10,000 Lives

Swamp Research

Here she is: the bog wallower. Sulking as the sun rises on her withdrawn hours of still.

AAAAAAH! The light is here! What does it want from me?!

Why can’t I. Just. SLEEP. Be no one, nothing, no job on my table, nothing to learn or figure out, just dreams to slip through my fingers and darkness to fill my sockets.

NO. If there’s one thing I know in this life it’s that I need to be someone. But how? I open my phone and check my emails, messages. A-HA. The things I am to do, the people I am to meet, and the ones I consider close. I am reminded of my identity, while the emptiness in my chest grows further away from my mind, racing, hunting for clues enough to weave a convincing front that *this* is who I am.

And I AM NOT nobody.

Now that I’ve rediscovered myself, I notice some flaws. I’m quite uptight, too serious. My character is vague, the plotlines don’t wrap up neatly and there are too many threads loose and frayed. She won’t sell well. Inconsistent. Messy.

I re-downloaded Instagram this week and found myself revisiting one of my old haunts, scrolling through the profile of a well-cultivated woman to compare and contrast. The Maelstrom of Meta beckons to me. I open the app for some character development. I quickly find the profile of a candidly gorgeous woman close enough to my age to be prime steak for butchering. I begin dissecting her images. She travels - not just to the mainstream hotspots but off the beaten track, she is authentic, experiences life unfolding in real time. She is adventurous, she hikes and climbs, and captures it in the moody sexiness of film. She has many beautiful friends. And creative, in fact she has collected works by women on menstruation, an idea I had recently.

She has done it already. I haven’t.

Oh, what juicy fuel for my pity tank! If I were only more like her! I decided as a child I wasn’t good enough for this world and this morning lying bound in bedsheets I found the proof. There it was, perfectly framed pictures and elegantly sincere words of a being I’ve never met. Why her! Why me! Woe unto thee!

But I sense there is more to this story. The moment I woke up this morning and decided to be somebody, I entered the somebody contest. I had to be the most body, the best body - there’s no place in the world, for nobody.

I found 10,000 ways to beat down my somebody. I slapped it beside another women’s body and in the end I berated, roasted, tore down them both. I hate her. I hate her feminine radiance. I hate her audacity. I hate how bright she shines. Because in my 10,000 past lives, in HIStory, it paid. It paid to be disgusted, to hate her and to hate myself. It paid to train myself into a good somebody, to make my women’s body serve other’s tastes, to be somebody who fits in place. I survived that way. And I died that way. Tortured. Beaten. Burnt. Drowned in the river. Bodies caught telling the wrong stories. I cut, carved my tongue to tell the story you would like to hear. So the lord might spare me. So that you might allow me to exist.

You. Who are you? I know deep down you are really I. In my other 10,000 lives I did what had to be done. Killed for king, country, and god. Pillaged Earth, mother, child. I cut my cord from Gaia. I stood alone. I was a good servant, a good ruler, a good man. I fought for what was right. I burned what was wrong.

Books. Bodies. Witches. Forests.

I set them alight and I threw on the fire any part of me that was still alive. That knew the pain. The part of me that would have fallen apart. The craziness that would make a man cry.

In 10,000 more, I was the nark. I was the woman who told on you, who gave you witches away. I was in danger. You would curse my children or turn them into stew, and cast a spell on my husband so he would fall in love with you. If I were left alone they might think I was a witch too. I told them where you were hiding. To save my family. My town. I did the right thing. I was somebody I needed to be.

I’ve been playing the somebody game a while now. Long enough that somewhere inside me is everybody. The witch. The accuser. The executioner.

It might be time to try out being nobody.

Not alone.
Not one.
But none.

I’ll let you know how it goes.