Where the Wild Things Are
I've learned a lot about guilt and anger lately. We can build so many wonderful, great things with guilt, it's amazing. Just as amazing as how much we can tear down with anger. I know I can. In between Pippa Lee and Max you can imagine a life of me. Others are equally torn, but sometimes they are saved from our eyes by their softer tempers.
I almost guilted myself into a life of serving someone who seemed to have the stuff of good kings, without bothering to look and see what their stuff was really like. Because I thought I was a fuckup and that there could be no higher kindness than for them to take me into their world and mold me into something acceptable. Funnily enough, the thought of devoting my best years to a carefully assembled pretty picture makes me very nostalgic. Quiet little tragedies have always turned me on. Perhaps it's genetic, perhaps it's tales of lives passed down among generations, perhaps it's just romatic crap.
Fortunately for me, I also have my wild things. I felt Max more deeply than I could ever feel Madame Bovary. Helpless rage and constant self-induced disappointment have been there for me so many times. I have always lost something to them, yet kept going back. Naturally, the price of what was lost went up with passing years. Adults don't always get second chances. There was no loving mum to feed me chocolate and to fall asleep grateful of my return when I last came back from the island.
I came back to my life and found it was empty, only to slowly discover that it was not. It seems richer than ever now. Guilt and anger don't dance with each other in endless circles any more. They have taken their rightful place in cute snapshots on my wall and I wave at them sometimes and smile. They are as much mine as the desire to be happy and the strength to make that happiness real. Their use to me is great from where they are now and I will always be thankful for what they taught me.
PS ... or did I?
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