Bleeding Wonderland

Sometimes the most effectual family lessons are the ones untaught.

Bleeding Wonderland

The women of my family are nothing if not good teachers.

My grandmother taught me how to starch a crinoline, how to dance a minuet, and the ideal way to force my size ten body into a size eight dress. (“Breathing is overrated,” she always said.)

My mother was always blunt. She told me never to wear a bikini because my body has never been the societal definition of perfect. She taught me how to hide every imperfection and how to compensate for my 5-foot-1 stature.

But the most poignant lesson I ever learned from her was not about walking in heels or talking to boys. The most poignant lesson she ever taught me was delivered as if it was nothing.

The actress gracing our living room TV was crying beautifully in the middle of a restaurant and my mother scoffs and peers upon the television with disdain as she remarks, “Come on sugarplum, cry in the bathroom like everyone else.”

I hadn’t considered it at the time, but I wonder who told her that her emotions are unworthy of being shown in public.

I wonder who she handed her heart to on a silver platter only to watch them shatter it at her feet.

How many times did she sit in high school bathrooms with a broken heart that she refused to let anyone else see? How many times did her heart shatter on dirty hospital bathroom tiles because of the patients she couldn’t save?

Would she congratulate me or console me if I told her how many times I took her advice and only cried when I was alone?

The thing about letting nobody else see the cracks in a collected exterior is that the cracks are still there, but you’re the only one around to patch them up. You’re the only one who knows they exist.

When everything you’ve tried to hide is spilling out like blood red sand through the cracks of the hourglass of your body how can one person put it all back together by themselves?

I am spilling blood red on the white tiles but all anyone ever does is hand me a broom to sweep the sand out of their path.

I am the Mad Hatter trapped in Wonderland but there is no Alice to offer me sympathy, there is only the odd passerby that asserts that I cannot possibly be imprisoned in this realm because I cannot tell the difference between freedom and prison, anyway.

There is no Alice to offer me sympathy, only the odd passerby here to remind me that I am not bleeding out on the snow white because I cannot feel the difference between joy and desolation, anyway.

            -- A.C. // 3:55 AM: In the words of Sebastian Stan, I hate Wonderland.