I felt compelled to write again before bed with the intention of going until I am done, and ready to publish this.
I haven’t uploaded any sort of blog in months, because quite frankly, my life has been going so much better lately. No, it is not sunshine and kittens, but it is a hell of a lot better than where I was last year. Last July feels like an eternity ago. I feel like a different person after starting my new job, and I’ve had money to spend on my cars and hobbies.
I feel alive again, and ready to take on the world, whereas last year, I felt beaten into a corner, and clinging on for dear life.
LIfe is so weird, because we grow up and reach our twenties, where school was the only thing we knew. It was high school kids, and high school drama, and high school whatever. It feels SO long ago. I genuinely forget half of these people, but it’s funny how some people stick in your mind. The people I liked, the people I had crushes on, and the people I hated still occasionally pop up, and the weirdest part is that I feel happy to know that they’re happy. LIke is so short, and time flies so fast. We’re all flying through this cosmic void on a rock for a finite period of time, and doing anything besides bringing people up is pointless.
We are all totally different people over 8 years later. Jesus, some of these people I haven’t seen in 8 years! It’s been 4 years since college now, and I still think about those moments too. I miss them with all of my heart, and it’s dangerous thinking. I still have a large chunk of life ahead of me, and I should be shooting for making them the best.
The elephant in the room is that you can’t think about yourself in the state of the world today. It is just falling apart, and it is so tough to think about finding love, getting a house, getting in shape, and having my warehouse full of classic cars, when this entire country is imploding.
I’m too selfish to be a martyr, but I can’t just stand idly by either.
I have been heavily focused on classic cars the past few months as summer has swept in, and thus I quite frankly had nothing to really pull from. Working on cars, and historically appreciating cars are two whole different animals. If I wrote about cars for the remainder of this post, the handful of folks reading this would fall asleep.
Instead I’m going to be talking about horror, because if I’m not mistaken, I don’t think I have ever talked about horror as a blog topic in the years I’ve had my website up.
Horror has always been a huge part of my interests, personality, and artistic interests. I worked on Murderhouse with Puppet Combo, I self published Consume Thy Flesh: The Pumpkin Smashing SIm, and I applied to Illfonic more times than I could count to work on Friday the 13th.
I want to spin you a tale of love, lust, and languish. I want to really analyze why I love the genre so much, reasons why I may psychologically like it, and dabble in the history of horror.
Horror has been a part of my life since I could walk. I have vivid memories of watching horror movies with my parents before they divorced. I saw Scream before I was registered for preschool, and it scared the shit out of me. Yeah, I can’t explain it, but my memories do go back that far, even at 26 years old. I think I can remember bits and pieces of being 3, before even starting school, and most of it is trauma and horror haha.
Why did my developing brain remember the horrors of real life and film? Why don’t I really remember going to the beach or the good times we had? There were good times, right?
Anyway, I wouldn’t say I was ever deathly afraid of horror movies, but I also wasn’t really into them until later in grade school. I remember renting Friday the 13th Part 6 from Movie Gallery with my Uncle John and my dad. It was the first Friday the 13th I had ever seen, and I was so confused why Jason was coming to life in Part 6! What happened between Parts 1 and 5? My young mind was also blown away at how there were 6 movies! “Wow”, I thought, “I didn’t even know any other movie that had 6 sequels!”
Little did I know the rabbit hole I would unravel as I got older.
A major influence in my love for horror was AMC’s Fear Fest every October. I would religiously watch horror movies all month, especially the Halloween movies. It’s funny how memories work, because I don’t ever remember the first horror movie I had ever bought. I remember many memories of buying dvds from Blockbuster, Giant, Big Lots, even EB games.
I suppose even before that, I had a love for the Tremors franchise, which I could write a dedicated blog post about, I love it that much. My first movie I ever received was Tremors of VHS, because my family was sick of me renting it from Blockbuster every week.
Really, my love of horror stemmed from my love for what I had discovered, and my curiosity for what else was out there. I knew cable tv would censor movies, and thus I’d make it a goal to buy what I had been missing, or what they refused to show.
Before middle school we didn’t have internet in the house, so I had to search out all of the movies I wanted at retail locations. Yeah, crazy and archaic, I know haha.
It’s weird to self analyze why I loved horror so much growing up. Perhaps with slasher movies, it was the power fantasy and escapism? I grew up in a broken home and bullied rampantly growing up. Maybe watching these hulking monsters dish out destruction and take hit-after-hit appealed to me?
I suppose that’s only partially an explanation, because I love a variety of horror films. I love monster flicks, slashers, ghosts, and demons. My love expands into many sub genres.
Really, as I get older, I think my love of horror lies in the escapism of it all. It’s almost a fun experience watching these horrific stories unfold, because they are just that; stories.
A big lumbering zombie or a demonic possession really doesn’t even get me scared, but rather excited. I can only explain it as feeling more like a thriller, with a lot of laughs. I enjoy the effects, craftsmanship, and filmmaking aspects.
Hell, I don’t even really have nightmares anymore, because little scares me.
My nightmares always consist of my mom’s abusive ex boyfriend or my drug addicted sister. Movie horror doesn’t hold a candle to the horrors of the real world and my past.
True fear is thinking the beating would come back, the screaming would louden, and the ambulance would be here again to adrenaline shot my sister’s still beating heart back to life.
I think that’s perhaps why I love horror so much? Movie horror is the antidote to real life horrors that plague us every day.
Debt, war, corruption,and violence scare me every day, but Robert Englund slashing at Heather LangenKamp in a deranged nightmare brings me joy.
Horror was my escapism growing up. If you could fight the monsters and survive in a horror film, maybe I could survive the horrors of home?
Horror taught me to stand up for myself, laugh in the face of threatening situations, and fight off the dread. When I went to college and would visit home, my tolerance for bullshit was zero.
The yelling would be replaced with the stern voice of myself. Sure, fighting still triggers an intense emotional response from me, but it’s a response of disarmament, not fear.
You don’t run from Jason, Michael, or Freddy. You fight them with what you have. You headshot the zombies, you exercise the demons, freeze the blobs, and you sure as fuck burn the things.
My anxiety has always been a huge point of suffering in my life, partially because of genetics, and what I had put up with growing up.
However, I feel as though the anxiety stemmed from those issues that I couldn’t solve myself by standing up to the monsters of life.
I am in much better control of that after college with a little dedication, and my love for horror has only gotten greater as I’ve gotten some money in my pocket.
I’ve loved going to conventions and meeting horror actors and celebrities. The community is still smaller, and it makes it extremely down to earth for even the biggest names in horror. It’s cool to see these people, and let them know what these films did for me growing up, and the impact they had on me creatively.
This blog post has been a combination of a few older posts, so forgive the piecemeal flow to it all.
I suppose parting words here is that we survive. We push forward, and we keep going. My life is going a lot better these days, and I hope everyone else has been good after we have crossed paths in this journey. I’m still not ready to settle on anything, and hope to continue fighting for the things I still want in life. Maybe I’ll never be happy with what I have, and maybe I’m okay with that never ending hunger for more out of these short years we’re allowed in this plane.
This blog title goes out to someone I once really liked who happened to just pop up on my feed tonight. They’re pretty settled into their adult life after all of these years, and I’m happy for them.
You are as beautiful as you ever were…
