Let's Squirm

My nerves have been jangled three times in a little over a week.
That's some kind of record.
What interests me is the jangling was caused by disturbing things. Two movies and a book.
Buried, and Open Water were the movies. Two movies that make you squirm uncomfortably throughout, and DON'T HAVE HAPPY ENDINGS.
I love movies that don't have happy endings because happy endings have become so predictable that you expect them. So when a movie doesn't end that way, you get a jolt of reality electricity.
If you can handle unhappy endings check out a movie called Joe, from 1970. It will blow you away.
The book is titled The Child In Time. I just started the book; it involves a couple whose child has been abducted. The mood suggests to me there is not a happy ending in sight.
Anyway, it seems like feeling uncomfortable makes me feel alive. Feeling uncomfortable over negative things.
I like to squirm.
Maybe life has become so numbing that strangeness feels like life. I mean joyful situations are hard to come by, even a general sense of happiness and well being seems like fiction. We all walk around with the Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads. I'm proud to say I got the Sword of Damocles reference from The Three Stooges.
There is happiness in my life. The wife, kids, adopted kids, pets, friends, Crown Royal consumed in a civilized way, music, books, poetry, writing. But I think the all consuming struggle for security and, god forbid, freedom, tend to override all other positive aspects.
Because you can't get away from it. Every decision you make has to revolve around your financial situation; trying to make it more secure, trying not to jeopardize it, trying to develop a twice weekly appreciation for cat food.
You tip toe around and numb yourself from this fear that dominates your life.
So, in my case, I catch a movie or read a book that goes its own way and shakes me up and does not end happily, and I am caught off guard and made to feel alive in an interesting way. Maybe in part because that kind of story seems to be more true, more reflective of how life works, and that is something I am definitely not used to experiencing, thanks to the unquenchable demand for happy endings.
Maybe I am not an accurate representative of the human race in general. Maybe my desire to squirm is outside the norm.
I do think this need is present in more people than you might guess.
Dats da name of dat tune, folks. I gotta run.