in the beginning was the Word.or at least, in my beginning were words, magic words that made them wonder, made them wish they weren't me, were blessedcursed with words running around like roaches in their brains all the time, every now and then escaping just for a minute into ... something.
bad bad words, the people are staring now, wondering if it would be impolite to edge quietly away, wondering where their coats are and how far it is to the door, nodding politely to the crazy woman with the tangled hair who tells them life is pain and joy is sorrow and nothing is real except the salt of tears. let's get out of here before she throws up, used tequila and clam dip in a puddle at her feet and another party comes to an end. why do i wear black, anyway?
but the taste of alcohol makes her sick. so she hides it well, drinking pale booze shimmering under layers of pungent juice.
this isn't about alcohol. it's about words, about having them tear at you and want out and knowing they can't escape. it's about writing this in despair, selfcursing why the fuck doesn't it sound right and who cares anyway, the hamster behind me is scratching at the hamster-proof plastic cage while the cats tap gently at his walls with their paws.
yellow sun of yarn on the floor for cats to eat, except it's not interesting enough, too tidy, too self-contained. don't you know that the only real things are chaos, screaming bleeding slippery mess on the floor and only in frustration and pain is there release? think about it: the moment before orgasm, when every muscle in the body tenses to breaking point, pushing toward an edge, unendurable finally snap and you're there.
and the next day we dress in white and go to church, then come home and pray over the corpses of our chicken dinners.
given that you've made it this far, this is about words and the magic they are, how i'm coming to realize that i live in a cage, peering out through bars that upclose resolve into the crossbars of capital letters.
background: i spent my adolescence having reality defined for me. the only things that were true were spoken things, and anything spoken by anyone but me was true. disbelief cost blood, so i believed fervently. words had terrifying power, they made you bad or good, sane or healthy, okay or terminally fucked-up.
then i left.
but still, i didn't trust my own judgment. until recently, i thought that's as far as it went. i've known for a long time (and fought against) a tendency to look for outside confirmation in everything i say or do. "ya know what i mean?" "follow?" "d'ya think?" are the closest to mantras i get. it's not enough that i notice something about you -- i have to point it out and get you to agree.
but there's a deeper dimension here, one i'm just discovering. on some level, i allow spoken things to run my life. if it is spoken about me, it is true. all those arguments about "why should you care what people say about you?" snapped into perspective when i realized this. amazing to discover that the rest of the world doesn't operate this way -- people's opinions about you are just that, opinions (and i can deal with that kind of distinction in fact-based stuff, btw). they don't warp reality, don't touch your soul. unless you're me.
so no wonder the move to chicago was so stressful. when i lifequaked and moved to austin, i was invited into the group i joined by many of its members simultaneously; i was choosing to subject myself to their opinions. when i moved here, i was asked into a group by one member, and accepting his invitation meant laying myself open for interpretation and redefinition by a dozen other people. i didn't feel asked in by these other people (who of course had no clue how nervous i was about the impending judgment and how much i wanted to get it over with), and i wasn't sure how to get them to ask me in. lots of confusion, each side waiting for the other to *do* something. at least in austin i knew who i was supposed to be -- here the only identity i had was being matt's girlfriend. the more insecure i got, the more i clung to being that and the more it slipped away.
so now what? being able to see this at all feels like a major beginning. i mean, now i know better what it is i'm fighting, and i can learn more to separate opinion from fact, take back the magical wordpower, make my own definitions. hard stuff, but that's prolly why i have a shrink.
interesting, though, that in the midst of all this i became a writer and fell in love, at least for a while, with a man who was as infatuated with words as i was terrified by them.
--
sine | deb
"to be nobody-but-myself in a world which is doing its best, night
and day, to make me everybody else means to fight the hardest
battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting" --
ee cummings