frank m. ahearn

The stress won't go away. It's constantly here now and there's not a fucking thing i can do to stop it. it's getting worse and it's killing me in more ways than one.

i've never really felt like a failure before. i really thought i'd never honestly give up hope. i'm at the very end of my rope, and i'm tired of this constant stomach pain. i'm sick of vomiting. i can't sleep or eat without feeling ill.

i don't care anymore about things. i just want to feel ok again. it's all i want. it's really all i want. and all the ways i know how to feel okay and get by are gone. i feel like i get in the way. so i'm going to move out of the way for awhile.


pat, i trust you and i believe you, even though you lied to me. if you don't think i'm worth knowing or worth being around, then i think you're right. i'm going to go fix that.

(and btw, i was working on a comic for you. i lie and say that it's only for myself, but it's really for you. only the first part was going to be about you though, the rest was about my grandma. she said she really really wanted to meet you when i saw her last and told her about you, and i told her that i thought you guys would get along great but she got sick two days after and then died. i kind of haven't been able to forgive myself for that, even though i know it's not my fault. she was the only one who was really OK with me being a faggot. she was my secret best friend. anyway i'll never finish it because no one is really going to give a shit about it, especially you. the sad part is, i think working on it was the only reason i didn't do this earlier.)


i'm going to go try and breathe again now

Make me feel like i belong

because I don't, really.

I can't sleep. At all. Despite the fact that I really want to. I've replaced sleeping with being super anxious and nervous. But what I lack in courage I make up for in being pathetic.

It really doesn't matter what I say or do or try, I still feel uncomfortable, almost all the time. It's probably just me, but I don't think I belong here. I really don't feel like I belong, and I don't think that's something you can teach. And this sinking feeling, it doesn't get better. I'm tired. And not from a sleepless thirty-six hours.

I've tried everything, but realizing that you have nothing is kind of fucked. Please, save me.

Which is different, and more important

"We're just going to lose. What is that going to do to us? Does that not have a fucking price tag attached to it?"

"It will wreck us. It will be viciously costly."

"Wouldn't it be better just to quit now?"

"NO. Because we will be OK if we fail. We will get up and we will be OK someday. Not soon, but someday. But if we give up now then we will never, ever be okay because a) we will never be the people we want to be and b) we will not have done all the things worth doing."

"I want to do something worth doing, it's just so fucking scary, it's so fucking scary I'm so fucking scared.. Because I know that this is it for me, for this."

"Yeah I'm totally fucking terrified. You know why? Because we're putting ourselves out there in a big way for maybe the first time, and it's terrifying, because we know that they won't accept us. So let's FUCKIN DO IT."

"..are you really drunk?"

"Completely fucking smashed."

"I can't believe that there's a nightmare

on my street!"

The remake, or rather, reimagining of A Nightmare on Elm Street was pretty great. Reviewers will tell you otherwise, though, but that isn't something rare to the genre. It's pretty much expected.

It was by no means perfect, and in my mind didn't quite live up to the original, but the 1984 version of the film is kind of wedged into my heart pretty deep. Haley did not fall short as Freddy, and as a matter of fact, I'd say he did a fucking fantastic job. My issues with the film as a whole are somewhat 'minor', but they're enough to make a stark difference in my mind. For example, I had been led to believe that one of the biggest reasons for doing this reboot was to get Freddy away from being a wise-cracking killer. They do a good job of that, until the end of the film where Kruger gets a little dialogue heavy and starts to have that air of Englund about him.. the only difference being that it feels a lot more out of place with this Freddy than it ever did with Englund.

The first half of the movie literally had my heart racing, which almost never happens, and if it does, it's not for the length of time that it was. The suspense building that others will criticize as being 'expected and tired' is something that I applaud as feeling fresh. Part of that might be my knowing and expecting characters to die at a certain point, but that feeling should have been there with everyone, having seen the original or not. It's kind of just a goddamn genre thing. It got to me, and that doesn't fucking happen anymore, so I really just loved feeling uncomfortable again, like when I was a kid. Maybe it was just me though?

Of my two big problems with film, one was the use of CG at two particular parts that.. were really unnecessary. They should have just used spandex like they did in '84, and it would have looked great and been real. The other issue, and this might be a spoiler, is that the homage-death for our Tina character was very lackluster when compared to the original. I love watching a girl float around a room and get throw into the walls to the sounds of her back breaking just as much as the next guy, but.. I feel like I would have loved watching her get drug around the room in a far darker, bloodier, grisly mess (GRANTED this trick was done in the original movie and then AGAIN in Wes Craven's New Nightmare, but still.. the part felt like it wanted to be that scene, but didn't hit the mark).

So other than being a nit-picky fan-boy? Pretty great. I'd love to hear what other fans of the series, and genre, thought of it.

Convincing Myself

I keep lying and telling myself that the largest piece of motivation behind this project isn't just an excuse to talk to you again. I mean, the project itself means more to me than that, it really means everything to me right now. It's everything that's been plaguing and curing me for what has almost been a year, and maybe then some. It is about the important things in my life and what I've actually learned through all of this. But I can't pretend that an extremely important part of all of this was my relationship to you. And to my knowledge, you've only one out standing promise to me, and I hope you keep it.

I can already hear the horrible things that will be said about me once this is actually made public. I'm trying not to care, I really am, because this is more to me than anyone will know. Except, maybe you. And part of me is hoping that way.

I'm not going to lie to myself, and after I've tried every last thing I possibly can, I can look back and say "I was nothing but honest", and mean it. And then I will sit here, in love with you and alone, and read my book.

"He doesn't want us to cut through our chains

He wants us to cut through our feet." (And you know fucking good and well that we're doing it.)

It doesn't get easier, it's not a secret. You can't change how you feel in an instant, and sometimes you never can. Nothing can make it any less real, and it's those moments of reality that make the rest of it worth it. Sometimes we're just forced to live with pain, regardless of how much sense it makes. And all I can do is take that pain and try to make something worthwhile out of it. And I'm working on something I would call very worthwhile to me. It will probably upset a lot of people once it's out there and they see it, but I can't help but not really give a fuck. If it's what I have to do to feel something real again, then it's what I'm going to do.

In the mean time, I'm falling in love with pretty people and drawing them, poorly. This first boy's eyes were so beautiful that I would never be able to do them justice.

The second boy here has this thin, perfect neck that if I talk about for too long you might think me crazy.

(larger version upon click)

So far I'm not doing a good job masking the feeling of wanting to slit my throat*. It doesn't get easier, but I hear that if you wait long enough it does end.



*metaphor, you idiot

While You Slept

I try to keep business and pleasure separate. This being one and this being the other. However, from time to time I feel the need to bridge the gap between East and West. Soon and very soon we'll be a lot more business-y, all up ins, with a nice retrospective of some of my favorite slasher flicks and why I love 'em. But for now, I'm trying to help myself for once. Here is your repost, entitled:

Of Surreal Sincerity

" Sometimes I don't resonate with people. Sometimes things get downright livid. But there is a silent calm that comes after a fit of rage, and it's in this calm that realization always happens. They're the moments that a person can write off those finals chapters of life and end it all the easier way. They're the moments when it's so easy to abandon all hope.

It's an avalanche, if you'll allow that of me. Speaking directly about slaughtering yourself, it's never the last thing that happened. It's a misconception that a lot of people get strung up in. Ted down at the lumber mill one day up and offs himself, and the first question you hear on people's lips is "Why'd he do it?", but they don't really want to know. They want to know what 'pushed him over the edge', that exact phrase will always come up if you let it. But it's usually not that simple. It's an avalanche.

I understand that this point could be conveyed very simply by saying 'it's a lot of things that build up over time', but something gets lost in that. Some people come home to find their wife banging the pool cleaner, so they go out to the shed and find something sturdy. But some people don't get triggers like that. Some people are pushed so slowly out of bounds, that all it takes is for the weatherman to lie to you one more goddamn fucking time and-- We appear to have digressed again, because you opted for it.

As I was saying, realization always happens in these moments, but it isn't limited to being so morbid. Sometimes we can get a glimpse into everything we've ever known and wanted. Sometimes we receive extreme sincerity, and I don't mean something harsh like 'brutal honesty'. These are moments that are real. These are things worth walking away with. Sometimes the ends do justify the means.

What am I walking away from? And with? And where the fuck am I going to go now? This isn't quite over, and I will explain that in more painfully cryptic detail soon, I promise. But the feeling of the end being soon is there. In that same breath, though, I have a feeling this is not quite the end yet. We have to finish finish The Final Chapter before we can even think about starting A New Beginning. "

I hope we all get along.

Zuma's Revenge

"I just feel bad that he's being used in that way. And it bothers me that he's been pegged so wrong."
"I know. He's by no means a bad person. I think he's alright, really."
"I think he's a good person. Definitely worth talking to, different from everyone else I know."
"Oh, thanks."
"I didn't mean it that way."
"So is that why you love him?"
"..."
"What, did I strike a nerve?"
"No, I'm just trying to concentrate on this shot"
"Well you missed."

Ugh

My life.

The Times

I fell in love with a photographer like I always knew I would.

And people will still ask me why.