A Rabbit's Lifetime
Ten years ago, yesterday was Rabbit Hole Day, a cultishly observed matter of "What-If"s and mad conjectures. Ten years ago, yesterday, I observed this date observing that I lived Rabbit Hole Day every day. And then, as is my nature, I proceeded the next day to attempt to correct that.
Ultimately, it possibly did not end in the best ways possible; there was a significant of drama and bloodshed (mine, mostly, and not what you think), things were said, lost, unsaid, conjured, dreamt, buried, lost. I tried to live in the Real World. It wasn't pleasant, but that's how you know it's Real.
I'd planned this entry event for several days. It was going to be an uplifted introspection of walking out of depression and patchy free counselling and becoming an adult free of teen/childhood shadows, rah-rah. It was going to be even a little whimsical, perhaps, and fun --- then things happened.
At first it was simply missing the planned blog date/time because my day filled up unexpectedly and I becane unexpectedly wearied. And then, a bit of ennui and procrastination, back-burner in favour of other things I suddenly had to get done, the overarching tedium of people and events in Real Time, etc. I thought at 22:00 that I would spend 2 hours working on it and go to bed, except arthritic pain set in suddenly and I crashed and burned. Tomorrow will be fine, you say, thinking that no one was counting anyway. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. But that's not the point.
I wanted to be able to say "Hey, I've toughed it out and stopped slipping through the cracks of reality for a while, taken responsibility, settled in, grown up"...... But that is a lie, I've woken up an hour past the day to realise. It's a big, fat lie;
... And screw it, it's ok. It's better than ok. It's sane.
Because, after all, here is my reality: days filled with the back-to-back low-key rejections and disappointments that I've come to take for granted. Insincere "we'll call if we have work"s and 13th hour refusals of contractual terms. Mobile-synced, one-sidedly ignored to-do apps. 6 month arbitrary wait-lists dragging around brain-jellifying pain because whatever is wrong is not significant enough to be immediately life-threatening (and maybe if we wait long enough she'll go away). 2 months Camping on the only female doctor in the area for a simple gynaecologist referral for full general check-up that I still have not successfully procured (WTF??). Having no social ties that is not significantly skewed towards the "S.O" (the whole "friends of the couple" thing, and the guilt that I should find it so stifling and objectionable). Having no social life at all (though that's not really a problem since, what on earth would I do with one?). Large swarths of time monopolized in thankless non-consensual slave labour. Strangely, being resented for said labour. Finding new excuses to weigh myself down every day, collecting pointless dead-weight just to keep myself from floating away. Growing spores. Discarding Personal Wants in favour of the responsible "Familial Needs". Being a responsible Adult, with Adult Responsibilities. Learning to exist in a bubble, calling it serenity (there may be something to that, though).
Because, as the person I'd placed emotionally as my "elder sister" pointed out to herself on her 35th birthday 3 days ago, we are not socially considered adults, where I'm from, until you're 35 (and I have a last few precious years to go yet). Because most of that Reality is, as Caroll snidely points out, quite mad. Because how can things that one, by nature, finds absurd, be, by right, in any way sane to that one? Because, how does one keep from rejection if they themselves are not accepting of the things they do not wish to have rejected? You don't. Because impulse is significant.
And largely because I'd already started slipping through this Reality onto the next world through the next Rabbit Hole, the long-unsighted Rabbit Hole, without fully realising what I was up to. Left Brain, Right Brain.
* * *
Once Upon A Time, I was magic. Reality denies this, but its accuracy on such matters is in doubt. I could do more, then, and I did. There was a mad little power that defied explanation and context. I used to be right; and I did much better when I used to listen to myself, even letting the chips fall where they may. Or, perhaps, more so. I read fortunes for strangers with certain alarming accuracy. I understood what I was. (And then I got hacked.)
There are things that little can be done about and is, to a degree, pointless to rally too hard against (national health policies for example, and failures of the past), and there are things that are pointless to enforce (denying a thought doesn't change the fact that you'd had it). Nose-dive off the precipice. You will either come through ok, or you won't, and in the latter case, you wouldn't realise it anyway, so why worry?
Perhaps this is only really true for Me, and that is the faulty assumption, that at the end of the day I am like everyone else. Perhaps the truth is, truly, that I am not and am quite deluded to think I secretly am. After All, that's the dirty little secret of modern media, isn't it? Tell all the muggles that they are special and powerful and ply their fantasies of being fantastic, everyone's a Wizard! And we all know, secretly, that it's merely a lie to stroke the ego for whatever nefarious purposes. Look at the Hand, Look At The Hand. And we the Tom Riddles slip through the cracks unawares to ourselves.
Rabbit Hole Day did not go as expected.
It was not the quietly festive memorial day envisaged.
But it did not go terribly, as things go.
Ultimately, it possibly did not end in the best ways possible; there was a significant of drama and bloodshed (mine, mostly, and not what you think), things were said, lost, unsaid, conjured, dreamt, buried, lost. I tried to live in the Real World. It wasn't pleasant, but that's how you know it's Real.
I'd planned this entry event for several days. It was going to be an uplifted introspection of walking out of depression and patchy free counselling and becoming an adult free of teen/childhood shadows, rah-rah. It was going to be even a little whimsical, perhaps, and fun --- then things happened.
At first it was simply missing the planned blog date/time because my day filled up unexpectedly and I becane unexpectedly wearied. And then, a bit of ennui and procrastination, back-burner in favour of other things I suddenly had to get done, the overarching tedium of people and events in Real Time, etc. I thought at 22:00 that I would spend 2 hours working on it and go to bed, except arthritic pain set in suddenly and I crashed and burned. Tomorrow will be fine, you say, thinking that no one was counting anyway. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. But that's not the point.
I wanted to be able to say "Hey, I've toughed it out and stopped slipping through the cracks of reality for a while, taken responsibility, settled in, grown up"...... But that is a lie, I've woken up an hour past the day to realise. It's a big, fat lie;
... And screw it, it's ok. It's better than ok. It's sane.
Because, after all, here is my reality: days filled with the back-to-back low-key rejections and disappointments that I've come to take for granted. Insincere "we'll call if we have work"s and 13th hour refusals of contractual terms. Mobile-synced, one-sidedly ignored to-do apps. 6 month arbitrary wait-lists dragging around brain-jellifying pain because whatever is wrong is not significant enough to be immediately life-threatening (and maybe if we wait long enough she'll go away). 2 months Camping on the only female doctor in the area for a simple gynaecologist referral for full general check-up that I still have not successfully procured (WTF??). Having no social ties that is not significantly skewed towards the "S.O" (the whole "friends of the couple" thing, and the guilt that I should find it so stifling and objectionable). Having no social life at all (though that's not really a problem since, what on earth would I do with one?). Large swarths of time monopolized in thankless non-consensual slave labour. Strangely, being resented for said labour. Finding new excuses to weigh myself down every day, collecting pointless dead-weight just to keep myself from floating away. Growing spores. Discarding Personal Wants in favour of the responsible "Familial Needs". Being a responsible Adult, with Adult Responsibilities. Learning to exist in a bubble, calling it serenity (there may be something to that, though).
Because, as the person I'd placed emotionally as my "elder sister" pointed out to herself on her 35th birthday 3 days ago, we are not socially considered adults, where I'm from, until you're 35 (and I have a last few precious years to go yet). Because most of that Reality is, as Caroll snidely points out, quite mad. Because how can things that one, by nature, finds absurd, be, by right, in any way sane to that one? Because, how does one keep from rejection if they themselves are not accepting of the things they do not wish to have rejected? You don't. Because impulse is significant.
And largely because I'd already started slipping through this Reality onto the next world through the next Rabbit Hole, the long-unsighted Rabbit Hole, without fully realising what I was up to. Left Brain, Right Brain.
* * *
Once Upon A Time, I was magic. Reality denies this, but its accuracy on such matters is in doubt. I could do more, then, and I did. There was a mad little power that defied explanation and context. I used to be right; and I did much better when I used to listen to myself, even letting the chips fall where they may. Or, perhaps, more so. I read fortunes for strangers with certain alarming accuracy. I understood what I was. (And then I got hacked.)
There are things that little can be done about and is, to a degree, pointless to rally too hard against (national health policies for example, and failures of the past), and there are things that are pointless to enforce (denying a thought doesn't change the fact that you'd had it). Nose-dive off the precipice. You will either come through ok, or you won't, and in the latter case, you wouldn't realise it anyway, so why worry?
Perhaps this is only really true for Me, and that is the faulty assumption, that at the end of the day I am like everyone else. Perhaps the truth is, truly, that I am not and am quite deluded to think I secretly am. After All, that's the dirty little secret of modern media, isn't it? Tell all the muggles that they are special and powerful and ply their fantasies of being fantastic, everyone's a Wizard! And we all know, secretly, that it's merely a lie to stroke the ego for whatever nefarious purposes. Look at the Hand, Look At The Hand. And we the Tom Riddles slip through the cracks unawares to ourselves.
Rabbit Hole Day did not go as expected.
It was not the quietly festive memorial day envisaged.
But it did not go terribly, as things go.