"No amount of something you don't need will substitute for something you do need." -- Bernard Poduska
I wrote the following essay to explore why I felt jealous of Grace, my current protagonist. Because she has been strongly focused on developing her musical talent, adolescence was something she had little time for. However, on her adventures, she has to deal with Ichirou, who is about her age, and Greg, who is a few years older. She's definitely starting to notice the opposite sex as I write. And I got jealous of her:
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I suspect everyone has a fairy tale of their own writing that they hug to themselves, as a spell against trauma. The existence of the fairy tale fills that hole in their heart that the terror tore out of them, the recitation of that fairy tale to themselves chains and locks the dungeon door so their demon can't escape. Moreover, if they could live their fairy tale to the end, the demon would be slain and the hole in their heart would be healed.
The fairy tales are as varied as the people who hold them and the trauma they've suffered. But they include this one word, as an incantation: "If ..."
If the prince would fall in love with me, it would take away the terror and pain of my adolescence. That is my fairy tale.
My adolescence resembled Stephen King's "Carrie", without the ability to torch my tormentors. One of the acts perpetrated against me obliterated my innocence and stunted my adolescent development. I was thirteen at the time. I had all the crushes a typical teen girl entertained, but shame at even thinking of men as men shrouded my reverie.
Hence the fairy tale -- if the prince would fall in love with me, I might be normal ...
But no amount of something I don't need will substitute for something I do need. The prince will never be enough, because only in fantasy does the prince truly understand the extent of damage
I suffered, and understanding is the key to the fairy tale. The prince can only interact with me at the current moment, and I am married, no longer that adolescent who needed healing. The hole in my heart will be there, will always be there, although it doesn't ache as much as before.
The reality of life beyond the fairy tale is that everyone has a hurt that their fairy tale will never fix.
I am pretty sure that every person can identify with that painful awkward phase of adolescence. For some it is more scarring and drawn out than others. It is a process when we start to separate from our parents, entertain thoughts of romantic relationships. Autonomy is the main theme in that stage of life.
ReplyDeleteI believe that all people have the ultimate need to be loved, accepted, and understood by their object of desire.
When you are younger you subscribe to the popular thought that the other person will fulfill you in every way. But that is not true. No matter how perfect they are (the other person also has issues!!!!!) you are still left with a void. You on your own have to be able to fill in those missing spaces. The other person can't do that for you.I suspect that is one reason some relationships fail.
In my own ecperience...I am a Christian and I believe that God sustains me....and there are times when i just feel so dejected by a specic circumstance. My husband is very supportive, listens to me,is sensitive to my needs and wants. He sounds like perfection...I know. With all that i still sometimes need more that what my husband gives. I am able to get that from God.
With Grace she is young and experiencing romantic love for the first time. As she plunges head first into love will she have the expectation that this boy will make her life complete? Does she hear the music score from the end of every Disney cartoon movie playing subconsciously when she thinks about the boy she loves? Will it work the way she imagines it to? Or will it fall apart because they are two inperienced kids who both have a lot if insecurities because the are both alolesencents?
I read something today that reminded me of your note -- "Some things can't be fixed; they can only be borne." I can sit here and be jealous of Grace for experiencing something I didn't, but as the story unfolds, it's clear that she has her own baggage, as does everyone in the story. As do all of us.
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