They are… complicated. But that is fine. I feel very ambivalent* about everything I watch- always looking at why I like or dislike or feel uncomfortable about things.

(Addn: this is just one facet of identifying- and I have tried to not frame things as “I r spechul snowflake” but that on this single level the movie affected me deeply; emotionally and vicerally. It’s what I can talk about directly and in public. I also did not identify with everything about the character because while I can dislike and feel anger I have yet to want revenge. But I do also identify with the accidental caring and wanting to protect “beasties”. As I wrote above: ambivalent. Not uncaring but pulled in many directions.)

I did identify a lot with grown up Maleficent. And the loss of the wings meant something very different to me than intended I think.

Okay, it has come out the scene is a metaphor, it is not over reaching as some reviewers have been accused of. And I got that, but the howls of anguish she lets out were visceral and really affected me deeply.

Often when we cry it feels very much part of the body, you feel your face and eyes and chest as the pain just wracks your body. But then there is howling. And it feels different. You feel disembodied and that you are eavesdropping on someone or something else.  You don’t know when it starts or when it stops and you can’t actually feel it, until after.

I howled, not raged, not wept, but howled when I was diagnosed. I knew what it meant. Autoimmune diseases were what I had previously studied at a compartmentalised distance so I understood the complexity and how it was never going to be better. The disease was taking away, not giving and what was taken would never be returned. And it was taken.

It was not just my dreams shattered, I’m pragmatic and change whether I like it or not, but also on a very mundane level it means I have to have care in many day to day mundane and humbling/humiliating ways. It changes day to day, month to week, year to year, but I know the minimum to expect when I am older.

Yes, since then I live and cope and often thrive in spite of it. And I do not live with regret and I mostly live without self doubt or being bitter and resentful.

But I still howled, and my heart aches when I hear it in fiction or reality because to go that far means you have been pushed that far.

So, plot, story and other elements aside, I did identify and appreciate a lot of the character at least.

*The fact that the term was spelled out in Girl, Interupted is not lost on me.