according to my 2023 letterboxd year in review, my most watched movie was signs and i watched it six times. this doesn’t shock me—after all, the first thing my letterboxd bio says is that i am a signs historian. oh, and this is my avatar:
honestly, six feels sort of low? i feel like it should be more times. or is it actually high and i am inane? let’s find out.
…drumroll, please…
well, there we have it! there is no limit to how many times you can enjoy a movie, according to the only way to know anything (google). great!
that said, i…watched signs six times in 2023. signs, from 2002. why did i do that? well, first of all, let me get the obvious reason out of the way: i fucking love signs, dude. why don’t you sue my ass? i welcome you to do this. uncle farnsworth LOVES a PG-13 scary movie, my friend! just scary enough, no bullshit. the alien does his walk across the alley, but he does not eat a child or do anything TOO scary, don’t worry!
signs is a comfort movie to me. i feel a contentment watching it that is best described as being wrapped in a comforter but a cooling one where you can lay in the puffiness without feeling too warm. it’s a wonderful cloud-like state where i feel safe and fluffy and my smile is as large as my head because i am glad to be watching my friend.
i watched A LOT of comfort movies last year because, as far as I’m concerned, my life can now be divided into two parts: before 2023 and after it. the whole year was a weird fucking bridge from one world to another. january was one world, december was another, and all the months inbetween were a foggy upside down apocalypse world i referred to the whole time as “fucking nowhere.” 2023 was the nowhere bridge! sometimes i walked, sometimes i crawled, sometimes i laid down as a tractor dragged me behind it.
by the end of the year i had reached a sort of acceptance of what was happening and that my family and i now lived in a new world. and i looked down and i wasn’t on the nowhere bridge anymore. i was just walking on some regular dirt in a place i didn’t recognize. and the bridge was gone—there was no going back, sorry! can’t cross the nowhere bridge back to the other side of the life from before. sorry!!!
but what the fuck does this have to do with signs (2002)? well, mel gibson’s character had just suffered a massive loss that made him opt out of all he had previously believed in to the point where he is the most cynical, angry man alive. and, bitch, i related to that!!!! DAMN, i sure did, dude!
in 2023, my belief system just, fucking, blew up. loss kicked down my door and pointed at me with it’s spindly fuckin’ hand and shouted, “YOU,” and i was like, “me?” and it stomped over to me and started flinging me around the room as i screamed in a very high pitched voice. and then it took a peice of dynamite and attached it to my bag of beliefs (which i like to think of as one of those cartoonish bags on money with a “$” sign on it) and exploded it.
i stopped knowing what was real and i no longer knew what i believed in. i’m not religious at all but i’ve always considered myself spiritual; i believed in the universe, in something bigger, in a way where i trusted that shit would work out regardless of whatever. and i believed that, no matter what, i could make sense out of whatever did happen. oh, and i guess i also believed that if you took care of your physical body by doing every single thing “right” to a near-bonkers degree, you were probably going to live until you were like 200 years old.
but then, EXPLOSION, and bye, faith in whatever! bye, beliefs! the literal healthiest woman alive who dedicated her life to a career in healthcare and health education and alzheimer’s prevention still got alzheimer’s at the exact same (YOUNG) age as her dad did. what a cruel, dumb joke. like, really? haha, alrighty then. who cares about anything! goodbye to my beliefs!!!
i stayed in this mental landscape for awhile. i was angry. i was sad. and without her, my world was so much quieter. i was living in a sort of paradoxal realm where my relationship with my mom was over but also it still existed.
then one day i watched signs and mel gibson the angry ex-pastor gave his speech about belief in miracles and signs versus belief in…well, fuckin’ nothing at all, really, and denounced his faith. and then he said the most depressing, annoying sentence to joaquain phoenix that i would say to myself under my breath at least one time per day, every day, in 2023:
“there is no one watching out for us, merrill. we are all on our own.”
DAMN! i felt this! hard!!! therefore, i needed to watch signs over and over again because i was also a guy who no longer had belief in anything. mel gibson’s* character was nowhere, just like me. and it helped to see how i felt on my television. it helped to relate to that pain via a fictional movie character.
*sidenote: genuinely sorry for saying “mel gibson” so much in this.
and even if i didn’t realize it, it also helped the thread that was my faith in anything not get cut entirely, because at the end of signs, mel gibson (SORRY, jesus) regains his belief system. and seeing that made me feel like there was still hope for me down the line, too, even if i didn’t feel it right now. it was like a little floatie for me to hold on to as i waded around in this stupid huge ocean i was wading in, as i tried to see anything around me.
i haven’t quite put together my (new) belief system yet but i’m gathering the pieces that make sense as i go along. i suppose the biggest chunk of this new belief system has to do with the fact that, in this life, there can be a love as big as my mom. and when a love is that big, it doesn’t just, like, go away. how could it?
that’s probably reason enough for me to believe in something. or at least it’s a pretty good start.
another thing i used to believe in that i have recently started believing in again is…myself. grief takes a toll on the rest of your life, obviously, and the last thing on my mind was…literally any other part of my life. i threw a tarp over my hopes and/or dreams because who gives a shit? but now i’ve taken the tarp off and i’m staring at them and smiling because, wouldn’t you fuckin’ know it, my own voice that i use to communicate my perspective is an integral part of my belief system. i can create my own meaning in a world where, apparently as I’ve found out, there sometimes isn’t any at all.
still, it’s hard to care and find the strength to try. so, today i decided that in order to do that right now, i need my mom’s help. i need to hear her pushing me forward, just like she always did. i already know exactly what she would say, because she’s said it over and over, for my whole life:
don’t you let this stop you, aud. you are resilient and beautiful and HILARIOUS. i’m going to be okay. and i will always love you more than anything no matter what. but don’t you give up on yourself, APF. don’t give up on the world. don’t stop caring. don’t stop being you. who loves you? i do. forever.
she has never stopped believing in me, so i might as well keep believing in something. i’ll leave you with a couple reviews of signs. talk to you later.
Hi Audrey, I'm a random fan and Twitter follower. Your writing always brightens my day. This post was a privilege to read - Thanks for being vulnerable and sharing your story. I just wanted to say that I'm praying for you during this difficult time. And that you've inspired me to re-watch Signs :)
Glad to hear that things are coming together for you, sounds like a disorienting time to say the least, but your mom is undoubtedly right, you have the wherewithall to pull it together and live a life that both of you can be proud of. All things good and pass will pass