MY LIFE IN HORROR PART 2: A PANTOMIME OF DENIALS

5/3/2023

CONTENT WARNING:

The following article explores experiences of depression, social alienation, suicidal ideation and other mental health issues.

Barker's fiction was the very first I'd encountered that spoke to me on that level; that engaged me as a queer youth and sought to show me the metaphysics inherent. Whilst he was far from the first queer creator whose work I obsessed over, his was certainly the first to be so flagrant in its queerness; to exercise expressions the like of which I didn't even know were possible in horror and fantasy up to that point.

Insomnia is being at war with your own mind. It escalates and escalates like a mutually abusive relationship, but one occurring within your own skin, that you have no means of escaping.

Like my Mother before me (and her Mother before her), from the moment I hit double digits, sleep became a rare and fleeting commodity. Nighttime hours became matters of sincere dread, the certainty of what was to come when my head hit the pillow enough to excite anxiety (which, of course, only made sleeplessness that much more certain).

If you want to know just how sadistically malleable time can be, talk to an insomniac: Hours stretch into illimitable gulfs, twilight wastelands through which we crawl like thirsting wretches across parched desert. what few oases exist in that desolation are invariably haunted places, the ghosts and demons that infest them congealed from a toxic union of subconscious dreads and the biochemical imbalances of puberty. I still recall the Freudian horrors I encountered in those ruins, creatures that have since found their ways into much of my published work.

Manifesting uncertain, nascent sexuality -perversely married to day-to-day dreads and anxieties of waking life-, I would often wake from what moments of relief those oases provided in a fevered sweat, disturbed all the more by the betrayals of a body I didn't understand (and still find myself at conflict with on regular occasion).

That sensation of being twisted in one's own skin, of it being a rapine or smothering alien that one cannot writhe or break free from...I remember that well; the utter wretchedness of the condition, the staring out through bedroom curtains into a dark, still and static world, envying and judging it for its quiescence in the same instant. To my sleep-starved eyes, it seemed an alien place; a paused, shuddering, faintly distorted image on fraying VHS tape. Nothing is real, after enough crawling through the wasteland. Waking life becomes a species of grey dream, disassociated and uncertain. People become ghosts, faces smear, and you begin to recede more and more, deeper and deeper, until whatever distinction exists between reality and fevered dreaming dissolves.

I recall watching teachers at the front of class from whatever recess my twisted, pupating carcass had found, hearing their voices as though through fog or depths of dirty bath water. My engagement with those lessons, their subjects, was perfunctory at best; just enough to not be condemned as a lunatic, exiled as a disruption.

In truth, I didn't care if I was; their world -that I'd become increasingly, painfully aware of as childhood slipped away- wasn't one I had much hope for or desire to be part of. In truth, it still isn't.

Dreams, waking fantasies; my own, those of others, became not only sanctuaries from the corrosive onslaught of grey waking, but essential windows into other realms, echoing Lucy's discovery of Narnia via the wardrobe. I lost myself there, and found myself: It was amongst those states, those stories, that I came to consider and understand the human condition; the abstract lives materialist, post-modern living rarely obliges or provides the means for us to perceive, much less explore.

It became apparent very early on that I was caught not between two worlds, but fractured amongst many: Whilst I would force myself to reluctantly engage in the droll duties and disappointments of waking life as much as basic operation required, I was more often -and more sincerely- abroad elsewhere, in realms that many might consider disturbing or horrific; nightmares that, to me, were as welcome and enchanting as the most elysian of dreams.

And, dream or nightmare, I have always been happier, more sincerely myself, amongst them.

Obsession with art and fiction in all their forms had long since been an irrevocable part of my being; ever since childhood, I could no more separate myself from the imagined than I could my own assumptions of identity, my sense of self.

In my early teenage years, that obsession -and the immersions that followed- quite literally saved my life. Were I forced to engage exclusively with grey waking, then the suicidal ideation that had already begun to foment would have come to fruition, certainly in the attempt if not the success. There is no doubt in my mind that, without the fiction, films, comic books, video games etc that provided me with not merely escape, but the scope for other conditions, the framework for other experiences and states of being, I would not have survived my high-school years.

Of course, back then, I lacked the language or contexts for defining my own despair; for considering the diseased condition of my own mind. Whatever worms infested it were eloquent and effortlessly loqacious beasts: It seemed so reasonable, given the condition of the world, that we should all operate in states of despair, that no sane person would wish to endure waking life much beyond childhood.

Part of that condition is with me still, even now; I don't wholly condemn or deny that lost, despairing boy his assumptions of wisdom, nor am I wholly opposed to the assertions of his disease (diseases too can be wise). I would assert still that the world is unworthy of us, that what tradition and previous generations have established and allowed for is wholly unsatisfactory.

But I'm not quite so consumed by those certainties as I used to be, nor so willing to surrender in the face of them.

I assumed, as a child, that it was fantastical fiction in itself that drew my eye; that engaged me more deeply than any other subject. Whilst this was -and remains- essentially true, what I lacked the language to articulate were the qualities inherent -but not exclusive- to that fiction which aroused me:

Having been raised on the likes of The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of The Rings etc, I naively assumed it was portraits of purer, more certain and defined realities that I ached for. It took exposure to darker, more ambiguous material and consideration of my own attraction to it to understand: What engaged me was not certainty or some adolescent promise of "purity" (such was actually antithetical to all I sincerely felt and increasingly knew of myself). Rather, I was drawn by the potential of imaginary conditions; the fluidity and malleability of reality itself.

In dreams, in nightmares, reality became an unfixed feast; apt to change in the blink of an eye, the utterance of a word. This was as true of the fiction I'd begun to consume as it was my own fantasies and imaginings (increasingly, my appetites strayed away from the absolutism and archetypes of Tolkien and the wish-fulfilment metaphysics of Lewis to the more ambiguous, confrontational fiction provided by Barker, Carter and Le Guin). It was also around this time that my fascination for horror began to crystallise as a sincere part of my identity:

Whilst as a child, my engagement with horror films and literature had been an airy distraction, of no more or less consequence than the myriad games and diversions I filled my childhood days with, now, it became an obsession:

I regarded the sagging bookshelves and library of VHS tapes my Mother had accrued over the years with new eyes, not merely as sources of distraction or diversion, but as lifelines. I hurled myself happily into a world of horrors both old and new, seeking out that which disturbed or distressed, that moved or repelled with a treasure hunter's zeal. I ached to be lost; to be elsewhere, even if that elsewhere was a source of nightmares. I became fascinated by my own reaction to those subjects; why they aroused such fascination, why they proved so cathartic in contrast to ostensibly more comforting fare.

The appetite came to mirror that of the vampire or the werewolf; insatiable and undeniable. Largely sleepless anyway, I'd spend long nights in early-pubescent discomfort, losing myself in horrors that aired on late-night terrestrial television (as well as the -always heteronormative- softly-erotic stories I'd soon come to associate them with).

It was during this period that I arbitrarily discovered the writing of Clive Barker. Whilst I won't dwell on it here overlong (stay tuned for many, more in-depth articles on the subject), needless to say, the man's work dropped into the turbulent pools of my imagination with the traumatic force of a falling star. Though I didn't know it at the time, that discovery chimed with the inchoate burgeoning of my nascent queerness:

It was likely clear to most of the adults around me -and more than a handful of my fellow youth- that I was a queer kid. Looking back, I don't understand how anyone could've taken me for anything other.

However, back in the mid-1990s, homosexuality and queerness in general were still largely verboten in UK culture, save as schoolyard insults, sitcom jokes and scapegoats for right-wing media to demonise. Those of us who grew up during that time often lacked the contexts and language enjoyed by our straight siblings to understand or articulate who we were becoming, what we felt. Many experienced protracted periods of confusion, denial and even self-loathing.

For my part, though I didn't consciously articulate the state to myself until later, the distinction between my peers and I was overt and, indeed, welcome. I have never had the desire to be amongst the flocks of the sun-children; to be accepted or popular. The inclination is somewhat alien to me. Therefore, anything that deepened my removal from the madding crowd was fine and dandy, no matter how confusing I might've found it at the time.

The art and fiction I consumed during that period leant me both the contexts to understand and the language to articulate what I felt, the changes and traumas rewriting me from the inside.

Barker's fiction was the very first I'd encountered that spoke to me on that level; that engaged me as a queer youth and sought to show me the metaphysics inherent. Whilst he was far from the first queer creator whose work I obsessed over, his was certainly the first to be so flagrant in its queerness; to exercise expressions the like of which I didn't even know were possible in horror and fantasy up to that point.

As such, the awakenings and transformations that had been dissolute became crystallised, not to the point that I could make any positive or certain statements as to my identity -that always seemed the reserve of the straight world to me-, but in a manner whereby the flux of it all became apparent, and the anxious need for certainty and anchorage itself began to dissolve (and with it, those old childhood yearnings for states of Tolkien-esque “purity”).

This was also the era of my first dalliances with self-destruction.

As established earlier, suicidal ideation is an abiding and extremely persuasive part of my psychological makeup. It's rare a day goes by in which it does not make itself known in some way, shape or form. It's a Siren song; a seduction to other states of being where all the despairs and disappointments of this life are over and done with. At times during my teenage years -and through to my early twenties-, oblivion seemed a preferable alternative to living in a skull that felt infested with biting, venomous broods, a skin twisted on its own skeleton and a world so clearly careening towards self-destruction.

It became clear to me very early that people are unhappy, almost universally; dissatisfied with their lots and their positions, at odds with something ineffable in their lives. By the same token, I became puzzled (and often infuriated) by the masks they wore, the pantomime of denials they called "life." Why did they not see? Why did they always smile and turn away or frown and condemn me whenever the subject came up in conversation? Even as young as 8 or 9, the performative nature of it was so clear to me, in almost everyone I met. But I lacked the language or contexts to articulate it.

Only fiction provided that; arenas and mediums in which some degree of interiority is essential, where characters are given to considerations of who they are and what and why and how. Those considerations matched my own in ways that the blithe performances of people off the page or screen did not. As such, I came to identify with the fictional more intimately than I ever did the actual (a tension that still haunts me to this day).

Fortunately, the rare occasions in which I've surrendered to that existential Siren song, tumbled headlong -and gratefully- into the undeniable abyss, were not successful. And that was more due to ineptitude than any ambiguity on my part; I just never managed to get it right.

There's a particular species of gallows comedy in that depth of despair; when you arise woozy and uncertain from a night of vomiting up wine and sedatives in the understanding that, not only are you very much still alive (the migraine-pounding of your temples attests to that), but that you couldn't even get dying right; a feat so many achieve without even trying at all.

It was in those moments that I began to almost believe that perhaps there is some authorial principle in creation; some shit-heel, celestial gutter-poet or comedy-writer who has cruel irony in mind for all of us.

Not that the suspicion ever crystallised into full-blown belief (mercifully).

It's a strange thing; in those depths, having reached what I considered then to be the bed of the abyss, I found myself. Fiction, as ever, became the lifeline; a reason to live and a means of expressing why death could be so very, very attractive.

I won't pretend even now that the inclination has entirely left me; occasionally, I still hear the whispers, feel those spiders stirring in my mind. The major difference is context: I know what they are, and have means of drowning them into silence, if needs be. The world, as it stands, has never been enough, and is a very poor argument in itself for continued existence. Show any potential suicide a flower, a butterfly, a celestial phenomena, and they'll show you an extinction event, a natural disaster, a plague, a societal collapse, a church ceiling crushing the worshipers below.

Existence itself is not an argument. Life is not an argument, and certainly not a persuasive one. I discovered that very early on. Most people, even most professionals in the arena, lack the language and the means to argue for continued existence. Most of us can't convincingly argue the toss of it with ourselves.

So, there has to be something else. Something more. And what that is depends on who we are, what we value. It can be difficult for those suffering with suicidal ideation to perceive or articulate; all too often, circumstances and the disease itself have conspired to crush that love from us, and you'd be surprised how elegantly poetic and persuasive the abstract equivalents of cancers can be.

For me, it was, is and likely always will be stories. Stories had informed the state of my mind and anchored me to the world for as long as I could recall. They were how I engaged with a species and systems I otherwise felt powerfully outcast from. The hunger for stories, the power they maintained to enchant, transport and express, remained the sincerest species of magic, even in those darkest depths, and the places where I found not escape from nightmares, but reconciliation through them.

The consumption of stories in all their forms and mediums allowed me to work through what I was experiencing. They connected me to creators and characters whose states and circumstances were analogous to my own.

Furthermore, the fiction I consumed -rabidly, desperately- provided portraits of other ways, better conditions to which I might aspire, even though the chattering, sentient disease in my mind might make it seem impossible.

Through my teens and the early years of university, my tastes flourished with the eating, every day providing some new form or flavour I'd never been exposed to. My abiding love of poetry, whilst already kindled, truly waxed during this period: Discovering Blake and the Romantics proved a necromantic revelation: Learning about their transgressive metaphysics, the peculiarly mythological manner in which they viewed the world, felt like a communion with dead souls with whom I shared so much, who expressed my own peculiar perspectives in ways I lacked the language to do so.

It was also during this period that I became exposed to creators such as Patrick Suskind, Poppy Z. Brite (AKA Billy Martin), Chuck Palahniuk, Guillermo del Toro, Douglas Coupland and myriad others. I became filled with them, a vessel for art and stories; for film, video games, comic books, prose and poetry. So, so much of budgets that were supposed to go towards prescribed study materials and basic living were spent on materials that, to my younger, suicidal self, were just as essential; artefacts that, in a very real sense, saved his life.

Thank you for indulging me this far, especially given the places these introductory articles have taken us. In the third and final instalment, that deep dive will continue,into more recent years, recent traumas and revelations. Thank you once again for staying the course, and I hope that, if nothing else, these strange little confessionals provide some context or clarity for others experiencing similar.

George Daniel Lea 12/01/2023

GEORGE DANIEL LEA

George Lea is an unfixed oddity that has a tendency to float around the UK Midlands (his precise location and plain of operation is somewhat difficult to determine beyond that, though certain institutions are working on various ways of defining his movements).

An isolated soul by nature, he tends to spend more time with books than with people, consumes stories in the manner a starving man might the scattered debris of an incongruously exploded pie factory, whilst also attempting to churn out his own species of mythological absurdity (it's cheaper than a therapist, less trouble than an exorcist and seems to have the effect of anchoring him in fixed form and state, at least for the moment).

Proclaims to spend most of his time "...feeling like some extra-dimensional alien on safari," which he very well might be (apprehension and autopsy will likely yield conclusive details).

Following the publication of his first short story collection, Strange Playgrounds, is currently working in collusion with the entity known as "Nick Hardy" on the project Born in Blood.