Guest Blog: “We Can See You” by Razz-Bel
Chance is traveling for a couple of days, so Razz-Bel stepped in to offer a few of his own fanboy thoughts! Thanks, Razz-Bel! Enjoy!
When I was a child, many things used to scare me to no end: monsters, the darkness, squash and...my secret. Even at a young age, I was more than aware of my difference to most other little boys. The thought of coming out of the closet scared me more than anything else could. When I was a pre-teen, I forced myself to get into horror movies to try and get over my fears. Slowly, I learned to love the things I hated. Including myself.
Early on, I developed a love-hate relationship with all things zombie. From Michael Jackson’s Thriller video to my shocking discovery of the terrors in Return of the Living Dead. Horror filled my mind when the writhing, dried-out upper torso of the female corpse monster explained that it hurts to be dead. That burned into my tiny impressionable brain. The same brain she would eat if given a chance. I didn’t sleep comfortably for about a week!
I grew older and like any normal teen, my sexual urges became more prominent, and so did my nightmares about the living dead. “What would my parents and friends think about me?” I’d wonder. “What sort of monster would they see me as?” In my dreams, the creatures were always trying to reach out to me. Suddenly appearing out of thin air. Coming at me in gigantic masses, or one at a time. Sometimes they’d just sit and stare at me as if to say, “We see you. You can try to hide, but we always see you.”
Hyperdictionary.com has this listing under Monsters in their dream dictionary: “Monsters represent parts of yourself that you find brutish and ugly. You may possess some fears or some repressed emotions.” Yup! Sounds like me at 16. I realized the undead were my way of putting a face on my fear. I was separating myself from others and pretending to be myself, when in reality I was only lying to myself. It took a while, but I eventually realized that I’d have to stop running and turn and face those rotting zombie demons head on! (Same goes for squash. Which isn’t too bad when you mix a little cheese with it.) I had to embrace who I was and not treat myself like a whipping boy. Like any good hero, I came out and faced the problem head on. Although I did make a mess, the monsters pretty much stopped coming around.
However, whenever I’m stressed out or not happy with some aspect of my life, the zombies return. Like when I had reached my limit of tolerance at my last job, they’d come back into my dreams and tell me the same as before. “We see you. You’re not really living. You can’t hide forever.”
Thanks guys! Duly noted.