It used to be books. At the corner of a library, lied there on the bookshelves, veiled adventures. How printed lines on papers, bundled in a dusty and ragged cover, sometimes with a smell of ammonia, took me places. My first love was books.

But then the internet era was sneaking up until it eventually ended the dark ages of limited information. A renaissance of the data sharing and mining. The reign of internet gave birth to unlimited access towards sea of knowledge. Also, my hometown’s public library took three years to be fully renovated. So, during that hiatus, my lack of adventures forced me to deal with harsh reality – rejection and alienation by society.

Growing up, it was rather difficult for people to understand me. I was way over my head. Raised in a dysfunctional family, bullied at school. Literally it was war zone, both at school and at home. My fondness of books stem from a very early childhood. No one made me read book. I simply grew reading so much books as soon as I could read. It gave some kind of utopia in my head, to escape the cruelty I witnessed at home, watching my parents arguing all the time. Not just utopia, it gave inexplicable euphoria as well as if I was in a manic state. Fueled with boiling energy, couldn’t wait to tell other people all the adventures I went through. As it turned out, nobody really cared. I was boring, nobody wanted to listen to me blabbing about some fictional stories I read in the book, let alone non-fictional ones. I sort of evolved into this weirdo, an annoying know-it-all kid. Although, I must admit, I was very naïve back then. Some people hated me for that, the rest of them just didn’t get it. How I could be so excited about those very impractical things in life. I guess I just have some delight towards impracticality. I’m always drawn into abstract concepts and ideas, trying to read between the lines, succumbed into ceaseless existential contemplation.

When book was temporarily out of the game, I made a quest, in search of another treasure. My sister introduced me to movies, blockbuster movies. Usually, when I got home from school, I’ll just turn on my PC and watched the movies I rented. I was really in the zone when I was watching movies. Movies blew another life into my lifeless reality. To me, movies were almost like books. It opened an escape door for me, to another world, less hurtful than the real world I was living in.

I got crazy about movies. Like a junkie, every time I finished a movie, I got impatient for another. Like a thirst wanderer on a dessert, movie was my oasis. So, I watched more and more movies. Looking for recommendation on the magazines and internet. What I really loved about the young girl I was who knew barely anything about cinema was that I had no filter. I’d watch every single movie in sight. Unlike now, I have certain attraction to particular movies and being quite cynical about the others.

Actually I’ve lost count on how many times movies saved my life. I think that from what I’ve found on my old journals, my depression started when I was very young. Although it was in my early 20s that I got diagnosed and medicated by the professional. Since then, it was always an on and off relationship with my inner demons. Books gave me shelter, enough to carry on.

The highlight of my depression was probably at my third year of college. When I felt the most alienated and detached. I couldn’t even tell what was real and what was not. It felt like a never-ending nightmare, even when I was awake, the nightmares continued to unfold. It was pretty much felt like I was living in a mere simulation, or that I was trapped inside my own body and lost control of it. I started hallucinating, hearing voices, like someone else took over my conscious. Everything seemed to be in black and white, I was on drugs that made me feel weak and drowsy all the time. In those darkest hours, cinema was the only thing by my side. Nobody could ever understand me, but cinema could represent my inner battles, my turmoil and angst very articulately.

All of sudden, I felt less lonely. It was when I started to discover classic foreign cinema that I began to accept reality as it was. I surrendered to the idea that perhaps life holds no meaning at all, and that’s alright, that’s alright. Through the depth of Bergman’s characters’ contemplation, the poetic visual of Tarkovsky, the morally awakening irony of Kieslowski, the bleak hurtful reality of Kiarostami and so many others, I realize that the only meaning that life has is the meaning that we give into it. We can’t control life, all the sufferings and the tragedies are beyond our power. But we may choose how we’ll give meaning to it. I understand that life is not just about me, but also about the very nature of human being, the inescapable parallels of our experiences, as the human race – humanity. For the first time, I no longer pushed myself too hard in fulfilling other people’s expectation of me. My life doesn’t have to be spectacular for me to give meaning to it. Every experience and feeling is valid for the owner. I started to make peace with my depression, trying to live with it. I stopped taking my meds without consulting with my psychiatrist. I didn’t like how the drugs temporarily put down my senses. I swapped amitriptyline with cinema. So far, it works for me.

Most people think that I get my pessimism from watching too many movies. Well, they’re wrong. My pessimism and depression had long existed before I even knew the world of cinema. And it’s the spirit of the cinema that gives me strength to carry on. It’s cinema that opens my eyes. Cinema introduces me to great art works in the history of human civilization, whether it’s literature, music, science, philosophy, history, or all those people who contributed in shaping our world today. It’s cinema that has saved my life multiple times. When no hope is insight, cinema sends me lights. I owe my years to cinema, I owe my life to cinema.