I’m a horror addict.

Since childhood I’ve bathed in the dim glow of a television, watching as sea monsters devour ’40s starlets and crazed ax murderers deliver fatal, bloody blows.

As a suspiciously creepy doctor traces his eager fingers over a sharp blade, I study the bad lighting on his patient and scoff. The predictability is absurd, the warning overly sufficient.

The thing about horror movies is, in the most amusing way possible, the signs of terror are there all along. A kindly suburban family moves into a house built on an Indian burial ground and the father grills sausages near a half-unearthed skull.

Tess Johnson

A horny teenage couple decides to skinny dip in foggy waters patrolled by a hook-handed maniac. Because they’re doomed by their own naïve decisions, these victims seem expendable, even laughable.

At first I pity the young girl who lies down on, for example, Dr. Murder’s operating table. She’s a victim! Someone save her! But as the violins wrap my living room in ominous sound, my patience grows thin.

“Idiot,” I think, as she continues to trust anyone who might wear an eye patch. But Idiot and I have more in common than I’d like to admit.

My romantic life is often a campy horror movie — the signs of danger are there all along. I imagine myself in the place of the on-screen airhead, where my reluctance to learn is as classic as it is troubling.

Just like my cinematic counterpart, I’d do the illogical. To be me in the affairs of affection is to casually shrug off death omens; it is to lie on the operating table and feign ignorance as Dr. Murder dons his latex gloves.

Time after time, I walk into open traps — ones that would elicit choruses of “Dumbass!” and “You know better!” from an audience of moviegoers.

“Let’s check out this spooky basement. I’m sure the pile of bones means nothing,” I’d say, as I blow off a nice boy in favor of drinks with a strange, 32-year-old bartender with a face tattoo.

In the film world, I’d always choose the dark path into werewolf-infested woods, entertaining myself with the most unpredictable of its inhabitants. The dramatic irony is almost too much to bear when everyone in the theatre knows I’m toast.

The problem isn’t necessarily that I’m dumb, but that I choose to gamble. Facing a horde of gurgling zombies often ends in dismemberment, but in the off-chance it doesn’t, the escape is grand.

In my fumbled attempts at heartfelt connection, I might be the girl to unleash a rage virus upon society.

“Foaming at the mouth, you say? Oh, it’s nothing. This monkey just needs more love,” I’d insist as I opened the cage to get closer to boys who can make me feel just as wild and infected.

But when the credits roll, I take a serious look at my remains. How did I end up in 20 little pieces?

To be open to another is to be the soft and vulnerable sacrifice in your own cinematic story — the incarnation of an invitation for trouble.

With mostly myself to fault for entering haunted basements, I let myself have feelings for someone who never promised them back. I act surprised as I hobble around with a knife through my leg, when the fate was likely coming to me.

In a world where my moments of elation and security are often linked to harsh and cold retreats, the only solution is to compromise.

Though the romance genre is nice to visit, I will always crave the uncertainty provided by a mystery — poking my head where it doesn’t belong and ignoring easy chances for safety and warmth. But I will also, above all, try to be a smarter girl.

While my favorite films play host to dimwits whose organs end up on the ground, they’ve also got badasses who make it out alive.

As I watch Ellen Ripley defeat the Queen Alien, I vow to hone my own skills in life.

It’s easy to feel sorry for myself, to succumb to one defeat, to float in the wake of disappointment. But I won’t. I’ll bid farewell to unrealistic expectations, over-investment of feelings and obviously uninterested men.

The next time I’m faced with the rush of risk, I’ll sniff it out — but always with my wits about me, and always with a ray gun in hand.

-— Tess Johnson is a senior from Savannah majoring in anthropology