brill

I am one and several selves, all fragmented, fragments of the same mirror, but that speak in different tongues, all invented, all created by the pain inflicted upon me, the pain, the shame, the need to become other, to reinvent all that was real.

As I write my mind swims in ideas, they scream to my ears, they beg to come out. It’s as if I’m keeping the world locked inside me, the real world that at times I pretend not to see. I shut my eyes, my ears and my sensitivity in order to protect myself, I shut everything out, I don’t want to see the reality, the self-absorbed, intangible human beings that live their lives as if it was a soap opera, no brains, no real feelings. Where are the real people? Where are all the bohemians?

Meanwhile, while I seek, while I go out in the world searching, my mind screams, my mind makes me look at the world in several different ways, all the selves, all the multiple personalities that were created to keep me alive speak at once. My hands tremble and my mind spins, there’s this monster that wants to come out, this monster that pushes me forward, the monster of the real me, the real person that has so much to show, so much to communicate, even if to deaf ears, it’s just the need to come out in the light and scream at myself, show that I haven’t been that wrong. It’s the monster of my desire, of my necessities, making everything so visceral, everything so unforgivably necessary.

So I wake up, take my shower, put on my pretty face. It’s always the same face, everyday, the same face for the same office, the same people, the same lunch. The real one is locked in my bedroom, the bedroom that is not mine, since I haven’t found myself a house I could call mine up to now. The real face, the real me, the real clothes, the real tears are all locked in my closet, they are all inside the hat boxes that are piling one on top of the other, almost reaching the ceiling. One day I will have to carve a hole in it, to let the pile grow taller, if not, then I will have to wear the real face in public, show the real emotions, everything that really matter and then the world is going to collapse. Tsunamis and earthquakes, the world is not ready for me just yet.

by Mme. A., posted on August 11th 2004