The Screenplay Venture

I start writing on a screenplay version of FREAK in a few days. What a surreal venture this is going to be. When I first started writing, I had no idea it would eventually turn into a memoir. I was simply ranting into my computer as an exercise recommended by my therapist.

The whole therapy venture was ironic to begin with. I’d always wanted to go to therapy, recognized the fact that I was fucked up, but was too much of a bruised mouse to demand it. My husband said it was too expensive and I simply nodded, weary with the knowledge that I’d never been worth spending money on. What a ten ton anvil self-hatred is, and how our bad relationships love to keep loading us up with more weight. And we allow it because we hate us too. What’s so funny about how I eventually made it to the marvelous Ms B, my therapist, is that my husband sent me after I told him our marriage was over. He thought she’d convince me to stop being nuts and go back to him.

It was an exhausting, emotionally cathartic yet devouring experience to write FREAK. Insecurity addicts have a tendency to gloss over the facts when it comes to memory. We’ve hardwired ourselves to see everything we did in a despicable light, regardless of age or circumstance. I remember my being a cocktease whore before I’d hit puberty, asking for all those unwanted dicks in unwilling orifices. When I began to knuckle down and legitimately write FREAK, my research began to show me the glaring inaccuracies in my emotional memory. Strange, how simply putting events into chronological order could have such a life altering effect, but it’s true. I was forcing myself to see things as they actually happened, splitting emotions and memories into separate categories as I examined the facts. Eerie and strange, to discover what a complete self-abusing dumbass I’d spent my whole life being. And few people had a clue as to what was going on inside my poor fucked up head. Outwardly, I was hilarious, bizarre, kind-hearted Rebecca, the woman with a quick wit and a fierce temper, someone you could always count on to help if she could, someone who’d never be mean but could sometimes be scary. Inwardly, I was a vicious, cruel bitch to a battered child with a tattered vagina and bleeding asshole. Insecurity addicts are inhuman monsters to ourselves. Writing FREAK, examining the story as a writer instead of the subject, changed me. Analytical thinking came face to face with self-mutilating emotionalism and the two established a shaky truce. Nowadays, self love outweighs self hatred, and by a lot. You can make leaps and bounds forward once you pull yourself out of the quagmire and quit stewing in your own acidic juices.

So now the next stage: a screenplay. FREAK is a brutally blunt memoir, with a lot of direct engaging of the reader as I ramble on about this that or the other horror or pondering. The good thing is, I’ve written a few screenplays already and I’m a movie fanatic. Those help a lot. So wish me luck in my screenplay venture. I’m thrilled to have had such a talented film director approach me about it in the first place. Being a brother of circumstance himself, he understands where my bouncy brain is coming from. I believe he can do a good job translating my story into film. Now to begin writing the damn thing. It will most likely be as much an adventure as writing the memoir.

Aieeeeeeeee!!!

Take care, All.

Love, R