On Dreams, Auditions, and Anarchy

She arrived precisely on time—heels tapping out composure across the polished stone floors, her suit the soft grey of storm clouds before a downpour. Mid-century elegance wrapped around her like armor: precise, expensive, and quietly defiant.

The lobby was too clean. The kind of clean that made her want to smear fingerprints on the glass just to prove she existed. Two women, tight-lipped and silk-bloused, came to collect her.

“They’re ready,” one said.

Were they? She wasn’t.

A shadow walked beside her,

the person who came with her. She didn’t know who they were, only that they stayed close, like grief or memory. Silent support or silent judgment, she couldn’t tell.

They led her to a small set. Lights glaring. A camera already rolling, red light blinking like a quiet warning.

She hadn’t been called in yet. No cue, no action.

And yet she began.

Mimicry first, exaggerating the teacher’s clipped tones, the theatrical hand gestures, the superior tilt of her chin. A cruel little puppet show. Their mouths fell open, their perfectly painted lips trembling with silent protest.

Then came the collapse.

Tears without warning. She folded like paper, knees to floor, sobbing, “I just want to go home,” her voice cracked with a grief so real it painted streaks of black down her face. Her makeup wept with her.

Before the sympathy could settle, she erupted.

“I HATE THEM ALL WITH THEIR SLOBBERING GREEDY MOUTHS AND THEIR RANCID SOULS!” She flung her arm toward the teacher and assistant like Moses parting a sea of rot, as if she could ward them off or curse them with a gesture.

A breath. A drop in pitch.

“But I can’t kill myself,” she whispered, trembling. “I’m too much a coward.”

Then came the grin.

“Or maybe I will,” she continued, eyes gleaming through tears. “And they’ll find my bloated corpse crawling with flies and bursting with maggots. And my spirit—” she paused, smiling wider “—my spirit will be hovering nearby, just waiting to give one of them a swift kick in the ass so they fall headfirst into my putrefaction!”

The teacher gasped.

The assistant covered her mouth.

She ran straight to the camera, flipping both middle fingers, screaming with laughter:
“FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING FUCKERS!”

Then she stopped. Composed herself. Straightened her collar.

Turned to the teacher and asked politely, “So, did I pass?”

The silence buzzed.

The teacher’s voice trembled: “I don’t know whether to pass you, have you committed, or give you a job.”

She looked dead into the lens and smiled like it was a punchline.

“I’ll take one and three. I’ve already done two.”

Sleepy and Mother

~Sleepy~

Scarves floating like ghosts
Twirling and twirling
tickling my knees
Silken pink slippers
playing gypsy dancer
Gossamer wings
to fly and flit
petals waiting on the wind
floating softly
fairy boats on the water
Dappled sunlight
playing warm on white stones
mermaid sunning
blue-green wetscales
and Ophelia's petal-hair
Siren songs
sing sweetly
of Secret Gardens
follow blackbird
to the iron-keyed door
where swings are twining vines
swallowed in sweet scent
of pollen bees buzzing slowly
Leprechauns have houses of gold
where the rainbow ends~
-------------------------------------

~Mother~
I wondered why that spot inside of me was so vulnerable.
That secret place I had tucked away in a far corner of my heart.
Growing dusty in the attic of my mind.
That traveler's trunk of insecurity,
locked securely and strapped tightly.
Yet I walked into your the room of your mind,
into the dim interior of your idiosyncrasies,
and you opened that rusty trunk as if it had never been locked.
I know... I know...
I told myself over and over,
that I am not those things you think,
not those things you say.
I bled everyday as the lies I swallowed became razors in my throat.
Working their purpose
destroying me from the inside out,
bleeding away all of my self-esteem
all of my security,
all of what is me.
I was sick unto death and my hatred of you grew and grew
until it became its own entity.
Living and breathing,
the stench of the cesspool of vileness it exhaled
morbidly intoxicating,
replicating,
doting on its horrid spawn,
cultivating more and more
of me.
And building upon itself seared my vision
white hot with insurmountable rage
and lashing out wildly in the end,
uncontrollable,
I imagined that you were dead.
That I had cut you to pieces
and left you in a quivering, bloody heap.
And then I vomited up all of the sickness
and all of the lies
you fostered
that I believed
and I felt relieved.~

Things I've Never Said To Anyone

 I think about suicide every day. I think about it several times a day every day. I have been doing this since my first suicide attempt at seven years old. I would never attempt it again. Mainly because of my daughter. What would happen to her if I died? I have no will because I can’t afford to a lawyer to get one made, so if I die, she goes into foster care. This is something I would never want for her. I have never told anyone, even my many therapists over the years, that I think about suicide every day. Suicide is a trigger word and people have automatic knee-jerk reactions to it. I can understand why, which is why I have never told anyone. Some mornings, like yesterday, I wake up and the first and only thing I think is, “I’m so done with this world, this life. I’m so done.”

I get hard mood swings. I never go very high, but I definitely go very low. Last night, I was sitting at my computer doing something fairly routine for me and all of the sudden, my heart dropped and I had visions of myself slitting my arms open from wrist to elbow. Intrusive thoughts and more intrusive feelings. When I was in my twenties, the intrusive thoughts were so bad that I thought I was losing my mind at times. So, I learned, for the sake of my own sanity, to visualize pushing those types of thoughts away. Now, I’ve become very adept at it as was the case last night. It’s exhausting, though, to have to constantly monitor your thoughts and to actively push away some of them and replace them with more positive ones. There have been several points in my life where I was so exhausted that I just stopped doing it and let those thoughts run wild. As a result, I nearly went over that emotional cliff that I’ve always been terrified of. 

Involuntary. 

Psychiatric. 

Hold. 

Ever since I’ve had my daughter, though, I’ve given that particular cliff a very wide berth. I’m the Champion of Mental Monitoring. Even though, being a single mother is very hard, I suppose this is one benefit for me. I love her so much that I have, for the last ten years, kept myself from falling in the hole.

I’ve never been diagnosed as Bipolar, but I have been diagnosed with chronic depression. Sometimes, I wonder if I have Borderline Personality Disorder, but then a part of me thinks, “What good are labels?” I mean, don’t labels just limit us in terms of what we think about ourselves and what we can do with our lives? Isn’t living with a label somewhat akin to living in a box-shaped life? On the other hand, I don’t have very much hope for my life as it is now. I can only imagine just living one monotonous, miserable day after another until I die. For a couple of years in my thirties, I was in a serious relationship with a guy in his early twenties. (I remember telling a good friend about this and she said, “I had one of those once. They’re fun.”) I can remember his constant hopefulness about his future, which was in hard contrast to what I felt about mine. His unflagging optimism about his life was so unfamiliar to me that I looked at him in my mind sometimes like a strange being from another dimension. Like a unicorn. We were so different in so many ways, that now I think the only thing that kept us together for as long as we were was the sex.

An Old Poem from Another Me

You'll see through me.

Right?

You'll rescue me.
Right?
From the shadows of myself
that I creep around in.
I need you to say that
everything will be okay.
You'll tell me.
Right?
How to be like you?
Healthy.
Functional.
You'll speak to me, right?
So, these noisy, insane voices
will disappear?
In the name of Honesty.
I am an open book.
Laid bare and raw before you.
You won't leave me, right?
When you find out how crazy I am.
You'll stay with me, right?
When I try to push you away?

Break The Rock

 

 As I lay in half sleep, listening to her voice, she said with a Russian accent angrily, "Who is this person who is so bad that you hate her so much? Why? Why do you hate her so much? What has she done that is so terrible? Is she a serial killer? Does she steal? Does she lie? Does she abuse children? Why do you hate her so much? Why?"

I thought back, "She lies a bit about some things. She has stolen a few things when she needed them and had no money. She's never killed anyone and she's never abused her daughter."

Again in her deep voice she said, "Why does this person not deserve abundant material wealth? Why does this person not deserve to be healthy? Why does this person not deserve to be sound in her mind? Why does this person not deserve all of the good things that the Creator has made for her?" 

I thought back, as if stuck in a horrible loop, "Because I hate her."

Angry again, the voice yelled, "WHY? WHY DO YOU HATE HER?!"

I had no answer. So, I lay there miserable wondering why this angry Russian woman was questioning me so harshly. 

Minutes ticked by ever so slowly. I don't know if I was waiting for her to begin again or if I was trying to go back to sleep or if I was continuing to try to justify hating someone I had no real reason to hate.

She came back with a boom in my head," Let me tell you why you hate her. You hate her because you mother taught you to hate her when she beat you and cursed you. You hate her because your father taught you to hate her when he beat you and said those cruel things to you. You hate her because your grandfather taught you to hate her when he said he loved you and violated your body when you were such a small child. You hate her because the men told you to hate her when they raped you. They told you that you deserved it and that you really wanted it. You hate her because you have never found a safe place for your heart in this world which can be so cold and soulless. You hate her because she is you." 

And then she showed me the image of my hate in a place in my mind in which it floated. It looked like a rock suspended in water or jello. The color was grayish black and from behind the rock there was a glow of reddish pink shots of light interspersed with dots of white. As if it were set against a backdrop of spiritual fire and sparks. 

This is what she told me and this is what she showed me. I am waiting for her to come again. I am waiting to break the rock.