Kevin Smith: Trauma is trauma

I was introduced to Kevin Smith when I was in my early 20s. This would have been around the mid 1990s.

I was at work talking with a couple of co-workers my age. I considered them friends, but we never hung out outside of work.

They were big time pot smokers. I had never touched the stuff and had, up to that point, viewed marijuana as taboo. That is why we never hung out outside of work. That wasn't my scene, but other than that, our personalities were completely similar.

We shared the same sense of humor. We were all sarcastic. We shared the same worldview – basically, that most people were idiots. We reveled in watching customers doing dumb things. Working at McDonald's, there was no shortage of material.

So one morning we were just milling around in the kitchen. We must have been watching an elderly female customer glancing at the menu – first left, then right, then back left, and then right. This kept going on for like five minutes. By this time there was a line forming behind the lady.

Every once in a while she would ask the employee waiting on her what the price of a particular item was. Then she might ask if she were to bundle the sandwich with a coffee and a hash brown, would it be cheaper.

She'd keep looking side to side. "What comes on a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit?"

"Bacon. Egg. Cheese," the employee would answer her. The line kept growing behind the customer. She was oblivious.

"Hmmm. That sounds good. What kind of egg comes on it? Are they real eggs? I don't want those liquidy eggs. I, definitely, don't want frozen eggs," the customer would ask.

"You know what? I'll just do a coffee," she would decide. I want it from the fresh pot on the bottom. I don't want it too dark, but not too light either. Do you have Splenda? I have diabetes. I can't have sugar. I went to the doctor yesterday and he told me I have to watch my diet. Do you do a senior discount?"

So me and my friends would just watch these kinds of interactions and offer our commentary. We would anticipate what people might say next or things they might do. This is how we would amuse ourselves all day.

So this one day, one of my friends, making note of my sarcastic wit, mentioned to me, "You know, Tony, have you ever heard of Kevin Smith? I think, actually I know, you would really get a kick out of his movies."

He told me I had to check out a couple of movies which Smith directed and appeared in – Clerks and Mallrats. So I did. I went to my local Blockbuster and rented out both movies. That's what we did back then. There was no Netflix back then. If you don't know what Blockbuster was, or even if you did, I strongly recommend checking out the documentary, The Last Blockbuster.

My friend was right. The movies, and the humor, was right up my alley. Hell, it felt like I could have written Clerks myself. The story is about a day in the life of a disgruntled, underachieving convenience store clerk who gets called in to work on his day off. He and his stoner friend mock customers as they come in. Plenty of other hilarious incidents ensue including an elderly man dying in the restroom while sitting on the toilet reading a nudey magazine.

The phrase the main character keeps repeating at various points during the movie was, "I'm not even supposed to be here today." It was so relatable. I was sucked in. I, instantly, became a fan of Kevin Smith.

I was excited every time he came out with a new movie. Chasing Amy came out in 1997 and starred Ben Affleck and Jason Lee as two comic book artists. It was a hilarious movie but also tackled some social issues which I hadn't seen addressed like this in movies.

Lee steals the movie as Affleck's best friend who tries to protect Affleck from falling in love with a lesbian. I was rolling on the floor laughing every time Lee would go ballistic when someone referred to him as "just a tracer" (Affleck drew the cartoons for their comic book while Lee's job was to accentuate Affleck's drawings).

In all his movies, Kevin Smith would play the role of Silent Bob alongside his friend, Jay (played by Jason Mewes). Usually, the two played a minor role in Smith's movies, although Smith would later do a movie which featured the two stoner friends, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001).

Jay was a loud-mouthed, obnoxious wannabe rapper with some funky dance moves. Bob, played by Smith, was his trench coat wearing sidekick who, you guessed it, wouldn't speak (except in one poignant scene towards the end of Chasing Amy).

It's crazy to think those movies are almost 30 years old now. They remain some of my favorite movies to this day, especially Chasing Amy.

Smith has always been a large guy. Maybe that is why he always wore a trench coat as Silent Bob. That's why I was shocked a few years back when I saw a picture of him on social media which showed he had lost a ton of weight.

Good for him, I thought.

Then I saw a picture of him a couple of weeks ago in which you could tell he had lost even more weight. This time I was worried. He looked sickly skinny.

It got me thinking to do some research on what was going on with him. That's how I came across this YouTube video which I found very enlightening.

Smith reveals in January 2023 he had checked himself into a mental institution for a month. He credits his time at Arizona's Sierra Tucson treatment center for saving his life.

My friend, back in 1995, referred me to Kevin Smith's movies because my friend was astute enough to know that I would relate to Smith's humor and views on life. Thirty years later, I find myself relating even more to Smith. His story is my story.

Smith starts by relating a story of when he was 6 years old and how he was sexually molested by a neighborhood kid who was a little older than him. Smith said he, casually, told the story to a therapist while the two were walking around a track at Sierra Tucson. The therapist stopped and looked at Smith and said, "Kevin, that is sexual abuse."

Smith laughed and said, "No, it's not. We were just playing doctor."

The therapist explained to Smith that, no, that was sexual abuse. She went on to explain that Smith saying "they were just playing doctor" was a way of him just trying to dismiss the whole incident. Smith said the therapist's answer blew his mind.

Smith's story triggered something in me. I haven't told more than a handful of people this, and, definitely, never publicly. I, too, when I was about six years old, "played doctor" with my neighbor who was a couple of years older than me. When Smith used those exact words to describe his incident, I was floored.

I never thought much about it. In fact, I never thought about it until recent years when I've been combing through my life trying to evaluate how my mental state got to the depressive point where it is now.

I am tempted now to still minimize the whole thing. I, to this day, still see that neighbor of mine and I harbor no hard feelings, pardon the pun, towards him. We still say hi from across the yard on the occasions when our paths cross when he visits his mother.

I'm sure he has no recollection of the times we used to go over each other's houses and disrobe and do "check ups" on each other. I still remember him commenting on my penis. I recall us dancing naked and kissing. I don't think it ever went any further than that, but, who knows, maybe I am blocking that out.

But, to this day, like Smith thought as well, I didn't view it as sexual abuse. Then Smith said something which is now, permanently, etched in my psyche. When he told his therapist that he believed his incident didn't measure up to other stories of sexual abuse he has heard, his therapist said these words, "Trauma is trauma."

Wow!

Smith goes on to explain, in detail, how the mind handles trauma. My therapist loves to do the same thing – go into details about the Vagus (which, for the longest time, I thought was spelt like "Vegas") nerve, the Hippocampus, the Sympathetic Nervous System. My eyes glaze over when she starts talking about that stuff.

It is only when Smith said that the body interprets trauma, simply, as trauma. It does not differentiate levels of trauma.

Trauma is trauma.

Smith cites an example I often mention when I try to minimize my situation. He talks about he has been in groups where he hears soldiers tell stories about seeing their friends' heads getting blown off in battle. He then looks at his perceived "traumas" and thinks they don't measure up. But...

Trauma is trauma.

At one point, Smith refers to the concept of people comparing their traumas as "Trauma Olympics." I, previously, wrote an article referring to the problem as "Imposter Syndrome." I, constantly, battle with the idea that my issues don't measure up to the levels of the problems of others.

Smith goes on tell about deaths of family members of his that occurred in rapid succession to him when he was around 9 years old. The same happened to me in 2011 (and is happening now) when, in the matter of ten months, I lost my best friend in a car accident, and two cousins I was close to – one from brain cancer and one (what I believe to be, but has never been confirmed to me) from a drug overdose. My best friend and one of the cousins passed away within a week of each other.

One death of a loved one can be traumatic in itself. When you start adding in the cumulative effect of several deaths of loved ones in a short period of time, it takes a toll. Like Smith goes on to say, we were brought up in a generation that teaches us to "just suck it up." And so I did, especially when my mother passed in 2021.

Smith goes on to talk about how he has always battled with needing to be validated. He cites an incident with a teacher when he was nine years old calling him fat. He cites another incident a few years later where a teenager working the top of a water slide told him that "no pregnant people are allowed on this ride."

Smith says that he weighed 330 pounds at his worst. He claimed to weigh 180 pounds during that video. He said he hated himself so much that he found solace in the character he had created, Silent Bob.

He became consumed with work. Fans loved his movies. He had to make more movies, better movies. That is how he would feel validated.

On February 25, 2018, Kevin Smith suffered a heart attack. His left anterior descending artery (LAD) had become completely blocked. When that happens, people suffer what is called a "widowmaker" heart attack. It is called that because only 12% of people survive a heart attack when it is that artery that is clogged.

Again, that incident hit home with me because I have had issues with my LAD artery, as well. In 2012, I had to have two stents put in my heart because my LAD artery was found to be 95% blocked. My cardiologist said, after the operation, I would have been dead within a year if we hadn't taken care of the issue when we did. When I told my primary care doctor what my cardiologist had said, he looked at my reports on his computer and without looking at me, dryly said, "He said that? I would've given you only a month."

Being that close to death makes you reevaluate a lot of things. It makes you re-prioritize things.

Number one on the list: Is work really that important?

Smith admits he got burnt out from working so much. The same happened to me. I was promoted to General Manager of my McDonald's in 2015. For the next seven years, I put in 50-60 hours per week working in the restaurant. The rest of the time, I was pretty much on call to handle any issues that may have cropped up at my restaurant. There was no downtime.

After a while, work becomes your identity. When Kevin Smith showed up at his mental facility, he told his therapist, "I don't know who I am." He had become who he thought the public wanted him to be. He had become Silent Bob. He wasn't Kevin Smith anymore. He didn't even know who Kevin Smith was anymore.

That is a lesson for all of us. Always remain true to ourselves. Don't try to be someone you think everyone else will like. That will lead to a life of sadness and unfulfillment. Besides, being someone everyone else wants you to be is hard work.

These times are unprecedented. Social media is such a monster. Smith was involved with social media from its inception around 1998. Up to a few years ago, he was extremely active on social media. He admits social media fed into his issues with co-dependency. He needed the re-affirmation social media could give him, but we all know how dysfunctional and downright mean social media can be. For any celebrity who is thin-skinned, social media should be avoided at all costs.

And it did affect Smith's mental state. He ended his YouTube video by saying that he was done with social media. He didn't need our re-affirmation anymore. He understood how social media had messed with his head.

He now knew what he had to do and, more importantly, he had a plan of attack. He – thanks to therapy – now had the skills he needs to get better. He had to do away with his Silent Bob persona and re-discover who Kevin Smith is.

I wish him luck. It is never easy. I worry that I still see pain, sorrow, and insecurity in Smith's eyes. In the picture that caused me to go down this road, it looks like he weighs even less than the 180 pounds he said he weighed in that video. Losing weight can be an obsession and an addiction, as well.

He still has a way to go in his journey to fulfillment and happiness. So do I. We all need to recognize that. There is no simple "happy pill" that will erase 50 years of trauma.

The important part is that he has identified he has a problem, he has identified that he needs help and can't do it alone, and he has taken the first step to obtaining happiness. But the lesson to be taken from all of this is to not make light of your problems.

Trauma is trauma.