Dear Diary,
Hi! How are you? Sorry I haven’t written in a while. I’ve been fine, thanks. I decided to write this blog post to you, because I can’t think of anyone else to write to. Usually, I write with a person in mind, someone I feel the need to connect with. But recently, I haven’t been able to envision anyone. No one seems real to me. A world full of paper dolls.
Paper dolls only on the surface, though. Underneath, people who are busy, engaged, trying to better themselves or take care of their families. Not people who need to know my feelings about the color gold. I can’t envision anyone in the whole world who needs to know my feelings about the color gold.
So why blog at all, then? Especially when all I really want to do is to redecorate my desk in shades of orange and find out what happened to Europe after the fall of Rome.
Because I have to. There is this red light that wants to flow through my body, but it will only flow if it can form a complete circuit. Right now, it is blocked in my thymus gland and will only complete itself if I open up my mouth and let words out. If I don’t do this, there will be no red for me. I will have to live out my life as a bloodless vegetable sucked dry of all it’s colors.
Still, I don’t really want to say anything. It feels like opening my mouth is just an invitation to be attacked and ridiculed. I would feel more comfortable just trying to be nice and quiet and only speaking to flatter those around me. When I was a teenager, I decided to make complement bombing one of my life strategies, which basically meant whenever I was around a mean or threatening person I would try to sing their praises in such rapid-fire speech that they would be unable to get a word in edgewise. I would spend hours before encounters imagining all of a person’s praiseworthy attributes. It could be exhausting, but was somewhat effective, like throwing a constant string of steaks at a lion. I would still get bitten, but not as frequently.
It could have been a better strategy, though, for someone like my husband James, who is adept at lying. Some people, it seems, can wear one face to themselves and another to the world without becoming confused. I admire those people. But for me, the worst part about flattering people, is that I truly hypnotize myself in the process until everyone I meet takes on a godlike magnificence in my mind. James reminds me of this sometimes, when I fawn over him with praise he feels is undeserved– “Look at the arches of your feet- they’re so beautiful, like swans. Mine are like rusted canoes.” (I usually throw in a little insult to myself for contrast. That always seemed to make my parents happy.)
But, there is definitely a price to pay for pleasing others at your own expense. It bleaches you of all your prouder colors, the reds, yellows, and golds. It makes your hands and feet cold, and turns your face into a lifeless mask. It sucks the blood from your heart and brain and eventually turns you into a catatonic moron who can neither think nor feel. That is the eventual price of being a sycophant.
On the other hand, those who do stand up for themselves also have to pay a price and sometimes it is severe. Being scorned and shunned, stabbed in the back of your hand with a fork, forced to kill your own puppy, sometimes being killed yourself… things can get sadistic when people are intent upon breaking down your will and you refuse to let them. Who can say if being a fighter or a flatterer is the better choice? Sometimes the fawners live to see another day when the fighters don’t.
The confusing thing about life is that it feels like love and goodness should be all-powerful, and yet, whose observations prove to them that this is true?
From what I can figure, Heaven is that place where love, beauty, and justice rule absolutely. Hell is the place where power and force rule absolutely. Earth is the place where the dark forces of power are blended with the shimmering forces of goodness to produce strong and durable materials that couldn’t exist otherwise. Materials like gold, which is stockpiled in Heaven, but only produced here on Earth, from the pure intentions that are constantly subjected to trials and tribulations.
On Earth we are forced to never lose sight of love and dreams, for when we do we die inside. But we are also never allowed to let go of practicality, selfishness and cunning, for when we do, we die outside. Having to keep our grasp on these two fluctuating polarities, which are sometimes in harmony and sometimes in conflict, gives rise to whole generations of strong and beautiful alloys, which, I like to think could not be created otherwise.
But it is hard work to always keep one foot in heaven and the other in hell, so sometimes we deal with life by releasing one of these poles and becoming either too good or too bad in the process. Bad people can sometimes be quite effective in a practical sense, since they can streamline all their choices to maximize personal gain and self-aggrandizement. But the trade-off is being forced to live in an internal world that is harsh, barren, and brutal. And if they ever want to leave their inner hell, there is a long road of pain and remorse in front of them.
But releasing the dark forces and aiming to be too good is equally treacherous. It is like living on a diet of jello. You end up weak and insubstantial, lacking a mind or will of your own. Eventually you become an instrument in the hand of evil-doers.
Which all comes back to why I feel I must write. Because I’m the sort of person who, under stress, lets go of the dark forces and levitates upwards into a world of unicorn fantasies. Whereas every time I open my mouth and utter words, I merge more and more with everything that is complicated, imperfect, and heavy. After all, nothing I say will be exactly true, nothing I express will quite capture what I think or feel, I will certainly end up misrepresenting myself, alienating people, being criticized and ridiculed, and lying tangled on the ground in a heap of contradictions and funny feelings. But in the process, word by word, I will take on mass and become real. I will earn my red stripe, and eventually that stripe will turn to gold.
