![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Retellings/Rehearsals/Explanations/Ethics
Nov. 1st, 2006 10:54 pmOnce, I made a mistake. This is not unusual, especially when it comes to knowing my own feelings. I could blame the mistake on anything - fear or courage, intellect or lack of thought. I made a mistake.
The mistake in itself was not horrible, but then everyone behaved nobly and chivalrously. If any one person had decided to be selfish and ungallant, the situation would have resolved itself. No one did. Everyone was smart and principled.
Eventually, things worked out regardless. I think maybe I chose to be stupid and wrong again, and that turned out to be the right thing to do.
=
Not too long ago - six years or so - I still believed I was doomed to lose my mind. Late onset schizophrenia. It runs in my family. I warned my friends, everyone I dated, made sure they knew that if I started acting out of character one day, they should turn me in and never feel guilty about it, that if it hurt them too much to stay my friends after the snap they should move on and find better companions.
I don't know what it is that convinced me I was sane; I can't remember. I only know that I stopped worrying about it. Suggest to me now that I might go mad, and I'll roll my eyes.
What I didn't drop is the now-vestigial sanity check, the careful look to the left to insure my behavior was normal, or at least within the bounds of society. Given my appraisal of a situation and somebody else's, I'll weight the other person's every time. Accuse me of being over emotional, of seeing things that aren't there, and I'll fold. Call me erratic or irrational, and I'll spend inordinate effort justifying myself; afterwards, I'll spend days mulling it over. I'll ask you the same questions again and again to make sure I understand why your answer is the right answer.
And your answer is the right one, or I assume it is. Only it isn't necessarily - not for me.
Vestigial.
I'm learning when not to listen. It just takes time.
=
It scares me to have so few rights, so little freedom of movement. It's hard to feel safe when you can be thrown out of the country at any time, with no warning, no need for a reason, no guarantee of appeal. I could be talking here of Britain or the US. I watch movies like The Third Man and To Have or Have Not, movies set in wartime, in places full of paperwork and crossed jurisdictions, and all I see is how valuable a passport was, how it used to be enough. How people could be strong and confident and educated and polite and it was enough. So easy now to track people down - to telephone, to search through a computer - any uncertainty becomes terrifying. Lacking a telephone makes me an anarchist.
=
Cat-called by construction workers today. "Hey gorgeous, hey sexy, hey beautiful... I would buy your hat if I thought I could and I like that your scarf shows a return to handicrafts. Thank you for walking by." A resolution of the dual identity of Marilyn Monroe body and religious icon face.
=
I'm living with a poet and an opera singer, which pleases everyone but my dad, who doesn't like poetry or opera. To him, it is better to say I live with two violists, which is also true. Nevertheless, it is more true that I live with a poet and an opera singer.
The poet, Sarah, is perhaps the most insightful person I have ever met, and I am honored to know her.
=
It's cold enough that the radiators are on. I sit pressed up against one, and it is the finest thing in the world.
=
I made a mistake, but everything worked out in the end. To suddenly, so unexpectedly, be in love - me. To find that there is love after all, sure, uncompromising, illuminating. Looking behind the moon, and finding God and not space in your telescope.
I'm glad I exist.
The mistake in itself was not horrible, but then everyone behaved nobly and chivalrously. If any one person had decided to be selfish and ungallant, the situation would have resolved itself. No one did. Everyone was smart and principled.
Eventually, things worked out regardless. I think maybe I chose to be stupid and wrong again, and that turned out to be the right thing to do.
=
Not too long ago - six years or so - I still believed I was doomed to lose my mind. Late onset schizophrenia. It runs in my family. I warned my friends, everyone I dated, made sure they knew that if I started acting out of character one day, they should turn me in and never feel guilty about it, that if it hurt them too much to stay my friends after the snap they should move on and find better companions.
I don't know what it is that convinced me I was sane; I can't remember. I only know that I stopped worrying about it. Suggest to me now that I might go mad, and I'll roll my eyes.
What I didn't drop is the now-vestigial sanity check, the careful look to the left to insure my behavior was normal, or at least within the bounds of society. Given my appraisal of a situation and somebody else's, I'll weight the other person's every time. Accuse me of being over emotional, of seeing things that aren't there, and I'll fold. Call me erratic or irrational, and I'll spend inordinate effort justifying myself; afterwards, I'll spend days mulling it over. I'll ask you the same questions again and again to make sure I understand why your answer is the right answer.
And your answer is the right one, or I assume it is. Only it isn't necessarily - not for me.
Vestigial.
I'm learning when not to listen. It just takes time.
=
It scares me to have so few rights, so little freedom of movement. It's hard to feel safe when you can be thrown out of the country at any time, with no warning, no need for a reason, no guarantee of appeal. I could be talking here of Britain or the US. I watch movies like The Third Man and To Have or Have Not, movies set in wartime, in places full of paperwork and crossed jurisdictions, and all I see is how valuable a passport was, how it used to be enough. How people could be strong and confident and educated and polite and it was enough. So easy now to track people down - to telephone, to search through a computer - any uncertainty becomes terrifying. Lacking a telephone makes me an anarchist.
=
Cat-called by construction workers today. "Hey gorgeous, hey sexy, hey beautiful... I would buy your hat if I thought I could and I like that your scarf shows a return to handicrafts. Thank you for walking by." A resolution of the dual identity of Marilyn Monroe body and religious icon face.
=
I'm living with a poet and an opera singer, which pleases everyone but my dad, who doesn't like poetry or opera. To him, it is better to say I live with two violists, which is also true. Nevertheless, it is more true that I live with a poet and an opera singer.
The poet, Sarah, is perhaps the most insightful person I have ever met, and I am honored to know her.
=
It's cold enough that the radiators are on. I sit pressed up against one, and it is the finest thing in the world.
=
I made a mistake, but everything worked out in the end. To suddenly, so unexpectedly, be in love - me. To find that there is love after all, sure, uncompromising, illuminating. Looking behind the moon, and finding God and not space in your telescope.
I'm glad I exist.
