200-09-8 - 3:55 p.m.
did you come here for forgiveness did you come to raise the dead?
Did you come here to play Jesus to the lepers in your head?
I wonder what it is in me that is so broken that it pulls others into the pain through my own need. And then I wonder whether that is even the case or if that is just another of the lies I’ve been told by the irresponsibility of the boys I’ve known that blames me for how they felt. Being a girl is not so easy as everyone thinks… if you ever take the time to examine yourself, if you’ve ever loved anyone of the opposite sex, you know that built into you very core is the tendency to use your femininity to get what you cannot acquire without it. Whether or not I have been guilty of that, hardly matters at this point. "O, that I were a man..."
what happens when you walk to a mirror and the face you meet is not your own? or worse still, you suddenly see the face that is your own for the first time step from behind the thing that you thought was your face, finding it is only a carefully constructed mask dropping from your fingers. it's not every day you face the possibility of being something you despise. the bedroom scene in Hamlet comes to mind, in which gertrude is faced with her son's accusation. i'm not saying that i'm going to be running back to a.. he had just as much fault in the thing as i. but his accusation hurt like the sting of truth. i don't know where it started or how it insidiously grew, but a. is right, i am terrified of being known or being possessed. even in my closest female friendships, the admittance of being lonely or weak has always been difficult. and the fear of becoming boring to those i love has been one of my greatest. i can hardly stand my own company sometimes, how can i trust that task to anyone else? and then there is the j. factor: he took all those primal fears and insecurities about being known and turned them into a reality. the one person in the world to whom i intentionally made myself vulnerable again and again for a year and a half, because i loved him so much, etched into stone the certainty that i would and could never be loved. he told me i was not beautiful (unless i was, for a few shining moments, a sexual attraction), that i was not smart and that my appearance of intelligence was a show. most importantly, he told me that my heart was never safe, that there was always someone smarter, more beautiful, and more engaging for whom i could (and was) betrayed. so i don't know exactly where it began, but it was certainly solidified by j.. and then, just for good measure, a. half-assedly threw the last nail into the coffin, to teach me a lesson. with breathtaking specificity, he took one of my most lucid prepubescent fears and made it real: that a person would pretend to like you, and then laugh. in summary, i don't really know what to say... cause or effect? the only thing i know is that i have no desire to go anywhere near the male species. at this point, i am both unloveable and unable to love. i believe there was a character named orual who would have understood me quite well. where did i put my veil? Lewis was right, it is very difficult for there to be friendship between the sexes.
