Watching "April Showers"

I know I posted about this movie before.

It was created by a fellow Columbine alumnist. And it is a story about a school shooting, based on the events of the shooting at Columbine in 99. And I've been wondering if I should see it. It came out into select theaters right around the time of the 10 year anniversary of the shooting this year. My local theater was showing it, but I didn't want to pay $10 to see it and possibly breakdown in the middle and have to leave. I decided that i wanted to watch it in private.

Well, it has been available to rent on Netflix and I got it in the mail this week. Landon and I watched it last night. And the scene of the shooting made me really uncomfortable with the noises and the scenes of the shooter walking through the school, blood on the walls, bodies in the halls, etc... brought back purposefully forgotten memories.

But somehow I got some comfort from it.

We didn't really talk much about it, my friends and I, not much. it was more just, "how are you doing?", "are you sleeping okay?" type of stuff, not really TALKING about it. But all that we were dealing with after that day was hard to go through feeling alone, yet we didn't want to share it with others.

And somehow, it was comforting to witness someone else's story and feel not so alone in it all. Even if it was just a movie.

I wouldn't say the movie was enjoyable. Landon kept asking me, "was it really like that?" and actually the movie was so much like it really was. I think it was good to watch it together. Not that Landon really needs to know these details - it's not like i'm still sleeping with the light on. But he and I haven't really talked about it much at all and I think it's good to share some of this with him. There are definitely some hurts from his childhood that I wish i knew more of so that I could support him better, even if it is simply a deeper understanding.

All in all, I'm glad we rented it and got to watch it together. I didn't have nightmares last night, it didn't send me into a relapse of post-traumatic stress, I didn't cry through it. It was good.

What I've written about the Columbine shooting recently:
Remembering Columbine, April 20, 2009
...continued, April 21, 2009