August 3, 2020
We have been inside for so long. In my life I have always had it this way. My body lying on a bed, eyes making daydreams on a popcorn ceiling. I do not mind that it was chosen for me because I would be here regardless. The park across the street is where I catch the sun and leaf through books. I can see it from the small room in which I live.
The other day I looked at the moon thinking, if I had known what life would be like before the choice of existence was presented, I would have decided against it. The theatre of my mind has never been so private in its suffering, but it persists blithely without an audience. The pain is familiar enough that describing it is both easy and a drag.
I do feel older now, less devoted to the performance of my real calamity. In spite of this I can say that love made me into a woman.
I sleep next to the same man every night.
Our cherished world of softness, wind and light.
I convince myself of little delusions, like he falls for another girl or disappears while I am out of town. I find myself exchanging learned austerity for charm. I fall and spill my ice cream and kneel on the pavement, shocked as a girl but unscathed. His embrace is so tender it dazes me. Resplendent I close my eyes to commit it to memory.
My façade was always severity, and this will haunt me for a long time. A part of me considers girlishness moronic unless it is aware of itself, and this also is evidence of a stubborn paradox. The acceptance of his tender love puts to sleep the harsh displays. Around him I am a girl and beloved. How beautiful I feel, how strangely vulnerable and inept.
The problem I encounter is as follows. Subduing the deluge of my melancholy with the usual application of force is deeply incongruous with being loved. My strategies are knocked out of being. Yet before me is the life that they have made.