Thought Experiment

Try this. Try being absolutely non-racist, non-sexist, non-elitist, non-homophobic, non-sizeist - non prejudiced in every way possible. It's is not easy, I know. You have my sympathies...empathy rather, because I struggle too. Sometimes, I forget and an atavistic discomfort with the other creeps in. If you're like me, you might make a tasteless joke or become flustered & confused. Or you could swing the other way & be patronizing of the other. It's okay, get back on your feet and try again.

But try.

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I liked this post a lot. It's fun. Also true: Important Truths For Your Consideration

Goodbye

Look at our house.
There's water seeping in through the concrete. The paint is peeling off. The flowers in the wallpaper are falling to the floor, shriveling up into a dry heap.
The windows are caked with greybrown grime. No one can look out, no one can look in. The bolts have long since fallen off, the hinges have rusted into paralysis. Can't push them open, can't pull them shut.
The air is dust. Every breath we take is punishment. We can't see for the haze all around us.
We had a cat once. Or was it a fish? I know we had flowers, maybe even a garden. Big, yellow chrysanthemums. Can't find them anymore. What are we tending to then?
Sometimes I think we might be hamsters in a cage. Running on that darned ferris wheel, endlessly, thinking we're covering vast expanses of land. Thinking we're getting somewhere. Except we're in a tiny cage, barred in - going nowhere, playing the same song again and again and again. And it's the worst song you've ever heard. Cacophony in syncopated time.
Remember when we danced standing still? When we cooked without heat? We smiled crooked smiles at each other - or was it our teeth chattering in the cold?
Remember when we closed our eyes tight shut and tried to wish each other away? Only to frantically unwish it in the fraction of a second before we reopened our eyes?
Remember how we waited for each other? Seemingly forever. At the time.

Right, so. I've done a load of laundry. The pantry's full. The bills have all been paid.
Now I have to go.
                                    

Tonight, I want Kansas

There comes a time when you stand face to face with your psychoses and you have nothing and no one left to blame. You've read too many books, attended too many workshops, had sufficient hours with a therapist and had too many genuinely enlightened moments to go back to being a victim.
Oh, but it was so comfortable there.
Tonight, as I pray for sleep to come, as I pray for someone to cosmically clue into my misery and reach out, as I pray for chemicals to magically materialize in the palm of my hand, I wish that it was simply enough to feel wretched in order for the miracle cure to appear.
I feel angry and confused tonight. I cannot reconcile myself to the idea that I must have the courage to pray yet I must learn not to expect.
I must not shy away from my desires, yet I must not wait for them to be fulfilled.
I must not be a silent witness to my life, yet I must learn that I cannot control it all.
It's like trying to brush your teeth and wipe your ass with the same hand, at the same time.

How simple they make it seem - these self-help authors, these wise men & women on Oprah. Oh yes, we know The Secret, they all say, Let us give it to you. Click your heels thrice and say 'There's no place like home.' They lull us into the complacent belief that it's really that simple, this business of getting happy. No one tells you the hows, whens and the how muches. That's your deal, sucker. That's life.
Because some nights, like tonight, there is no logic, no Grander energy and no softness to this feeling that settles in my belly. I have tried all the home remedies and I've tried to banish the familiar aloneless and self-loathing that infects my insides. I know full well that I will wake up, if not tomorrow morning, then the next one, feeling as though the world is right side up again. I will no longer remember this restlessness crawling under my skin. I'll even look back on this evening and dismiss it as just another one of those moods.

But tonight, all I want is to crawl into the arms of someone safe and make my brain stop. Tonight I just want Kansas. Like Dorothy, I'm sick of Oz.
And while we're on the subject, let's not forget how she came upon those ruby slippers in the first place. She dropped her house on the Wicked Witch. The original owner of the shoes and Dorothy's first murder victim.