Severance is, fairly actually, the primary time I’ve seen my life precisely depicted on display screen. It superbly demonstrates the fear of what it’s wish to, in a mere matter of seconds, be unwillingly transported into one other a part of your mind; a component that doesn’t acknowledge or keep in mind all of you however is adamant that its model of actuality is the fitting one. The collection, dropped at life by director Ben Stiller and creator Dan Erickson, illustrates how touching a sure texture or listening to a particular noise can instantly turn into transformative. What happens in a single second, when triggered by the “elevator” of one thing else, utterly dissolves into one other.
Some days, I’m Irving, a ugly black ink seeping its approach between my two worlds: a transparent view of affection and hope in a single life, blurry imaginative and prescient and a distorted actuality in one other. Different days, I’m Dylan, searching for work whereas disclosing my severed state. My efforts to search out my place within the already extremely selective world of movie and tv, whereas confessing my limitations, are past disheartening. Rather than our wishes, Dylan and I are reluctantly given the comfort prize of a pineapple fruit basket and encouragement to re-mask our interior turmoil.
Most of the time, I’m Mark: compelled right into a metaphorical elevator in an try by somebody, usually unintentionally, to thrust me again into the manageable model of myself that is aware of learn how to mix in. I change between nervous methods, all the time questioning why my end-of-the-day Outie feels none of the advantages of my daytime, suppressing Innie. All whereas realizing that nobody in my household, regardless of their loving makes an attempt to assist, might probably perceive the expertise of residing in my physique—to know what it’s wish to threat all the pieces in an try and really feel complete once more.
My remedy classes look an identical to Mark’s camcorder dialog with himself within the season two finale: that back-and-forth dialogue between elements in an try and make one perceive the motives of the opposite, and the desperation of making an attempt to have each admire, as greatest they’ll, that neither is a menace to the opposite. Like Mark, I drink the reintegration sludge within the type of intense remedy therapies that try to attach me again to my physique however depart me bodily unwell.
The largest actuality to grapple with for each Lumon staff and me is the understanding that all of us underwent this irreversible process below the promise of a brand new life, solely to search out out the laborious approach that the phrase “new” was not synonymous with “higher.” Like all my pals at Lumon, an organization based with the mission of ending all human struggling, I used to be robbed of the life marketed by this process, suffocating below the understanding that I can by no means return to who I was.
In April 2025, I attended a Severance press occasion on the real-life constructing that serves because the set of Lumon headquarters simply exterior my hometown in Holmdel, New Jersey. Teetering on my surgical boot within the standing room solely part, I watched as Ben Stiller turned to the gang and, as if pondering out loud, mused, “I’d like to know what it’s about Severance that makes viewers join with it a lot.” Whereas I can’t communicate for the roughly six p.c of the world inhabitants that suffer from C-PTSD, for me, Severance is an hour of exploration the place I’ve nothing to do however wait and see what else I find out about myself. Greater than that, it jogs my memory why movie and tv have been, and without end shall be, the one factor I wish to do with my life. I’ve dreamt of appearing in a challenge like Severance, taking part in a personality as impactful as those within the collection; an instrument in a crucial symphony, telling a tragic story in a panoramic approach.
