2005-04-19 - 8:02 p.m.
The Bitch in the House.
The book came today, and being the weak-willed book junkie I am, I started it right away.
I'm hardly into it, and already it's stirring up the muddy silt at the bottom. I feel like I have so much to say. But as usual, it's largely disorganized and cloudy, and I'm not sure where to start.
Maybe this is a bad time for me to read this book. Maybe there will never be a good time to read this book. Not now. Not anymore.
Veronica Chambers starts off her essay with the recollection that she "never had many fantasies about marriage.", and already I felt all the unfinished emotional baggage of a murdered dream rising from its shallow grave to flash it's green and rotten teeth at me.
I mean, I never sat around fantasizing about my wedding. I've never thought about gown, or flower arrangements, or colors, or cake, or music, or any of that stuff. It always seemed a little girlish and silly, and I've never wanted to be either. But I did...I DO...want to be a wife.
Not that it seems to matter.
And even as I move forward with my writing, I realize in another way, I'm completely stuck. With the death of this deepest and most fundamental of dreams, I don't know HOW to move forward. Don't know why I should.
Indianapolis was an abortive attempt to spark interest in a career, but I'm just not that gyrl. I work because I have to. I can't make it be more than that--a means to an end--and even if I could, even with the death of my dreams, I don't want it to be more than that.
California has been my attempt at forgetfulness. The hope that--separated from everything and everyone--maybe I can just stop caring. That my phantom heart would stop aching without the constant reminder. But the reminders are everywhere. There no lessening of the hurt just because I don't know them.
But the fault is my own. A dream I'm afraid to truly let go of is not going to die. It's only a zombi, dogging at my heels and trying to eat my brain. And we all know the rules about zombis. Only a headshot will put it down. And, thou shalt not suffer a zombi to live.
