Control

Keep talking. We're all mad here. Mad as hatters, one might say.

One must make one's self superior to humanity, in power, in loftiness of soul,--in contempt. -Nietzsche

As a child, I read. Book upon book, page upon page, devouring the words put in front of me. My brother--bless his heart, he and I are amazingly close now--used to try and convince me I couldn't. I remember being in first grade, with "White Fang" held on my lap, sitting rapt in my doorway. It was my favorite place, for some reason. I think because it was easier to run away--I wasn't trapped in my room, nor was I exposed in the hallway. He would grab the book from me and point to words.

"What's this one say?"
"'It'."
"No it doesn't!"

Yes...it did.

I would be embarassed. I think that's when I started questioning reality. How did I know I was reading? How did I know I wasn't making it up as I went along? What was real? The words I perceived? Was my mind that strange?

As we got older, we had reading hours in school. Fourth grade, I first picked up Romeo and Juliet. My teacher didn't believe me when she saw me reading it, and claimed I could never understand. She asked me to read her a passage, and tell her what it meant.
I chose the scene where Mercutio is first taking Romeo to the party where he meets his Juliet. Explained it to her. I remember how quiet she got, looking at me with a strange, speculative stare. She then started pulling me in every lunch, asking me to talk to her about the books.
Romeo and Juliet. Hamlet. Othello.
I devoured them.

Mr. Stein was our Librarian. He left that year. I would hide in the library during all free hours, because I was so afraid of the other children. I was social to an extent, but by this point, I was already depressed. He used to sneak me books during the book fairs that I could keep, or special order ones to rent. I remember his last day, he called me over, his aging form large and kind. He gave me a children's book. "Rupert Goes to the Dentist."

"You're still a little kid, PrettyWreck. Act like one sometimes."



It still is my favorite book. I have it hidden away.



By the end of fifth grade, I had read Shakespeare's collections. I performed a Sonnet as an audition to an art's academy. In science and english, I scored in the upper 99th percentile for my standardized tests. I wrote my first book in the sixth grade. Wrote four more the summer before seventh. They were nowhere near Shakespeare's quality, but they were mine. By the time Jr. High ended, I had memorized two different dictionaries.

And then I remember hearing those words.

"Honey...you really should try to act a little simpler. People won't like you if you're too smart."







I wasn't liked much anyway.
I blamed that.
And so I stopped being smart.




There are other contributing factors. Drugs killed off a lot of my brain, I think. I stopped doing my word exercises, no longer read the novels I loved, hid away my Stein and Longfellow my Junior year and picked up the cheesy books my classmates were reading. I stopped being the 13 year old who had her nose buried in Dickens, Vonnegut, or Huxley, and became the vivacious strange little goth with a love of prescription drugs and ICP. I stopped reading, and started trying to fit in with others.
My writing suffered.
And then greatest blows came when people I had known I was always better than started getting better scores than me on essays.



So I gave up.

Even now, when I talk, I carefully tailor my words and purposefully forget things. This blog started out much the same, where I think I tried very, very, very hard to not ever, ever talk like the words sound in my head. There's always a certain flow and rhythm that I learned when I was a child, and it honestly humiliates me. I don't feel like it's anything worth reading. I feel pretentious, and falsely superior in some ways. Like I'm somehow trying to be better than everyone, and I'm not. It's just how the words in my head sound. They flow in me like poetry, because that's what I wrote for so many years. It what I was published with. It's what I lived off of. Everything follows an obsessive rhythm, and if it stumbles, my brain screeches to a halt and has to fix it, and I think I'm the only who hears the beating of the drums as the words go.
Slave labor.
Row, Row, Row,
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM,
Write, Write, Write.
Starve, Starve, Starve.




What do I starve for?
To control the past?
To attone for what was done to me?
To become more like the image of what I think people want to see?
To eradicate the last vestiges of me?
The girl who sat with her nose in Othello in the fifth grade, toes curled in excitement while reading Hamlet, eyes wide. "ALAS! Poor Yorick, I knew him well!" The one who wanted to be the Count of Monte Cristo instead of a lead character in Clueless or Legally Blond?
The girl who doesn't laugh as often as she puts out, and prefers philosophy to video games?
Who can stay up all night engrossed in a physics book?



I'm not smart.
I don't want to pretend to be.
It's why I hate the way I write. The way I talk. Because I feel like it comes off as pretentious. Like no one will like me if I act the way my brain actually demands I be. I have to be what people want. The skinny girl. The ditzy girl. The one who doesn't know what a Nhilist is, the one who hasn't, by the age of fourteen, counted herself amongst the Hyperboreans. The one who doesn't have the dictionary of angels and demons memorized, nor can quote you facts and scriptures from religions dating back to the beginning of written time.


There is, in truth, some booksmarts there.
But I am not quick.
I always scored second best on my biology exams.
I never went to class or turned in homework, always getting C's.
I never managed to get above a 98% on my essays.
I never managed to truly understand Kant in my philosophy classes.
I never really got Calculus.
I still have a hard time with math.

I'm slow.
I'm not very smart.
I'm not trying to say I am.
What I'm saying, is that I've done all of this, and I talk a certain way, but I'm still not good enough. And I don't understand why any of you like these entries or read them, but I love you so, so, so very much for doing so. I love you so very much for leaving me such beautiful comments and making me smile, when yes, at one point, I may have had potential, but I'm not sure where it went. I've read all these things, and I've hidden all my words, and I've hidden the flow of the thoughts in my mind, but only because my intelligence isn't real.
My mother said, "People won't like you if act smart."
Act, being the key word.
I'm not.
It's not honest.
It's not true.
I'm just me.
This is all just...just me.

...thank you for reading it. For accepting it.
I adore you all.

And your words will always make me smile. ♥

"First the day after tomorrow must come for me. Some men are born posthumously." - Nietzsche


"I've thrown my body away in vain attempts to convince myself my soul isn't attached." - A Will Is The Way