Now I (don't) wanna be your dog
28 August 2011 06:01 AM Categories: Writing prompts
My life appears the same. Stupid wake-up time. Round Robin write that turns into post fodder. The coffee. Soon, the pill. This morning my husband will go running and then we will go to the Berkeley Bowl and then we will clean in preparation for my mother’s arrival (visit delayed three days because of Hurricane Irene – she’s fine and her house is intact, thank goodness). I will run the vacuum cleaner and the dust rag. I will prepare dinner and load the dishwasher. I will toddle off to bed too early after sleepy conversation with the man.
Internally, however, it is all shifting. I am holding off on the confessional. I know that the only behavior I can change is my own. I will slowly build my arsenal of classes to move on, I will sculpt a resume. My fall won’t be quite as out in the world as I was hoping – the classes I will take will all be online – and I have had to let go of my disappointment, see hope as a long-term thing.
When I am feeling optimistic, I know I can do this, that I don’t need a hand to pull me up (though I do need other people, I do need other people, I do need other people – the mantra I must repeat because I have a tendency to withdraw from them in times of great need). I can carve out something for myself, I don’t need a rescuer or a soft surface. But if I think about it too much, I will falter, so let’s change the subject.
I had a dream last night that I was back with the old crowd. A person I had wronged, someone who got angry at one of my recent posts, was there. I told him I was sorry. I told him that the posts from prompts were most likely to be half-thought out, not careful enough in their treatment of other people. He was ok with it (in real life, he sent me a terse Facebook message, unfriended me, and didn't respond to my measured apology, which included an offer to delete the post). I told him that because I wanted to, not because I wanted to feel better about myself, to show that I was good now, see. I told him because I felt it, not because I wanted to be the dog who flipped on her back, belly exposed in submission.
I don’t have to prostrate myself before anyone. I don’t have to mold my behavior to fit what I think they want. I don’t have to confess into the void, desperate for a reaction, a sign of caring. Fuck that. And when I’m feeling weak, like reaching a hand out to nothing, like proving my goodness when there is nothing to prove and no one to prove it to, I will read this. Again. And again. And again. Until it forms a ridge of thought in my mind, protective, permanent. An indication of self.
From a photo prompt, completely unrelated to what I wrote.
I'm posting every messy Round Robin prompt, a prompt a day until the RR ends. Unless I tell you otherwise, this is the original 12-minute prompt edited only for clarity and typos. It must be my general mood, but I keep on wanting to use the word "fuck" in the titles to these posts (what would it be in this case? Fuck you? Fuck 'Em All?) Today I also wanted to use that picture of Johnny Cash, you know, the one where he brandishes the bird? Not a very friendly shot and perhaps an indicator of how pissed off I am in general. It's an old, old feeling and I am tired of it, of its fire and the way it projects shadows of the past on the present. I am dealing with that one over time.
The Stooges "I Wanna Be Your Dog" via YouTube.
Image by dimmerswitch.
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