The Revisionist History of Love
Give a mouse a cookie, give a bitch a platform.
I’ve been thinking a lot about “the stories we tell ourselves.” A common phrase depicting how we often grow lies in our mind labs to make the reality of any given situation more palatable.
I stopped trying to clear up people’s misconceptions during my quarter life crisis. If this piece is about anything, it’s not about trying to make you feel any differently. You can think it’s all my fault.
I always tell myself: you don’t need to blow up your life, Maddy.
It’s rarely worth it, still, I always do. Growing older, I’ve found so many new and exciting ways to take the piss. Being an emotional terrorist is hard, but here’s what you need to know:
You always respond. Leaving well enough alone is so… unfulfilling.
Welcome the adversity, sadness, pain.
Then you get angry. So angry.
Fuck them. You did so much for them. Do they deserve to walk around like you didn’t?
Maybe you should fantasize some more about defeating them in battle before you fire off that text.
Settle into the quiet that comes when others can’t communicate the way you can. Seep into it, actually. Your watch is over, the play is done.
It’s demoralizing to see words that weren’t true before become true through years of thinking or sweating or shit-talking.
From the stands, I have to jeer. A constant watcher who can’t forget. You wore that outfit yesterday, but you didn’t like it then. Why’s it fitting you so well?
I wonder if there’s a movie you watch and think about me. I wonder if there’s a song you hear that reminds you I ever existed. I wonder if there’s stuff you write down but never show, because it’s about me and you hate me.
Maybe it isn’t worth it to open the casket, but I’m curious. What would everything we shared look like now? I would like to take it and put it on the operating table, both our versions. I could Frankenstein a new reality, where everything we both needed to tell ourselves was true.
This monster is what I imagine when I text you that I’m sorry. It’s the most honest I’ve been in years, but it’s still falling short. I don’t unlock the achievement that lets me see into your brain, just one more time. instead, I get some absolution and the warning to never call here again.
I didn’t want this stupid fucking forgiveness, I just wanted to try again.
“And I can go anywhere I want, Anywhere I want - just not home”
I often call back to a harrowing image in times like these. It’s that of Jeremy Strong’s Kendall Roy walking down a long hallway*. He’s smiling, until he’s not. He ends the scene contorted in a server room, hiding from a world he thought he had dominion over. A world that had been fun, but never true.
What did he tell himself?
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* Season 3, Episode 3 of Succession