What the Matrix Is

"Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is.
You have to see it for yourself."
~Morpheus

I got a mere one paragraph (the final paragraph, oddly enough) into my promised post on Silda Spitzer and the nature of the universe (I know, that's my problem, I think small) when I realized that I might want to use this concept of "The Matrix" yet again. And I found I've never adequately explained it (in spite of the fact that my friend Tigermom asked me to nearly a year ago). So, let me take a step back, pause and explain The Matrix. After all, even if I don't end up using it in this particular upcoming post, I know I'll refer to it again (and again and again) eventually.

Those of you who've been hanging around reading me for any substantial length of time already know that I find the movie The Matrix to be a brilliant metaphor for addiction (and codependency). And I know that many of you who have both seen the movie and lived with addiction (either as an addict or a family member) have told me you've experienced that same resonance. But many of you haven't seen the movie (in spite of the fact that I assigned it to you as homework nearly a year ago) and/or haven't lived with addiction. If so, this post's for you.

First, a quick plot summary: Neo (played by the inimitable Keanu Reeves) is a humdrum cog in the corporate wheel by day and computer hacker by night. In his computer prowlings, he hears of something called "The Matrix." After several tense and eerie scenes (with special effects to lend a nightmarish quality) Neo meets Morpheus, who knows there is something wrong with Neo's world and offers to share his knowledge of The Matrix. However, Morpheus says he cannot tell Neo what The Matrix is, he must show him. (The first time I saw the movie, I thought, "For goodness sakes, just tell him!" But I was in The Matrix then myself.)

Morpheus offers Neo a choice between two pills: one red and one blue. "You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." Neo takes the red pill, of course, and when he does, the world changes: a mirror melts and swallows him, he chokes for breath, and finds himself in an egg filled with goo, attached to it with wires connected to him through jacks in his skin. The wires are ripped from him, and he plunges down a chute into dark water, where he is scooped up and rescued by Morpheus and his crew in the real world.

Neo finds that everything he's lived, everything he's experienced, was a virtual reality dream fed to him by a computer. He (and the billions of other people in The Matrix) never actually walked or talked or breathed or touched another living being. He lived his life in a perpetual dream, in the womb of a machine, and has only now been born to the real world: a world that is cold, sunless and decimated by war (you know, the typical post-apocalyptic world of the future).

The movie goes on with guns and prophecies and romance and groundbreaking special effects, and while there are other parts of the movie that resonate, for the most part, that disconnect between realities, that violent birth, that birth as an adult, that birth of consciousness, that is what I'm talking about when I talk about The Matrix.

Addiction and codependency center, each in their own way, on fantasy. Addicts and codependents aren't attempting to escape from reality, they've never in their lives experienced reality. And that sudden, brutal awakening in The Matrix, more than anything I've ever seen or read, captures what it felt like to have that fantasy ripped away and to wake to reality. It captures what it felt like to me to find out that my husband was a sex addict and what he tells me it felt like to realize he himself was an addict. And I never took a breath, never walked a step, never truly saw and touched my husband until I left The Matrix.

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A clip, for your edification. (Unfortunately, I couldn't find one that ended where I wanted: after Neo is in the ship, when Morpheus looks at him and says, "Welcome to the real world." You'll just have to imagine that yourself.) It made my chest tight just to watch this again...