep. In a moment of selfishness (or opportunism) the next morning, I finished it while Jay was at work.

I found the ending very moving, and felt full under the spell and weight of the story, even without having seen the whole thing at once.

I was agitated. Keyed up.

Not feeling the energy to do anything else, I took the second movie I’d begun the day before, and put it back to see if there was more.

Just as Jay had arrived home from work the night before, I was nearing the end of the new Oklahoma! and turned it off. The cast was in the midst of the Title finale. That song was the last in the 50s version of the movie I watched once with my Grandma. It had bored me to pieces then. (This version is *much* better, though kicked up to a stronger PG-13 in my estimation.)

This next morning I was curious to see if that really was the end. The move had never seemed done at that point, loose ends still dangling.

Well, it wasn’t done.

For the next 25 minutes or so I was dragged through a shiveree, a knife-fight and trial (with accompanying emotional angst) before the incongruously tidy finish.

That hour was one of the most intense and disturbing of my life. Seriously. I had buried myself in the most intense parts of two other worlds with out the diluting time between.

The atmospheric pressure was too heavy; the membrane doubled, too thick and confining. And I had no idea how to process.

I continued shaking my head like a dizzy cat most of the remainder of the day (a friend came for lunch, and this was nearly all I could talk about).

Maybe it was the bends— a theoretically preventable malady that takes thought or planning to avoid.

I know I’ve been very careful not to do that to myself again.