slings and arrows

I've been hurting over the willingness of people I thought I was once close with to villainize me. It's really a strange thing being elevated in status from a person basically struggling, confused, and heartbroken, to an entity of mythological proportion. But, I suppose a threat doesn't have feelings, it's just a threat - an object of scorn and fear. While it is a distinct and undeniable downgrade from being human, it's not a position without power.

This is the dual life of the scapegoat. You are the honorary symbol of dysfunction, yet the only one who gets credit for having any agency. Someone points a finger and says she made me do it, or better yet, I would never do that. While I get to remain responsible for my own choices, everyone else involved is just a puppet.

In this black and white world, I am the black, the wrong, the bad. And as the bad one, I lost the right to feel hurt. I became invisible behind a screen on which others projected their fears (and formed alliances behind). People secretly love a villain. It validates what they always suspected to be true, that they are better than others. Disregard a person's total hypocrisy in numerous other ways - their transgressions big and small - on this count, they are fucking pious and will scream it from the rooftops.

Forgiveness is a slow process. Being human isn't enough, you have to deserve what you get. Well, I've decided I get to hurt. My gift to myself. I won't pretend the slings and arrows don't still land because they do. But I would rather sit with my grief rather than run to new dependencies. I will sit with my imperfections because I am ashamed. Not for all the debts I'm accused of owing, the pound of flesh, but for trading my love, my sense of self-worth for a lie.

"When we allow ourselves to be irritated out of our wits by something, let us not suppose that the cause of our irritation lies simply and solely outside us, in the irritating thing or person. In that way, we simply endow them with the power to put us into the state of irritation, and possibly into one of insomnia or indigestion. We then turn around and unhesitatingly condemn the object of our offense, while all the time we are raging against an unconscious aspect of ourselves which is projected into the exasperating object." ~ Carl Jung

Baba Yaga

You can hide behind another, like a bairn behind its mother's
skirts, but you're still scared of me. And you should be
for I've shed my earthly status for the realm of fantasy.

In the funhouse mirror of your eyes, I'm difficult to read,
as deformed as Baba Yaga sharpening her teeth.
But the bony one is hard to kill, I won't die easily.

Not because I'm supernatural or impervious to your swing.
It's simply hard to win a fight against your own psychology
(and it began long, long before I was ever on the scene).

In a few days, my understanding no more enriched than now, I place myself in the center of a green crater off the coast of Maui.

one, two

it's ok, really

no judgment

just numbers

like 4 follows 3

you're simply not 

strong enough yet

in yourself,

not for me.

don't stop the music

Walking to my car last night I ran into a neighbor and his friend. Sometimes it's ok to be vulnerable. You choose your moments or perhaps they are chosen for you. My building has covered parking in the rear of the building that opens to the street behind. There's an indenture in the wall behind the cars - a concrete stoop mostly hidden from view. Dominic and his friend meet here at what seems to be odd intervals to talk and (from the smell I would assume) smoke pot.

I take a seat between them without asking and am thankful when they don't object. An 80's mix of R&B plays on Dominic's phone. They are guys and I'm a girl, but there's no flirtation. People are people and right now I need it to be as simple as that. We commiserate over our crappy parking spots and swap stories of scratched car panels. We talk about Los Angeles. How it has changed and how it has stayed the same. Dominic's friend leaves.

Yarbrough and Peoples' Don't Stop the Music begins to play. I know this song from a disco tape my sister and I used to dance to as children. I don't have to think about it too much. The space hangs there between us, suspended by a few bars of music. I sing. And I let my voice carry. There have been so few moments lately, so little room for the heart. It doesn't lessen or even dislodge my hurt (which hangs somewhere between my ribs, sticky and unforgiving as tar). But I know I've been witnessed in some small way. And my idiot self is made easier to live with by it.