One of the most memorable scenes from one of the most amazing television series ever made, Angels in America, is when the delusional Mormon girl Harper sits in front of a the plastic figure of the Mormon Mother, and asks her:
“In your experience of the world, how do people change?”
The Mormon Mother comes to life and responds: “Well it has something to do with God, so it's not very nice… God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching."
Harper: “And then up you get. And walk around.”
Mormon Mother: “Just mangled guts pretending.”
Harper: “That's how people change."
Is that how people change? It must be, because in my experience, people rarely do change. If they do, it is because something terrible, something unspeakable has ‘mangled’ their insides.
It terrifies me to think of this, every time I say to myself I need to make a fundamental change in my life. The truth is, there are a lot of things I’d like to change. I’d like to be less dependent on alcohol et al, I’d like to stop wanting to control everything and everyone around me, I want to be more appreciative of simplicity, and cut out from my life everyone who only robs me of positive energy.
Yes, there are a lot of things that I want, but do I have the willpower to go through a process that will inevitably be excruciating and whose results are unforeseeable? It is very comfortable staying in this bubble of mine, but something is pushing for more- more value out of every-day life, less dependency. But what does heeding this call mean? How/where do I start?
I’ve tried getting out of the country for a while, to see if I can get into a good swing of things and return on a positive note (eat well, sleep well, exercise, avoid human contact beyond family). That didn’t work for very long. Back from NY, Saturday I ended up going to some the most pretentious, obnoxious and indulgent cocktail parties I’ve ever been to, in a row. Newtonian physics had their way again: my attempt to rid myself of something bounced back at me with equal force in the opposite direction.
Escaping the country does not solve any problems because that in of itself is a bubble. The battle needs to be fought at the frontier, London. But what do I do? Stop speaking to my ‘friends’? Try and make new ones? Both very difficult propositions, and no guarantee that I won’t just attract the same kind of people again.
Then I thought, maybe I need a boyfriend… The truth is, I really don’t want one, but it may be the case that having someone demand so much of my attention on a weekly basis could ground me more, give me something to focus on. But it’s hard, because my heart/mind are just not there yet. I’ve tried, I’ve been on a lot of dates, but not one has made a lasting impression. Where do you go from here?
Then, of course, there’s the obvious option that I’ve also exhausted a few times. A therapist. But why would it work this time?
Frustrated,
M
