Into Darkness

What is it that makes us like darkness?  Metaphorical.

I don't like scary movies.  THEY FREAKING TERRIFY ME.  I can't even watch scary trailers.  I can't even listen to scary movies.  This used to embarrass me, because I guess watching horror films is a bit of a rite of passage?  But now it just seems ridiculous--I honestly don't understand why someone would deliberately do something to scare themselves.

But then I fall off my high horse where serious eff-ed up stories are concerned.  I've always been a fan of dark humor, like haha death and stuff!  And then when you get into deeply manipulative and well, everything I can think of to describe this stuff involves the f-word.  A tamer version that does not capture the power the emotion is:  stories that mess with your head.

Those things where you read or watch something and think, "How could someone DO that!?" and it repulses you, but if the story is done well, you've been pulled into the action, and the weird thing is, you do understand. 

Maybe that's the sick appeal.  Being pulled so deeply into a narrative that you understand someone's actions, no matter how reprehensible.  Alright, so maybe not everything.  We've all got our limits.  It is near freaking impossible for me to accept being in the head of a rapist or serial killer.  But there are a lot of other ways in which a person can screw someone over, and I just really enjoy blinking through a story, thinking, "How am I feeling compassion for this horrible person?"

Now that I write it out, it's not such a mystery.  I lately realized that my central driving force is the desire to understand (I mean, this was a pretty big self-revelation, and I feel bad that I shunted it to the middle of a blog post on a separate topic).  I want to know WHY, and about everything, but especially people.  That is why I've always been drawn to literature and psychology and counseling.  So of course dark stories are appealing to me; they help me understand the darkness and depravity that people are capable of.  And through understanding comes compassion.

It's fair to say that this is potentially dangerous.  Well, I GET why that woman cheated on her husband, and don't I feel bad, so maybe adultery isn't always horrible?  Right, it's hard to keep a hold of morality and absolute truth when you're confronted with stories outside the norm.  And that's true, and I worry about that sometimes.  But also...I don't think that's a good enough reason to avoid such things?  Not all the time, at least.  I want to have the courage to, kind of, metaphorically hold onto the rope of Christ and then jump into the abyss of humanity.  Hahaha.

Oh my gosh, I'm not even trying to be coherent anymore.  Basically I read a really screwed up story online, and it has OVERRUN my brain, and I know it's an awful story (so I'm not describing it or telling you what it was, because frankly I'm a bit embarrassed I read it), but I can't stop thinking about it.  It was SO depraved, but so well-written, and each step taken by the characters was obviously a bad one, but it made total sense within the narrative.  It was fascinating!  It so accurately portrayed real life, how it's not like we think, "I'm going to kill someone today!" but a series of tiny steps can naturally and subtly progress to something "unthinkable."

Like I said, this thing took over my brain, and I had to process somewhere, so....there's my blog post for today!