Two faces

December 22, 1982

She mixes metaphors like a cocktail, scared to death of the headshrinkers she thinks are out to get her, and probably are – the enraged panic of a lost soul, who fears being chewed up by what she calls “a corporate zombie.”

The first rule in fighting any war is to know your enemy better than your enemy knows itself – or you – and to distinguish between those things worth hating and those not worth bothering with.

She does not always know which is which or friend from foe, and so, fears everything equally, and keeps everything out.

She only has a vague idea of how the real world works or how those who oppose her actually think – she assuming they think like her, and often, this is her undoing. Each time her fingers get burned touching the flame she mistakes for enlightenment, she creeps deeper into herself, and is longer to venture out again when the stinging stops.

Me? I like less vague boundaries, even if I have to build my own structure – like a blind man who builds a house he can come to know rather than spending a life time bumping into things he can’t possibly ever see, and feeling the edges of only causes pain.

In that regard, she is braver than I am, or more deluded; she may believe she can actually survive out there without boundaries, presuming that because she knows how to float nothing can sink her when nothing could be further from the truth.

So over time, she learns to wear two faces, rather than live in a box, one that looks out and pretends that the world doesn’t affect her, the other, she keeps in an even smaller box inside herself, that place where all the real feelings go, but never show.

But often, in the most terrible times, even she can’t tell which face is her face, and perhaps neither face is.