After my umpteenth time watching the brilliant movie, The Dark Knight, I know what draws me in. The Joker, portrayed by Heath Ledger, was clearly the nerd teased and bullied in his youth who found he could be somebody powerful in crime and crazy. Ledger's choice of voice for this super-villain demonstrated it to me.
I joined LitReactor because of the backing from the same group that, among others, created Chuck P's website. I believed this would be a group of writers who would be receptive to dark and transgressive literature. And I haven't been disappointed.
If you're drawn to Chuck's work or Craig's work or any other literature that explores the same, maybe you've had a life experience that yanked you out of your comfort zone and compelled you to deal with the dark side. Maybe you do it through your choices in reading and writing. Like me.
I know where I got my scars. I got my hard knocks out on the public school playground. And, the round and round of girl-friends who gave me one excuse after another why we could only be friends, associates or non-lovers. Although a rite of passage for most men, I still carry the baggage. It shows up every time I tap, tap, tap on my keyboard.
Where did you get yours?
I don't find inspiration from a hammock in the warm sun of the caribbean. I find it in the cold of angst.
This is the forum where you open your shirt and bare your heart.
I have a lot of actual scars but thats cool because scars look cool on guys.
I messed around with sluts. Partied too hard. Found out my friends were either gay or sociopaths. Every year that I grow older, I learn something more disturbing every year and learn a little more about myself along the way. The world is a dick. People are dicks. Writing and reading constantly for me is an outlet to all the day to day bullshit and it keeps me from going on a shooting spree. Art is a distraction like drugs or video games. The most honest advice I ever got was that it only gets worse every year. This seems like a cynical thread for cynical people but maybe thats just me being a cynical chode.
As for Heath Ledger...he was the joker. He became the joker like Christian Bale became Pat Bateman and Val Kilmer became Jim Morrison. Actually I think I've just lost my damn mind.
Like many of the world's great authors, my scars have been chemically induced. The metaphorical scars greatly out weigh the physical scars. The tracks on my arms that I'll live with until the day I die are of no comparison to the scars I've sutured onto my family.
Of course, we all have one great scar, whether physical or metaphorical. That scar, for me, isn't so much a scar as it's still an open wound. It's the one the runs the length of my heart. You know that scar. The one so long, so deep that forever won't heal it. And, ironically, it was the scars of my past that ripped that wound into my heart. She's gone, never to come back and no amount of stitching will heal it.
Happily, though, I can say that those tracks are just that, tracks. Memories of a life I chose. I cannot blame anyone but myself for these scars. Today, I am clean, sober and in the never-ending process of stitching myself back up.
Inspiration comes to me in the form of angst, betrayal, lies, broken hearts and self imposed pain. I'm drawn to the darker side of life, the seedier side of town and hell. LIke Jack said above, if it wasn't for reading and writing, I'd probably have unloaded a fully automatic on someone, somewhere.
I never gave a shit about Batman, until Heath's portrayal of Joker. So beautifully sick. So disturbingly perfect.
R.I.P. Heath... Your scars are felt...
I'm an alien, born under a black mark. Yeah. So what?
My scars are from being teased growing up. From growing up in a violent household, dealing with a psycho family, learning I was bipolar in my early 20's, having so much random casual sex when I actually wanted love, getting married but realizing that nothing is perfect and that there are certain parts of me that will never change and having to live with it.
We play a game at my work: every two weeks during one of our long days of meetings, we'll do a team building exercise. We reveal a little known fact about who we are, about our past, whatever it is we want. But everything I want to share is no secret, and all my secrets are ones I really don't want to share with coworkers.
But the internet is like a confessional and I'm going to dump what's been on my mind the past few months right here, right now. It's been a disease festering in my brain and if I don't share it with someone I don't think I'll ever let it go.
Kids didn't tease me growing up, even though I deserved it. Adults were my bullies. Mostly relatives, though my fourth grade teacher did wonders to destroy my self esteem.
The scars I bear are the ones from childhood, from a life of neglect and verbal abuse and being taught all the wrong things. I can't recall a time my parents acted like parents. You know what I'm talking about: Dad teaches you how to drive, mom teaches you how to dress properly, they both give you advice when you need it and take you to the doctor when you're sick and they will ruin whatever predator comes your way. I've never had that. In fact, nearly every adult from my childhood failed to teach me to swim in these shark infested seas. A few of them were the sharks.
I guess that's where writing comes in. When I was small, when we still had a house and I had my own room and a bed and barbies, I'd go to bed hours before my bedtime just to escape my mom's noise and my dad's insults. I'd snuggle into my bed and I'd daydream up every sort of story I knew existed. When mom abandoned my brothers and me to a filthy apartment and a manic father, I spent entire nights locked in my dad's office writing on his boxy computer in safe mode. Through my high school years I slept in a bug-infested studio with 8 people, and to escape the place I'd stay late at school and write away on the library computers. I never wrote about the despair I was going through growing up. I wrote about heroes, about people overcoming the odds and rescuing themselves from destruction. I still do that. That's why I hate John Steinbeck's miserable writing... because it's the opposite of everything I crave. The ending doesn't have to be happy, but the characters need to have achieved some sort of peace within themselves. They need to have realized their full potential.
I don't hate the life I lived because it taught me to rely on imagination, to be a creator more than a consumer, and to be strong when things seem impossible. I do hate that it comes back to bite me in the ass sometimes, though.
Anyway, I apologize for this long rant of emotional vomit. I promise you I don't do this usually. Really, the only ones who hear this story are my roommates after a few beers and one of those rare phone calls from home. Thanks for hearing me out, though.
I have a cigarette burn on my left arm, it was a mark of brotherhood with some dudes I would beat the living crap out of if I saw them nowadays.
I have a scar on my right calf, right below the knee, it's a dog bite scar, but only a couple of the teethmarks are left at this point since it happened, like, a decade ago. I forgave the dog.
My right ring finger was smashed by a television (not this flat screen crap, it was one of those old school heavier than hell televisions) and the nail still won't grow right. The scar is less prominent, but it's there on the front of the finger. (that was my bad, my little brother told me not to mess with hiss N64 game and I messed with it and the television fell and slammed me)
I was raised a rich white kid, homeschooled in the Carribean. So, I developed no social skills and was never able to interact positively with my peers. I mean, I played little league and was on the swim team, and I'm not going to pretend that I only got my ass kicked and robbed once a week only because I was a rich white kid, but being a rich white kid never helped my situation, it only made me a very different sort of person and a clear outsider.
In middle school my mom, siblings and I moved to NC. I started going to private school, with other rich white kids. But I was still used to thinking myself an outsider, and I still had no social skills, so I still got my ass kicked and robbed all the time.
I was VERY excited at that time in my life of finding girls to hang out with, and this enthusiasm presented itself in.... sub-optimal ways that earned me a lot of scorn from girls in my middle/high school.
So I still hear voices that remind me that nobody likes me and that everyone is out to get me. When I try to talk to girls they get really loud, and it makes it difficult for me to interact with these hypothetical females.A lot of my scars are self inflicted, but only the emotional ones. Man, I'm just now training myself to cut down on it. But its a hard habit to break, talking shit about yourself from go every day.
Because even if I were to shift perspectives and go with "I am a worthwhile person who does things in a competent manner" or past that into delusions of grandeur, well. If I am good at anything, isn't it because I'm so hard on myself? I mean, there's a possibility that it's a factor, but obviously I was taking too much time out of my day to contemplate how or why everyone is angry at me (although they are not) and how much of a piece of shit I am. So it's a development that requires a gradual approach, because those delusions, when you get manic like that it's only going to lead right back down. I am, however, quite proud of the improvements that have been made since I released the 5.0 patch, and the latest incarnation is damn near stable. It is a crazy subjective experience there, with 5.0, when I try to do the sort of things that usually incur panic attacks and shouting there is just the sound of my blood pounding in my ears like water rushing over them until it drowns out imaginary voices and the teeth get gritted and the prime directive of "this is why we planned this out methodically beforehand, just stick to the script," leads me through.
I write because I like to tell stories, and also because I'm good at it. What I write comes from issues about death from when my dad died, bad relationships, confusion on how the digital age is changing the way we interact and broadcast our thoughts and emotions, hollow celebrities made from reality TV, drugs...
Most aren't scars. They're things that bother me.
Almost all my scars are emotional. I have a five inch deep gash across my heart from the time this year when I had my first boyfriend, and we broke up because his parents didn't want us to be together and he was depressed and paranoid. I've been picked on since third grade, and now I'm in my third year of high school (out of five years) and I hate around half the people I know. =_= Yeah, things are fun.
FUN FACT: DID YOU KNOW THAT...Heath Leger took inspiration from Malcom McDowell in a Clockwork Orange and Gary Oldman in Leon?
Heath Ledger was a fantastic Joker. He scared the piss out of me. It's the only movie I can watch with him in it now... I had a huge crush on him growing up and I can't handle death well. Those two things mixed together give me anxiety when I see his face in a movie. It isn't just him, though--the day Morgan Freeman dies, there will be a LOT of movies I suddenly can't watch anymore!
I think that's also why I don't handle deaths in books. I get super attached to the characters. If JK Rowling offed Ron from the series, I think I'd never read Harry Potter again.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to show us the real you. To spill your guts and relieve some pressure. Some of the posts made me wish I could keep reading. Writing in first person is my preferred style and opening a topic like this forces one to use it. I do hope to see such angst and feeling in your writings in the future.
I think Heath Ledger was a terrible actor. Just really awful.
I have an actual scar on my left forearm. I worked at an Arby's when I was in high school. And I was turning a tray of apple and cherry turnovers around in the oven so they would bake evenly, and i pressed my arm against the oven door. Burned my skin right off. I guess I had a shock reaction, because I didn't do anything about it. I just went up front, because Jason needed to take his 30 or else he wouldn't be back in time for lunch rush. So I went to take the drive thru headset from him and everyone was really concerned about my arm. I didn't care. I did have chills for awhile tho. And the thing about a fast food resturant...there is grease in the air. Just literally. Even if you stand in the back all day and do nothing, when you get home your clothes will be saturated with grease.
So, after a few days it did start to smell. Sort of sour and, I don't know, if yellow were a smell. It smelled yellow.
And now it is....uh....12 years later (wow, really?) and I still have this strange place on my arm. from one angle, it looks like a heart. From the other way it looks like an "A", which disturbs me more.
@Averydoll
"If yellow were a smell. It smelled yellow." - That's what I'm talking about. Use that.
Chin Scar...yess i hit the floor playing basketball, the wound opened up and it looked like i had a second mouth...7 "cool guy" stitches for 2 weeks..i also have a random scar on my head i saw when i shaved my head??don't know where that one came from though!? and another one on my hand, but it was from a person's fingernail (basketball again ha) and it has no cool story so i make up my own, like a bear bit my hand, slightly ha.
I also have a cyst the size of my fist in my skull, but there are no scars there. It's an important sort of physical token that I carry around with me and means a lot to me, in the way my scars do, in fact moreso in some cases. But it's internal, so it's weird to describe it as a scar.
Unless you're a radiologist, in which case my MRI would make you shit your pants.
I have a lighter brand on my arm and certain other scars I'm not proud of. Self inflicted. Don't mix alcohol and insanity.
Funny story though, I was at a party and my friend who is a light weight when it comes to drinking, busted out his tattoo gun. The entire party gathered around while girls tattooed their names and a heart on his arm. The worst was the penis tattoo he got that night. Thats far worse than anything I've ever put on my body.
Scars, be it emotional or physical are like passport stamps on you life. They are the advertising banners to the journey you've had. That you've done shit. Like the saying goes, "He who walks the path, will bear its marks with pride." Yet, scar tissue is tougher than skin, learn from it, use it... move on. Nothings perfect. Nothing stays the same. Nothing is ever finished. Life without scars to me says you haven't tried. You never failed. You only know pain from what you've read. That life would have been spent being a utility to consume, work and pay taxes, like a battery.
It isn't death I fear, it's a life unlived.
