the piano has been drinking

I'm lying in the middle of a road, and the carnage is thick - the dead are many.

And now I'm sitting in an automobile (a super shitty one) at a four-way stop. I choose. I finally get to. I pick which way I go from here, which path is most desirable. Or, if I'm smart, the safest route.

Speaking of routes. This intersection I'm sitting at is fairly interesting. Each road unwinds in a different direction, and none intersect at any other point. Just right here. Right where I am.

To the North lies a road lined in pines. It leads to soft faces, sweet air, warm clothes and bodies in closets.

Leading East is the dirt road which becomes cobblestone, rolling toward an electric city full of musicians, politicians, and disappointment.

The road descending South hasn't got much to offer visually; but its charisma, strength, and perfectly generic appeal are quite enticing. Easy.

And then there's the path leading West. Vast, pushy, and incredibly enough, perplexing as it is: appealing yet unappealing, always showing its true colors under a veil of perception. There are signs everywhere about what a terrible road leads West.

My analytic yet dyslexic brain is screaming 'East', but I'm headed West. Because though I'm sure East is the right direction, there's a roadblock. A fucking cow in the middle of the road, to be precise. But every step of the way, this Western avenue is becoming more inhabited by scary signs of decaying life, withered and dry in its loneliness. The South never sounded so appealing. I turn backward, considering the possibility of a change in course.

But then I can smell them. The pines. They're fresh - earthy and sweet. My smile is instant. My dimple is showing. It's infections. I can see them all smiling, too. All of the unseen bodies inside the closets of the North. But all I can feel is my own, because I'm vibrating. So I wander there, down that road. To the North. Regretfully I look East once more. Fucking cow's still there.

vaches sur une toile

Let me paint you a picture. Say your entire life, the only food you wanted or were allowed to eat was chocolate ice cream. I mean, you ate

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chocolate ice cream, on so many occasions, that you even perfected ways to enjoy it. You had discovered special methods to not only eat but savor your ice cream, making it seemingly impossible for another food (even if you were allowed to have it) to satisfy you equally.

And then. One dark and stormy weekend, all of the chocolate cows contracted a mysterious computer virus and were dead within 36 hours. Whatever will you do? No chocolate cows = no chocolate milk = no chocolate ice cream. Truly, I guess you’re fucked.

Because imagine knowing you need sustenance to survive, but after near-perfecting your enjoyment of chocolate ice cream; of making consuming it an almost orgasmic and wholly satisfying experience, the act of eating anything else would seem dauntingly dismal.

What’s a girl in a world without chocolate cows to do?

gimme some truth

Today seems like a great day to discuss some truths. I spent a long time being okay with lying. Any sort of lying, really. Lying to get out of trouble? I wrote the book. Lying to control how one sees me? I deserve an Academy Award. Lying to myself? Mastered by the age of 4. So, if one had observed me over the years, I'm pretty sure I probably appeared to be some sort of LYING LIAR. Because I was.

And then, out of nowhere, I saw myself from the outside, looking in. Do you know what I saw? A LYING LIAR, that's what. Someone who desperately wanted control, but only managed to hold onto something superficially resembling it. In my attempts to put my life on lock down, I had careened out of the stratosphere. I had become an adult physically, but my emotional development was retarded. On the outside, I was a wife and mother in her early twenties. But on the inside, I had never matured past the age of 12.

I know it can be difficult, even after one has seen themselves for what they really are, to change. It can be nearly impossible, really, because not only do we come to rely on behaviors and habits, but we also tend to shy away from incredibly difficult internal conflict. It's why the word denial was created. But a funny thing happened when it finally clicked - when I finally saw what I had become. I ran from it like I was scared. And frankly, I was scared. Scared of becoming like my mother, or like all of the other degenerate bottom-feeders who lie to get through life.

I stopped avoiding the truth. That was my first goal. I knew why I had been furiously clutching rose-colored glasses to my eyes. Childhood can really fuck a person up, and it's a lot easier to pretend everything is great and swell than to face a truth we know will bring us to our knees. But finally addressing reality was exactly what I needed to begin my journey, for lack of a less cliched phrase. Self-acceptance is a long, winding road, and honesty with oneself is the first step. Fact.

This newfound honesty was both refreshing and disarming. In the beginning, you just want to keep lying. Almost more than before. Where it once felt like habit, it now felt like an addiction. But I could also see what my truths were constructing. I was slowly building a foundation. Of control. In my effort to rid myself of dishonesty, I had discovered a secret to self-control. When you don't have lies to hide behind, you begin to avoid dangerous situations. Because in a dangerous situation (speaking in very broad terms here), the truth will often earn consequences. We are not perfect, and mistakes will be made. If we put ourselves in safe situations, and surround ourselves with people who will accept our mistakes and move on, only asking that we learn from them, honesty becomes the easier option. I like easy options.

Of course, just as one would expect, after forcing myself long enough to tell the truth no matter what, I stopped trying. It just came naturally. And I breathed a humongous sigh of relief, because between you, me, and the rest of  the interwebs, I was starting to worry that I didn't have it in me. That I came from a LYING LIAR and would only ever be a LYING LIAR. But I'm not. I'm just me, and that's the truth.

How come you never go there

To err is to be human. I’m pretty sure this extends to vulnerability, as well. We convince ourselves we know better. We tell ourselves we have a handle on a situation, that we’re mentally prepared despite knowing we’re weak. We expose ourselves to consequence, and pain. When I put it that way, I can’t help but wonder how we can be so stupid. But when I put it in context; when I ask myself why we do it, then I know.

We do it because we want things. It’s always about desire, even if what we desire is in more abstract terms. Desire is what motivates us. Always. A desire to take care of those we love. A want to better ourselves. A need for self-preservation, and sometimes self-destruction. It’s all the same when you attribute our drive to those desires. Simply put, we strive and exist in the moment, just to get what we want. And we leave ourselves unguarded, reaching and straining, working for that thing. That thing we don’t have yet.

But it’s not even about why we’re vulnerable. It’s about why we continue to leave ourselves vulnerable, for whatever undetermined amount of time, simply in the name of achieving a goal or fulfilling some possibly stupid, probably never-ending desire. A desire that experience has taught isn‘t realistically in the cards. A desire that has resulted in relentless punishment, left countless war wounds. We go back for more, time and again, and it renders us about as useful as a lemming. Following blindly toward our goal, we never really believe, no matter how much we attempt to perma-slap it into our psyche, that we can live without it.

Why. The. Fuck. Do. We. Do. This.

I assume it’s pretty clear I’m speaking of myself. And my desire is abstract. It isn’t a tangible thing, a person, or even a goal. It’s something I’ve always seen come easily to others, as if they aren’t even trying. So I search myself up and down, in and out, trying to figure out what I’m missing, and how I can fix it. It isn’t hard to fool me into thinking I’m one of them. That I have what they have, and I just haven’t been able to show it yet. They make it easy for me. They momentarily convince me that I do, in fact, have it. But I’ve been betrayed by the physical side of life - forever doomed to be seen as a conquest, with my inside apparently never living up to my outside.

So then they take it all away. They remind me that I‘m not a part of the club. That if I’m so goddamned concerned with preserving my dignity, I must not have it after all. Taking it slow? What is this language you speak? Pssshhh. Slow is for kids. Now kindly drop your panties.

And there you have it. I desire to be seen as a person, rather than a sexual object. I’ve spent a lifetime being a sexual object. Can’t I be seen as a person? I mean, I would even take a post as a sexual person, if only I could stop being an object. I do not exist as a plaything for those who see me as such, but somehow I can’t seem to break that mold. Why can’t an adult human being want to talk to another adult human being, to simply enjoy their company, content with the knowledge that sex is a possibility in the future? My body isn’t something to be coaxed out of its shell, literally, for some asshole’s momentary shits and giggles. Why does it always have to be about the right now?

I’ll tell you why - for the same reason I’m beating myself up. Because we want things. Like I said. It’s all relative.