| The Door Locks and I'm Fucking Crazy Summer 2004 He was telling me -- his voice tight with frustration -- that I have the destructive habit of locking myself away, alone with my thoughts, unreachable -- only to emerge days later a different person. Someone cold, distant; someone who is suddenly unaffected by words. That's what he said to me -- and more, including a couple of references to "the crazy shit" I come up with in my head. But what he was saying in the end wasn't going to change a thing -- not his pain, not his tears, not even his pleading that I stop being stubborn and stop what I was doing. What I was "doing," I suppose, was very typical of me. Because he wasn't wrong. Even in his pain and frustration, he was lucid enough to see me for what I really was -- different, cold, distant, unreachable, stubborn, unmoving. I was doing what I always do, and in hindsight, he must have been taking it a lot more personally than he should have. My "locking away" is just something I have to do to achieve the necessary distance and sense of clarity to make a decision, carry it out and stick to it. And so that's the horrible thing about me. When "crazy shit" gets into my head, I enter into some sort of trance where I fix upon my thought/feeling and refuse to let it go. I could try to justify it or try to walk you through so you can understand what goes on inside me, but you probably wouldn't get it. All I can say is that I reach a certain point -- either some shit I've been putting up with is suddenly too much shit for my taste; or I feel hurt and slighted one time too many; or all the negatives begin to outweigh the positives; or I just realize and accept how not-for-me something is; or I'm just fucking tired of expressing my feelings and asking for what I want only to get nothing (well, in this case I'd get notified that I was "crazy" on a regular basis) -- and when I reach that point, that's it. There's no turning back. I don't let myself be talked out of it because I don't want to be. I don't want to be told that men are "oblivious and dumb" and that I should have known that and worked my way around it, I don't want promises, I don't want the picture painted with different colors; I don't want anything. Because all those things should have come before I ever even slipped away. Because yes, I sure as hell do lock myself away sometimes and emerge as something ugly. But prior to that final slipping, I was wide open. Open and open until open was simply just too painful. And so when I finally retreat into my own world and shut you out, you should ask yourself if you really deserved something better, if you aren't really blaming yourself when you blame me. Either way, you can be sure you will never again reach me. I'm "crazy" that way. |
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| Image copyright DC Comics 1979 |