Well it happens without your cognizance anyway, doesn't it? But what do you do when it doesn't make you happy anymore? I mean it doesn't make you happy in the way that you realize it never did and it's taking you so far away from happy that you'll need bus fare, a full tank of gas, or possibly a plane ticket to get anywhere close. And the worst part is that it's happening inside of you. And you can't let anyone else in to help. And you don't especially want to.
You know your mind was crooked once, and your hope was that it straightened itself out, and you know still that it's just laying dormant until nothing you expected will uncover all of the sand, and there it will be, ready to jump out and hold you at gunpoint. It's mostly about crawling down the interstate in a swirl of white, and you don't understand why feelings come so unbidden to you in your quiet mornings, with a cup of coffee and pretty music and nothing at all to lend itself to that situation. "But what happened?" they ask. "Something must have happened to make you feel this way." And they don't believe you when you say, "Nothing. Nothing happened." But that's as close to the truth as you can get, verbally. Nothing ever happens outside of you. The catalyst is something small. Something you could never even pinpoint as "the reason", because it isn't the reason. It's the little page boy sent to open the door on the avalanche you'll inevitably end up underneath. And you've never been the kind to shoot the messenger.
So you've tried the looking glass part. The "mirror, mirror on the wall". And fuck Snow White. Not for being beautiful, because who can hate because of beauty, but for being simple and happy. For singing at the well in total contentment and "Some day my Prince will come" submissive misogynistic bullshit that will make her happy, because fucking everything makes her happy, and no wonder the Queen wanted her heart in a box. Maybe she could eat it and absorb some of that total contentment, or at least bask in it in a dark room. Because who wants discontented beauty? No one wants to wrap themselves up with a distorter who will weave everything in her life into the fabric of her particular brand of demon.
Even before all of this, when you would dress up like Cinderella and Lori would laugh and say, "Cinderella, mop the floor! Cinderella, do the dishes!" just to go along with your little game, it was underneath you. Even when you would dance like an exotic princess in front of the mirror in Mary Ellen's room with her engagement ring tucked tightly in your little fist, it was there. A poisonous feeling that would rise to the surface without any warning. Love would disgust you. Any kind of love. And when you went to Church, they said it was the devil, and that made sense. Of course the devil would send you these poisonous thoughts. But then you got older and met good people who told you that everything you slept with and tucked close under your chest was a lie, and you did and didn't believe them at the same time. Logic. Reasoning. You started to see the evil in what you had deemed impenetrably good. And it was you. You were the evil, weren't you? The wicked Queen. Because who's disgusted by love? Who gets pleasure out of pushing him away from you until you see the hurt look in his eyes? You loved it, wrapped it around yourself like a mink coat, the knowledge that what you were doing would hurt them, even if they didn't know.
"There's a meaning to every fleeting action you unconsciously decide." And the thought exhausts you. Not so much worrying about how all of the hypothatical thems will interpret the unconscious signals, but because you don't know what any of them mean. You haven't located it, the source of all of the good that won't come out of you and the home of the monster/liar/side switcher who unleashes the avalanche. Was it a person, an event, a moment, a combination of all of these conflicting elements that make up your past, despite your mantra, "Your past is a story. It has no power over you. It's a story. It's a story. It's a story." Is it innate? Were you born with it? You were 15, and crying over something or other, and Lori sad, "You choose sadness. It never once has chosen you." So you can't help but think of it like the red cardigan next to the green cardigan in some department store, and the "Oh, I'll take that one." But part of you just can't subscribe to that idea when the avalanche descends and you stop being able to breathe.
So you have to keep them at arm's length, don't you? You say "So it doesn't cover them, too", but that isn't true either, is it? You're only interested in any of them so far as it concerns you. So you wrap yourself in a blanket of your red concern, and fill yourself with the temporaries. You're disturbed and disgusted by the ones who want to change you, fix you, like you're some sort of errant plane they could land. Somewhere in the twisting alleyways of your brain machine, you found a cul-de-sac, and you've been resting there. An, "I give up, let's do it this way." But it didn't work. It wasn't really a cul-de-sac. You're wrapped up in a new series of twists and collisions. "Take me home, country roads", but you don't know where home is anymore. You say, "Stagnancy is death, and I am alive", so you keep moving, but don't they tell children when they're lost to stay where they are? Let someone find you? Ha. But you aren't a child, and you don't want to be found. So maybe this is all appropriate. The fact that all of your changing comes with an eerie dose of sameness.
You know your mind was crooked once, and your hope was that it straightened itself out, and you know still that it's just laying dormant until nothing you expected will uncover all of the sand, and there it will be, ready to jump out and hold you at gunpoint. It's mostly about crawling down the interstate in a swirl of white, and you don't understand why feelings come so unbidden to you in your quiet mornings, with a cup of coffee and pretty music and nothing at all to lend itself to that situation. "But what happened?" they ask. "Something must have happened to make you feel this way." And they don't believe you when you say, "Nothing. Nothing happened." But that's as close to the truth as you can get, verbally. Nothing ever happens outside of you. The catalyst is something small. Something you could never even pinpoint as "the reason", because it isn't the reason. It's the little page boy sent to open the door on the avalanche you'll inevitably end up underneath. And you've never been the kind to shoot the messenger.
So you've tried the looking glass part. The "mirror, mirror on the wall". And fuck Snow White. Not for being beautiful, because who can hate because of beauty, but for being simple and happy. For singing at the well in total contentment and "Some day my Prince will come" submissive misogynistic bullshit that will make her happy, because fucking everything makes her happy, and no wonder the Queen wanted her heart in a box. Maybe she could eat it and absorb some of that total contentment, or at least bask in it in a dark room. Because who wants discontented beauty? No one wants to wrap themselves up with a distorter who will weave everything in her life into the fabric of her particular brand of demon.
Even before all of this, when you would dress up like Cinderella and Lori would laugh and say, "Cinderella, mop the floor! Cinderella, do the dishes!" just to go along with your little game, it was underneath you. Even when you would dance like an exotic princess in front of the mirror in Mary Ellen's room with her engagement ring tucked tightly in your little fist, it was there. A poisonous feeling that would rise to the surface without any warning. Love would disgust you. Any kind of love. And when you went to Church, they said it was the devil, and that made sense. Of course the devil would send you these poisonous thoughts. But then you got older and met good people who told you that everything you slept with and tucked close under your chest was a lie, and you did and didn't believe them at the same time. Logic. Reasoning. You started to see the evil in what you had deemed impenetrably good. And it was you. You were the evil, weren't you? The wicked Queen. Because who's disgusted by love? Who gets pleasure out of pushing him away from you until you see the hurt look in his eyes? You loved it, wrapped it around yourself like a mink coat, the knowledge that what you were doing would hurt them, even if they didn't know.
"There's a meaning to every fleeting action you unconsciously decide." And the thought exhausts you. Not so much worrying about how all of the hypothatical thems will interpret the unconscious signals, but because you don't know what any of them mean. You haven't located it, the source of all of the good that won't come out of you and the home of the monster/liar/side switcher who unleashes the avalanche. Was it a person, an event, a moment, a combination of all of these conflicting elements that make up your past, despite your mantra, "Your past is a story. It has no power over you. It's a story. It's a story. It's a story." Is it innate? Were you born with it? You were 15, and crying over something or other, and Lori sad, "You choose sadness. It never once has chosen you." So you can't help but think of it like the red cardigan next to the green cardigan in some department store, and the "Oh, I'll take that one." But part of you just can't subscribe to that idea when the avalanche descends and you stop being able to breathe.
So you have to keep them at arm's length, don't you? You say "So it doesn't cover them, too", but that isn't true either, is it? You're only interested in any of them so far as it concerns you. So you wrap yourself in a blanket of your red concern, and fill yourself with the temporaries. You're disturbed and disgusted by the ones who want to change you, fix you, like you're some sort of errant plane they could land. Somewhere in the twisting alleyways of your brain machine, you found a cul-de-sac, and you've been resting there. An, "I give up, let's do it this way." But it didn't work. It wasn't really a cul-de-sac. You're wrapped up in a new series of twists and collisions. "Take me home, country roads", but you don't know where home is anymore. You say, "Stagnancy is death, and I am alive", so you keep moving, but don't they tell children when they're lost to stay where they are? Let someone find you? Ha. But you aren't a child, and you don't want to be found. So maybe this is all appropriate. The fact that all of your changing comes with an eerie dose of sameness.
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