In the morning, after more than ten years, I watched American Psycho again with a mixture of fascination and horror, because it brought me face to face with something that troubles me too: that emptiness behind the perfect façade, that rupture between appearance and essence, between what is shown to the eyes of others and what haunts a soul inside. Patrick Bateman, with his impeccable exterior, his calculated confidence, his indisputable strength, attracted me not for the crimes that may not even exist, but for what he hides: an abyss of which he is not fully aware or which he hides to the point of oblivion.
And in front of this character, I saw myself, in that deaf struggle between remaining human or letting myself be swallowed by the wound that, instead of destroying me, makes me seek to destroy. And so, I asked myself the hardest, most uncomfortable questions, about what contempt is, what cynicism is, what is the desire for revenge, and how thin is the line between dreaming that you hurt and becoming, in fact, the one who hurts.
I realize with a painful clarity that I am at the edge of an abyss from which, if I don’t stop to look down, I could find myself slipping without being able to find my way back to myself. And it’s not about the abyss of crime, as happens with Bateman, this Bateman who, viewed from the blind angle of his shiny façade, could not help but fascinate me, not to tell me, behold, the man who knows how to be everything the world expects: handsome, impeccable, powerful, a monument of successful appearance, of the external order that covers the chaos within. But it is not he who really frightens me, but what I feel that connects him to me, the thought and the wound that make me recognize in his abyss an abyss that could also be mine.
For if Bateman kills, or dreams that he kills, or dreams that he dreams that he kills, what does it matter? He does nothing but fill with the blood of others the emptiness in himself, the impossibility of feeling, of finding himself in this world that asked him to be a mask, and not a living soul. And me? I do not lift the axe on anyone, but I recognize in myself the thought of contempt, of revenge, the desire to destroy the face of the one who has crushed me, to make them feel the wound they had inflicted on me. And yes, I am afraid of slipping, of becoming what I despise: a soul that pours out its pain on another, instead of carrying its cross to the end.
And yet, how much drama is born from this, how much drama for the one who dares to look in the mirror and stop lying to their eyes, their heart, their shadow! The truth is that we can’t live with this wound and remain untouched by it. The truth is that no façade lasts forever, that no matter how perfect the wall you build for yourself, there will come a moment when the crack will appear, and the emptiness inside you will burst to the surface, either in the form of a bloody dream or in the form of a contempt that poisons your every thought, word, or attempt to love.
And perhaps our greatest drama is not that we are hurt, but that we do not know what to do with this wound. Thirsting for the absolute, we stifle ourselves in an attempt to touch it, looking for in others what they cannot give us, expecting from the world what it cannot offer: perfect comfort, a hug that fixes everything, a truth that saves us from the struggle. And when we don’t receive, we despise. When we are not answered, we close ourselves. When we are not given what we dreamed of, we strengthen our walls.
I know well, I’ve dreamed so many times that I avenge my wound. I dreamed that I was defeating the one who broke my childhood, the one who buried my soul under years of humiliation and forced silence. And the dream leaves me just as empty, just as lonely and far from what I would like to be: a man who doesn’t hurt, a man who doesn’t let himself be pushed by the shadow, a man who, with all the contempt in his thoughts, chooses gentleness in deeds, chooses to be silent, chooses to leave.
But how difficult it is to choose gentleness when the desire for justice, for the liberation from pain, screams within you! How hard it is to remain human when the wound asks you to protect yourself with your fangs, when humility urges you to bite!
And this is where my path separates from Bateman’s. He allows himself to be swallowed up by emptiness, whether in fact, in a dream, or in fantasy. I still fight. I still care whether or not I become what I hate. I no longer seek to be good all the time. Who can? But I’ll never stop caring whether I’m still human or slowly turning into a monster.
Leave a Reply