Lost Boys

Each time I re-read “Alias Grace”, I find yet another layer of rage. There is something darkly satisfying in that, as then I can claim it as my own. 

I sorely lack it.  Rage.

I have it, sometimes, swelling inside as a wave - but it can be so scary, to the part of me that can’t bear any bad thoughts, bad feelings, nay, even bad emotions unless they’re directed toward me myself, that it’s already easier to play the Moon, reverse the tide and hit with it at the right person aka me. 

There is an arrogance in it, or naivety, - of a little child who thinks the world comes to existence or ends because of him, and him alone. 
If something doesn’t match that puzzle- I’ll invent something. Something that bridges between craziness and reality. It won’t make no sense even to me, but who cares- the main danger is averted. 

Or maybe not, not averted, since I continue to exist, and I must tell you, I feel like I’ve been made an archetype of Great Danger, so nice must have been to play with it, risk all, pull, push, pull again, implicate in all sorts of things (luckily some were so degrading even I said “no”. or cried “no”. or tried to ), then decide that the Danger that was me is too big indeed.

I thought- sometimes- I am past all that; but then it comes at me, all of a sudden. 

 Truly, I ask myself now, why didn’t I add some arsenic to their collective porridge? 
Never mind that no one ate porridge, and I possess no arsenic. God, I could scarcely tell them I’m angry and mad. How can one tell someone he’s mad if he’s not sure he’s mad at the right person?

Once, I wanted to at least have some dubious fun slash profit, probably to try to choose things out of a place in me that didn't quite exist, and open a bordello, well, sort of.  As if I am a Madame, only very thin and, frankly, an idiot.

I was a special sort of wise, nice idiot. The wave would come rarely and shaped itself into some object I’d throw, but away, so it wouldn’t hit anyone.

 I remember a broken mug, and a lava lamp. I still feel guilty.  And we had so few things, who even throws something when there is hardly anything to throw?

 I did slap once a guy. It was at a party. They had to tear us apart as he was not above answering. After that, the host told me that even though I’m right considering the guy’s behavior, - it’s best I leave the party. They escorted me chez moi by the elbow, as if they were some understanding policemen. 

Funnily, the host told me the next day that the jerk whom I slapped really but really wants to meet me again, and asks permission for a date, and added, on his behalf: “He has a car”.

Really, doctor, I thought. Great start to go for a spin. 


 Of course it’d be hard to start-up a bordello in dorms. Next to impossible. It would have to be a sort of bordello.

I shared the idea with some boys, and oh how fully they were behind the idea. I’d say, “giddy with anticipation”, if it wasn’t such a cliché. But they were giddy alright, and frankly all this rant is a cliché. 

You know what stopped me, first of all? I couldn’t think of any girl I could even dare to approach. They all were...they. And I..I was me.

 No bordello for you, guys, go pay to some seedy place, even though back then no one had the money for seedy places. No money for me either. I also do not do well with it, the idea of money earned this way, feel guilty too, all the righteous ancestors rolling in their graves. 

Maybe now it’s finally time to kill them, the boys I mean, but aren’t they kind, nice, good citizens, some very good, with lovely families that love them, yes, I know, when you’d be enraged, you’d do so in beautiful, eloquent, grammatically correct English.  Imagine everybody’s pain. Including mine. “He was a wonderful person”. 

Yeah, only I am a creeping bad dream. 

“She was a creeping bad dream”. 

Go there-I -don’t know where, bring me a small stone from that place alone, see how they grow into a hill, wonder whether I’m lying still. 

Getting back to “Alias Grace”- several years back, I bought a book, a thick one, collections of works and essays and study cases by students of Masterson. 

I was most interested in schizoids, no one really writes a lot about schizoids on the Internet and wouldn’t recognize one if they hit him with a schizoid on the head, figuratively speaking. 
Actually, most people wouldn’t recognize anyone, it’s a lot of psychobabble out there. I bet there’s lots of money in that too.  Reminds me of my unopened bordello.

 Okay, so I wanted to learn more about schizoids, but there were some studies on other disorders too, in the book, and only one on DID, but it was a very long one, and endlessly fascinating.  Lots of suggestions of course. Maybes.

(Which is how it should be. Very little is known about it, I know authors and scenarists just love it, this DID, but it’s a rare bird. I heard of a couple people being diagnosed, they were hospitalized.  Heard from their family members, they obviously didn’t want to go into details. It was all painful as hell.) 

Also, it’s not science after all, it’s art; and even if it was science, - science always seeks to disprove things, or rather claim things that can be supported- or disproved. Correct me, as I’m bad in sciences. That’s just what I gleaned, being around almost exclusively people who are good in sciences. 

 It’s after reading that study that I re-read “Alias Grace” and thought: both can be true. Grace could be everything a book implies her to be- and at the same time still have dissociative identity disorder. 

I wish, if already thus afflicted, only I am not, I know because I asked my husband whether he notices something unusual, and whether he notices memory gaps, and he laughed and said no, I even took offence at that, can’t a girl go completely bonkers? 

I’m really tired, you know. I even forgot what I wished for, a moment before. 

Except for the most important things. 

That’s different though. Most important things ...we don’t just wish for them.  Wishes are birds above us or perched on our branches, most important things are ...whatever makes us stand or break and fall, or break yet not fall, and continue, somehow, to grow, even when there are no birds left.


I forgive you, I said suddenly. Well, until the next wave; and after it, I'll forgive you too.  
 
Lost Boys of my Neverland, Lost Boys that grew up. 

After all, aren't you  allowed to be idiots too, when so young; or maybe not? 

and I also thought: probably they all hit their heads when falling out of their prams, these Lost Boys, you know. 

I'm just...sometimes it seems unfair, paying so much. 

Then, what do I know about payments and costs. I'm just a hand writing, mene, tekel, y-pharsin.


Vaya con Dios. You see, I, too, am trying. 

****

I was going to post something completely different. Something I’ve been working on. And then someting happenned. And here you have this idiotic rant. I might lock it afterwards too.

But it needs to be taken out of the way first, I said softly. Doesn’t it?

Beautiful things-that-aren’t really fully mine….they call for a different arrangement of the soul.

*****

*The cover image is taken from Plus Grandir by Mylene Farmer