I think about death a lot in these times. It seems just outside of my reach, you know. I think about how I’d die, water, to keep walking into the Lagoon till I’m fully submerged. To keep walking till my lungs fill with water. But I have a problem with water, the same problem I have with all the others, being found.
When I die, I don’t want my body to be found; I don’t want the faux tears, the wake, the “she was so young, so promising.” It’s all a lie; I’m not promising, I’m hardly anything.
I think about the Victorian Era and what I would have been. Poor and forced into whoredom to survive? Middle-class? An aristocrat? I like to think I’d have been royal. Sometimes I think of my ladies in waiting and what they’d have wanted out of life. Would they have poked fun at me when I wasn’t looking? Would I have been adored?
But then I think I’d have been poor. We don’t escape our lot in life, even upon reincarnation. Maybe I’d have had a keeper, been someone’s mistress, and have his wife absolutely hate me, but be grateful that she doesn’t have to deal with his unwashed ass every day. And what would happen after his death? If I’m too old to entice another keeper? I’d probably be dead as well. They didn’t live very long in those days.
I think about my future, where I’ll end up. I come up blank. I don’t know what I want anymore. I just know that I want to graduate. What will I do after I graduate? We’ll find out eventually. I don’t think I’d end badly. I’ve been winging it my whole life and look where I am. I’d probably wake up one morning when I’m forty-five and realise I’ve been doing the wrong thing for 20 years. Maybe I’d find what I love then and go after it. Maybe I’d tell myself it’s too late and go back to sleep. When we get to that bridge, I guess.
Sometimes I think of here and now, of what I’m doing wrong, and what I’d like to change. Then I stop because it makes me miserable. I want to tear at the tapestries, to show the ruin beneath. To say “look, I’m damaged. I look like gold, but only because I’ve been spray-painted gold”. Nothing is real here; all we offer is filtered truths and half-truths.
