The bulk of this post was originally published as a zine for the 2023 Hallozeen Zine Swap. I don't have any for sale at the moment, but if you would like one feel free to just send me an email and I'll see what I can do :)


On Saturday I went to my friend Matthew's 40th Birthday party. I had a really nice time just sitting around, chatting, drinking mulled wine and eating salad and pizza and cake. Matthew's only Birthday Request was for his guests to prepare a small living room performance, and so I decided to take along a zine to read from. Two other people performed some poems, which were both lovely, and we also sang him Happy Birthday, which I don't think was one of his birthday wishes (sorry Matthew!).

While reading my zine over in preparation, I had the a couple of moments where I thought "oh, this is acutally pretty good!", so I figured it might be worth sharing. So here it is! As always there is extra stuff in the zine that doesn't translate well to a website, and vice versa, but this is pretty much the bulk of it. Enjoy!


I Think the Movie 'Final Destination' Really Contributed to my Generalised Anxiety Disorder When I Watched It at Age 12

At age 12, the summer before I start high school, I watch Final Destination at a sleepover birthday party. Scratch that; I watch the first half an hour or so of Final Destination at a sleepover birthday party, and then spend the rest of the film hiding out in my friend Amanda’s family computer room playing Neopets. It’s a movie about a group of teens who manage to cheat Death, except this makes Death themself pissed, so they start killing off each of the survivors one by one in a series of elaborate freak accidents. The movie opens with a larger group of teenagers boarding a plane to Paris to go on a school trip, which is all very exciting, until this one guy, our protagonist Alex, has a premonition that the plane they’re on is going to explode. So he causes a big scene to try and get everyone off the plane, but he only manages to get a small group of students and one teacher to get off. They’re all standing in the airport lounge, shitty at Alex for ruining their chance to go to Paris, and as they watch the plane ascending, it explodes in mid air, and everyone onboard is killed.

Up until this point, I haven’t given much thought to what watching Final Destination is actually going to be like. I know that it’s a ‘scary movie’, because when we were picking out movies at the local Blockbuster, Amanda had insisted that we get something scary, and we all agreed because it was her sleepover birthday party after all. I realise later that what I had thought of as scary movies were actually just ‘movies with scary parts in them’; movies like Jurassic Park or Twister. I had no frame of reference for what a true ‘horror’ movie actually was. I thought - hoped - that the plane crash would be the worst of it.

Soon it becomes clear to me that the plane crash is definitely not the worst of it. I’m going to try and describe the first death scene, Tod’s death scene, from memory and I’m probably going to get a lot of it wrong, so I’m sorry if you’re a big Final Destination fan and I’m butchering your favourite movie. Maybe you can go watch it and see how much I get right? In any case, I’m going to be describing how someone dies in the next paragraph, so if you don’t want to read that (and fair enough), skip to the next paragraph.

Some time has passed since the plane crash, and we find Alex’s best friend Tod brushing his teeth in the bathroom. Either he knocks a glass of water off the sink or there’s already water on the floor - I have a vague memory of shattering glass - anyway, the important part is that he slips, and reaches out to steady himself. He grabs onto the shower hose, pulling it out of the wall, and in what seems like a truly freakish accident, the hose wraps itself a few times around his neck. The camera zooms in on his face, eyes bloodshot and bulging, as his fingers claw at his throat, trying desperately to stop himself from being choked to death. At this point I’m like ok surely this hose/wire thing is going to break, right? He’s not actually going to die, is he? But he does die. Of course he dies. This is a horror movie. And that’s when I realise, just as Alex and the other survivors do as Tod is wheeled away in a body bag, that the plane crash was only the beginning.

After the Tod-getting-strangled-in-the-bathroom-scene, I do not want to watch anymore. But Amanda doesn’t want to stop the movie, and she is the birthday girl, so I go and hide in the computer room. At some point Amanda’s older brother comes in and logs into the computer for me so I can play Neopets, which does make me feel a bit better, except that I can still hear everything that is going on outside the door. At one point Amanda’s cousin bursts into the room, declaring that whatever was going was too much, even for her! I’m not sure what was worse - watching the movie, or listening to the screams through the door and having my own imagination fill in the blanks. So when Amanda’s cousin decides that it’s safe to go back out, I decide to join her. She seems to think the worst is over, so maybe it is? My bravery is rewarded with the scene where the surviving teacher fills a mug that had just had a hot drink in it with a cold one. The sudden change in temperature causes the ceramic mug to break, spilling liquid all over her computer, which in turn causes her house to explode. And okay, as I type this out now I’m aware how truly ridiculous this sounds, but to an accident-prone twelve year old with an extremely active imagination, the idea that you could die by spilling your drink on a computer is pretty fucking terrifying. Ironically, I retreat back to the computer room.

To this day I have no idea what happens after the teacher’s house explodes, because Amanda’s mum get’s wind that some of us are not having a good time. She comes upstairs and makes Amanda switch the movie over to something ‘more appropriate’ - after a lot of arguing Amanda chooses Happy Gilmore. I’ve never heard of Happy Gilmore, and so I ask Amanda’s cousin, who I now consider somewhat of an ally, “is it scary?” She laughs and says, “You’ll be fine, unless you’re scared of alligators.” I am not scared of alligators, not really, and the movie is fine, but I still don’t sleep at all that night, and not even for fun tween girl sleepover reasons.

When Mum comes to pick me up the next day, Amanda’s mum tells her about what happened, and I am mortified because I have always been the kind of kid who tries to hide her feelings from her parents. When Mum asks me about it in the car I insist that I’m fine now, and I think maybe I am - it’s a bright, hot summer day, with nowhere for any scary hooded figures to hide. Except, the more I think about it - and it’s the school holidays so I have lots of time to think about it - there are no scary hooded figures to be afraid of in Final Destination. I mean, the kids are being stalked by Death, but it’s more of an abstract concept than a physical manifestation, right? The really scary stuff is the stuff that’s rooted firmly in reality - people die in plane crashes, people slip over in bathrooms, people spill stuff on their computers all the time. The movie might’ve made Death into a vengeful spirit claiming the lives they think they are owed, but in real life there is no single demon or cloaked figure to pin any of this on, not really. And so my anxiety is free to run riot and make me afraid of … everything.

I spend the rest of that summer fighting off waves of terror as I steep in all the awful things that could happen to the people around me. In the weeks that follow, any time I find myself separated from my family for more than a couple of hours, I start to get anxious, and the anxiety builds and builds until I’m almost certain that something bad has happened to them. An example - one day I’m at my friend Tori’s house, and it’s a really hot day so we decide to go swimming in her pool. While I’m floating peacefully on my back, staring up at the brightest, bluest sky, I spot a plane flying overhead, and then suddenly all I can think about is how that plane could explode at any minute, and also that my mum could be on that plane, and then I won’t stop crying until I call her up and talk to her on the phone.

The worst of it though is at year Year 7 camp. It’s the first day and I am doing fine until dusk, when we’re all gathered in the common room to eat our first dinner together. I am put on a table with people I don’t really know and given this food that I don’t really like and I guess that’s enough to set me off? Before I can help myself I start crying, and one of the random boys I’m sitting with goes “look Evan you made her cry.” Someone gets Miss May, my year 7 form teacher, and she gently takes me outside, but of course to get outside I have to walk past nearly a third of my year level with tears streaming down my face.

I walk with Miss May around the camp for a bit as she tries to calm me down. She asks about what’s wrong, and I can’t bring myself to tell her “I watched a scary movie and now I’m afraid anyone I love could die at any time”, so I just explain the movie part. I remember her saying “Wait, not the one with Pacey in it? You can’t be scared of Pacey!” And I know she’s trying to make me laugh, but I haven’t seen any Dawson’s Creek, and not knowing who Pacey makes me feel even stupider than I already do.

I make it through the rest of the camp okay, but I guess Miss May must tell my parents about what happened when we get back, because they get me to speak to a psychologist at the school a few times. And like, not the school counseller, they actually have to get a psychologist to come in to see me. I am given a note to take up to my teacher that excuses me from class, which is in itself horrifying, but I also feel a small spark of excitement, like maybe I’m feeling a bit special being the center of attention. In our session the psychologist asks me what my favourite colour is and I tell her, green. She says that when I feel the fear coming on, that I should close my eyes and imagine my whole body slowly filling up with that colour. She tells me the colour is supposed to take the fear’s place, and make me feel calmer. I imagine my fear turning the colour of grass, and I guess it helps a bit. Things do get easier after this, but I wonder how much of it is me becoming less anxious, and how much of it is me learning to hide my anxiety better, because I don’t want to worry or annoy anyone anymore.


At age 15, I watch The Ring (US version) at my friend Charlie’s house. His mum isn’t home on weekends much so we often go over to his on a Saturday night to eat charcoal chicken and watch movies. Most of the time we watch dumb teen comedies or action movies, but every now and then someone will try for a horror movie. I hate the horror movie nights, but I still go along with them because I’m an expert now, I think, at holding the anxiety in. I don’t want my friends to think I’m a loser, and I don’t want to ruin their night like I ruined Amanda’s twelfth birthday sleepover party.

The night we watch The Ring, though, I don’t do a very good job at holding it in. I have this blanket resting on my knees, and spend a lot of the movie with it pulled over my head, sometimes stuffing the blanket in my ears so I can’t hear what’s going on either. Still, I’m proud of myself for making it to the end without retreating to another part of the house. I don’t even get too upset by the prank Steven decides to pull - sneaking out to the backyard to call Charlie’s home phone and scare the shit out of us. I’ve survived another horror movie night, I think. But then Charlie finds something in the DVD extras menu called ‘Watch the Video’, which turns out to be an full, extended version of the footage from the cursed video tape - you know, the one that if you watch it, you get a phone call saying that you’re going to die in 7 days? I really, really don’t want to watch it, and I say so, but of course he plays it anyway. Why wouldn’t he? It’s not like anything’s going to happen.

I spend the next week actually terrified that I’m going to die in 7 days. Like I know in some quiet, rational part of my brain that if all the people who watched that DVD extra started dropping dead after 7 days, we would hear about it. But it’s being drowned out by a very loud voice that’s saying “but what if it’s real? Did you watch the whole thing? You hid under a blanket for most of it? I dunno, you were still in the same room, I think that you are definitely going to die.” Imagine having that conversation with yourself, on a loop for 6 days straight.

On the 6th day, so the day before I think I’m going to die, I go to this big rhododendron garden in the Dandenongs with my parents. It’s a beautiful afternoon, we spend ages wandering around, and I am much less surly about it than I might’ve been, I guess because I’m thinking what if this is the last day that I get to spend with my parents? I don’t say anything to either of them about it - too embarrassing - but I do remember thinking that if this is going to be my last day, it’s a pretty nice way to spend it.

Spoiler alert: I don’t die.


An aside: there’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot while writing about this, and that’s the double-edged sword of being an imaginative child. I have always placed great value on my imagination - the way it helps me as a writer and artist, how I’m rarely ever bored when I’m by myself, how it fuels my ‘rich inner life.’ And if my imagination is like a muscle, and I’ve been exercising it every day of my life, when I fixate on the things I’m scared of, the full power of that muscle is turned against me. My rich inner life becomes my own personal Saw trap house.


At age 16 I watch The Grudge (US version). I watch it in almost the exact same way as I watched Final Destination - at my friend Bronte’s sleepover birthday party. I spend the whole lead up to the party quietly nursing nausea, which gets worse and worse the closer we get towards movie time. All the couches in the room have been moved around to face the TV, but there are still too many kids to fit so some of us sit on the floor. Someone jokes, maybe Bronte herself, that if this movie gets too scary she’s going to hide behind the couch. That’s not a bad idea, I think. I move to the arm of the couch so I have a quick exit. The lights go down, people are giggling nervously or shifting around, still trying to get comfortable, throwing popcorn at each other. And then the movie starts and I feel … nothing. The movie keeps going, building suspense with music and the occasional jumpscare … and I still feel nothing. It’s like a spell has broken or a gear has shifted or something, because all of a sudden I feel like a fundamentally different person. I’m just not scared. The hands reaching out of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s hair while she takes a shower - not scary. The small child with the black eyes and screaming with the too-wide mouth - not scary. I look around the room. I look at my friends - some of them are scared, some of them have had too much sugar and are mucking around. I think, “Oh my god. I’m fixed. I fixed it. And I have no idea how I did it.”

I am not ‘fixed’, obviously. Going to therapy, I’ve learned this anxiety is something I’ve lived with for most of my life, and it’s not just because of a movie I saw when I was 12. And I’m still living with it. If Kyle is out late and I haven’t heard from him in a while, sometimes my mind will immediately jump to “he’s been hit by a car while riding home on his bike and any minute now the police are going to be knocking on my door to tell me that he’s dead.” And then that’s all I think about and I can’t sleep until I hear his keys in the door. I hate it. It’s a kind of worrying that I used to get annoyed at my mum about, that my Dad would always make fun of my grandmother for. It makes me think about how if I ever had kids of my own, I would probably spend most of my time completely immobilised by fear of them dying in some freak accident. They would either hate me or just laugh and tell their friends stories about how their bat-shit mother is always telling them not to fill cold mugs with hot water.

Still, I am learning how to get out of the Saw trap house, and quicker every time. Therapy helps. Antidepressants help. And I know now that even though I can’t stop the anxiety from coming, at least I can try to be more prepared for it when it does. I can study the Saw traps of my mind and get better at beating them, while still holding onto the smallest glimmer of hope that one day I’ll wake up and the gears will have shifted again and I’ll just feel different.


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