Muchness and Light

In the garden of memory, in the palace of dreams, that is where you and I shall meet.

Since my thyroid radiation in July, I’ve been struggling with still feeling like general crap. Fatigue and brain fog have been intermittently worse. A pretty leisurely two-mile walk with Rango and the boys recently wiped me out for two days. My bloodwork shows wildly-swinging levels of thyroid hormones, indicating that the regrown tissue is indeed dying off, though it may be months before it normalizes.

With that has also come more weight regain and self-recrimination and outright self-loathing.

I have tried to get back into the gym even semi-regularly. It’s hard enough to juggle work and school and kids successfully, and trying to find even six hours a week for myself in that is sometimes unmanageable. Of course I know the exercise will actually help me to feel better, but the fatigue that comes with hypothyroidism can be unimaginably oppressive.

Recently I started a series of virtual races through Yes.Fit. Of course I chose the Alice in Wonderland themed races. After I complete so many miles, as tracked by my Misfit activity tracker, my medal is sent to me automatically. As of today, I’ve completed three of the six Alice races, totaling more than 60 miles.

As it does every day, Facebook was kind enough to remind me this morning of memories from this day in previous years. I find it interesting to see how life has changed over the last few years, but I tend to face those reminders with some trepidation. I love the pictures and funny quotes from my boys from their younger days. Sometimes the memories are useless or now meaningless, or sometimes even too painful, and I’ll delete them. Sometimes I leave the painful ones, knowing those ghosts will haunt me again next year, because I’m either not ready to deal with them or I know they’re so important that I will need the reminders again.

But today, there were two things, from 2010 and 2011. Not surprising, there were pictures from a 2010 concert, of a band I loved then and love now. It was the second in a series of shows that were seminal for the changes that would come over the following two years. A year later, it was the memory that was down 99 of the 115 pounds in total weight loss. Yet another year later, I’d just separated from my now-ex-husband.

All of that has fueled my writing since 2010, which began with the realization that I’d lost my muchness--just like Alice in Wonderland.

I have said repeatedly over the last year that, for a variety of reasons, I felt like I was back in 2010 and didn’t know why I was reliving such similar circumstances. Regardless of the logistical changes and strides I know I have made, I have replayed the past in tandem with the present and come up with only confusion and emotional failure. I have continually grappled with figuring out which choice I didn’t make or should’ve made differently. I’ve tried to re-learn whatever lesson I obviously needed to repeat.

But somehow, I keep sliding farther and farther into the past. Where 2010 may have felt like a rabbit hole, 2016 is feeling more and more like the other side of a looking glass. Where then felt new and exciting and rebellious, now feels reflective and reversed and exhausting.

What is it? What did I miss? What do I need now that can only be retrieved from then?

It just so happens that Alice Through the Looking Glass comes out on DVD this week. Of course I saw it in the theater when it opened--how could I not?--but I really didn’t love it as much as I did the first one. It was beautiful, and I looked for the clues to my missing lessons, but the torment of Time was unsettling to me. I could willingly believe in a lost young woman traveling to surreal place and conquering her fears, but it was almost impossible for me to suspend my disbelief as the same woman mended old wounds.

But maybe that’s it. Maybe my path has been a big circle, and maybe the obstacle is an unturned stone.

Certainly I can pinpoint errors and mistakes and regrettable decisions, but I feel like I have done everything in my power to apologize and make amends for those actions. I would say I have done my best to move on, but I damn well know there are frozen moments that continue to haunt me.

I don’t know what it is, but there is something. It is maddening, appearing and disappearing, always just out of my reach.

So I’m starting back at the beginning, at Alice. I am literally retracing my steps, one foot in front of the other, until I can find a way to the next landmark on this destination. I don’t want to believe that I am personally destined to repeat the same mistakes over and over, that there is literally no way to avoid spiritual repetition. I’ve already seen the White Rabbit, I just passed the Cheshire Cat and am making my way toward the Mad Hatter. There is still the Caterpillar and the Queen of Hearts.

After that, I’m seriously considering the Pac-Man races, where I get to eat a series of brightly-colored ghosts.

Come a little bit closer before we begin.

 

Growler and I went to a show this week at the Masquerade in Atlanta.  We were supposed to be there to see In This Moment, but there was a 6:00 door, which we didn't realize until 7:15.  We got there just in time to see the stage being broken down and set up for the main act, Stone Sour.  (They were okay.  I'm not a huge fan, but it was a good show.)

I was surprised, though, that even in this environment—music show, my ideal demographic—the only guy who talked to me was in his early 20s and gay.  I got stared at a lot, but not one other guy really spoke to me.  I still had a great time with Growler, as always, but I was a bit flabbergasted, if totally used to it.  I was dressed down—black sundress, Chuck Taylors, and pigtails—so I wasn't even really trying to attract anyone.  Even when I do get really dressed up, though, it's rare that men actually approach and talk to me.

It's starting to make me feel like a freak.

It's not that I'm so enamored of myself that I'm appalled that men could turn down this hot chick.  (Really, I don't think that at all, at least not of strangers.)  But several men as of late, when I've mentioned this, have said that I'm a bit intimidating.

Me?  Seriously?

I can understand it if you've actually talked to me.  I'm bawdy and loud and smart and sarcastic—generally a big ball of glittery batshit.  But until you get to know me, I'm often just that quiet blonde over there. 

According to this informal survey, the fact that I am tall and blonde and busty in my general Amazonianness leads men to think they'll get shot down.  One woman told me that a guy once told her that men are actually more afraid of rejection than women are, if only because they've been more likely to be rejected than a woman. 

So I started thinking about this idea of women having to attract men.  In social situations, there's a definite expectation that women act a certain way.  There are all kinds of blogs and articles advising us to tone it down when we are meeting men, to be a little coy and pliant and make them feel special.  I see women, especially younger women, playing this flirty game of dumb blonde that drives me insane.  I know damn well that girl won't be anything like that once you get into her head, unless she really is that stupid.

Fuck that.

I can be quiet and coy and even pliant, but that's almost always reserved for the guy I'm actually with.  I am who I am (see above), and I've been adamant that I refuse to hide that from anyone, especially from myself and from potential romantic interests.  It feels dishonest for so many reasons. 

But are men actually afraid to talk to me?  Why?

I'm a nice girl.  Really.  I can carry on a conversation about almost anything.  I'm pleasant and funny and do know how to be socially appropriate most of the time.  (I know the inner circle will laugh at that, but they also know they're most often the direct target of my inappropriateness.)  I have a nice smile, and you might even get to see my dimple if you make me laugh. 

I'm also very sociable and will at least try to chat with almost anyone.  The worst thing that happens is that I don't hit it off with you and we say goodnight and move on.  Big deal.  But if you want my attention, you'd better be willing to at least meet me halfway.  Be nice.  Be funny.  Be pleasant.  Show me your smile.  Don't expect me to do all the work to put you at ease.  I'm just as nervous at the thought of being rejected—and maybe moreso given my personal history. 

And the truth is, I expect to be too much for most men to handle, so I do tend to kind of stay back and revert to my natural introversion until I feel like there's something worth exploring.  Maybe it's standoffish on my part.  I'm really no damn good and just walking up to a guy and introducing myself, especially when I'm surrounded by non-Amazon girls.  I'm not that tiny, cute thing and never will be.  I still constantly compare myself to those women, even though I know I am and have so much to offer. 

Dating is weird.  Men are weird.  Women are crazy.  How the hell this thing ever works and relationships can move forward into something longer-lasting is just baffling to me.  If you don't actually talk to me, you'll never know if I'm worth your time.  And vice versa. 

Climb on down the rabbit hole, tell Alice that Elvis wants his crown back in his grave....

I get off on experience.  Rather, in understanding an experience fully.  No matter how minute it may seem to someone else, I like to delve into the intricacies of something and get a complete perception of the thing. 

Boredom can set it quickly with me, though, and I often abandon the something when I feel like I know it completely, or if I feel like I can see the end of the ride.  It takes a lot to hold my interest for a long time.  It takes even more sometimes just to capture my attention. 

Even Alice (Lewis Carroll's original Alice) wasn't so interested in the talking White Rabbit; she didn't find him to be curious in and of himself.  It's only when "the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet.., she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge."

In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.

She jumps down the hole, curious about the things she sees as she falls—the cupboards and bookshelves that line the walls of the passage, the empty ORANGE MARMALADE jar that she refuses to drop because she doesn't want it to land on anyone below her.  And she doesn't look down, doesn't watch for what's to come, because it's dark and she can't see what's there. 

Honestly, I'm attracted to rabbit holes.  There's something alluring about the experience that looks like not much of nothin'.  From the outside, from the onset, it's just a hole in the ground.  There may be a rabbit.  There may be a snake.  There be just a hole.  But you can never know until you look inside. 

For Alice, the inside of the rabbit hole opens up a fantastical world of imagination and nonsense, of life lessons and epiphanies, but she does nothing with that.  She wanders from place to place in Wonderland, questioning everything but never coming to any real understandings.  Interestingly, the White Rabbit appears three times in the story, ushering Alice from one mad situation to another.  He's not the reason she does anything; he's simply a catalyst to move her from place to place. 

Eventually Alice becomes maddened by the surreality and wakes from her dream, having learned nothing about herself or life or anything.  "You're nothing but a pack of cards!"  She is, after all, a child.  And it's Alice's sister's thoughts that close the story, hoping that Alice will keep her girlish whimsy and be able to share her curiosity with other children when she's a grown woman.

Conversely, Tim Burton's Alice—the grown, almost-adult Alice—is the one who doesn't leap down the hole.  Instead she sees the White Rabbit (Nivens McTwisp) running through the garden and is immediately captivated, chasing him in an attempt to flee her own surprise engagement party.  Just when she loses sight of him, he grabs her by the ankle and yanks her off her feet.

She was falling down the rabbit hole.

This time Alice is looking around as she tumbles, scrambling for anything that will help her make sense of what's happening, that will help stop her fall.  She again grabs the empty jam jar, but this time she drops it without thought of who or what may be below her.  She keeps falling, "...down and down and down into deeper darkness, where there was no longer anything to hold on to."

McTwisp still appears to help move Alice from one absurdity to another, but his role is much more intentional than it was for Carroll's Alice.  He reveals that he had gone above ground to actively seek Alice, to return her to Underland (Wonderland) to fulfill her destiny of slaying the Jabberwocky.  He does everything in his power to help propel her toward her eventual conclusion of self-revelation and self-acceptance, though he's still not a major character in any traditional sense. 

Almost Alice's journey into the hole is not of her own doing, though it's certainly her choice to chase the rabbit that led her toward the discovering of it.  Once inside, she again battles her own preconceptions to make sense of everything around her.  Even though she seems to forget this third trip into Wonderland, she is left with the revelation of self-confidence that she didn't have before.  She returns to the garden where she first saw the White Rabbit and finds herself clinging to the edge of the rabbit hole.  She pulls herself up and out of the hole and returns to the party to share her insights with everyone else. 

I tend to be a hole jumper.   I often seek out the rabbit holes and go sometimes head first into them, just to see what's lining the shelves and to explore the possibly-unimaginable that I might find inside.  I'm fascinated by those new things, no matter how dusty or potentially frightening they may be, because it's an opportunity to understand something in a whole new way. 

Sometimes I'm dragged down the hole, pulled in by my own White Rabbit, and I'm more likely to tumble, to not be able to get my bearings until I hit the bottom.  Hard.  But I will eventually find a way to upright myself and take a look around and try my best to make sense of it all, even if it ends up making sense only to me. 

The biggest fear, of course, is that it's not a rabbit hole at all, but just a hole, that there is no experiential advantage to be gained.  In that case, I pull myself up and out, and I keep moving forward along my own garden path until the Rabbit rushes past me again, leading me on to my next discovery.