I’ve been having dreams about this girl. No, not in that way. I meet her, and we talk. I tell her how I’ve been talking about her, singing her praises—all while the knot of not hating, not being able to hate her, tightens in me. I aspire to be like her. I never aspire to be like anyone; I just start despising them. I grow angry and resentful that someone has it better than me.
When I was younger, even up until a couple of years ago, I truly did believe I was destined for greatness or something. I just felt special. It was probably something undiagnosed or delusional, but I just knew I’d ‘make it.’ Not anymore though—that feeling has died out. Not that the mental illness has died out; it’s just been replaced, suppressed, overtaken by something worse, something parasitic.
But wanting to be her—to be someone else—out of admiration has been grounding. The absence of my hatred must mean I’m not that bad. Not that bad of a feminist. Not that bad of a team player, bad sport, bad person. Just bad.
Is that enough? Should I let it be enough? Should I be satisfied with the sufficiency of this enough? Cue Naomi Wolf, holding the hourglass pictured on the front cover of The Beauty Myth. The sand trickles down. "You haven’t picked me up in years. You know you need to, before you become a cautionary stat. You know I spoke about women like you—jealous, competitive women overtaken by the patriarchy. Women who will never be happy, nor free." I know, Naomi, but it’s hard to get rid of old habits, I’d reply. I wonder if she’d look at me with disgust then. A fat, lazy piece of shit who can’t even do this much—for women! For humanity! For herself! (Tbh, I’d probably assume it was because I'm brown. See: I won’t kill anymore.)
But it’s true. Old habits die hard: forgetting to floss, gossiping, overeating. I know that much. I wonder if she, the Dream Girl, has vices, things she knows aren’t good for her but can’t stop. Things she knows will inevitably cause her downfall. Or maybe she exercises her free will. Where does that come from though?
I used to have this so-called free will. But nowadays, I’m just my brain. I feel HE can only be addressed with such pronouns when speaking of HIM. HE is dominant, off-putting, egotistical. Unlike the she-brain, which wanted to believe, prayed for tranquillity, and was drenched in the indisputability of greatness and success, this current HE-brain is gluttonous and dream-shattering. I’ve had pretty good male role models in my life, so I don’t know how HE made his way here, infiltrating every aspect like an abusive partner. He crept up on me like narcissistic men creep up on vulnerable women. There may be a remedy, an evaluation, or an eviction process for the HE-brain within the pages of Tolle’s work. But HE knows that’d be detrimental to his survival.
Does Dream Girl feel anything comparable to this? I can only imagine she does, but in a much more nuanced manner. It would be informed and valid. It would have good reason and cause. It would be humanitarian, deep, and Pinterest-y. Some girls get sad and become Sylvia Plath; I get depressed and end up fat. How is that fair? It can only be self-error induced. What’s the point of blaming it on trauma, PTSD, class, colonisation, or some diagnosis? In the end, when I submit my piece, all that matters is if I did something with all that sadness—something monumental, intersectional, and all-encompassing in a subtle, incomparable, non-replicable way is what I need to achieve. Instead, I ignore the incoming call from my friend’s mum from the hospital, asking me if I want to talk to her clinically-dead-for-15-minutes-and-now-recovering-but-hasn’t-been-the-same (no shit) daughter.
In the end, when someone on the other side is sitting and reading this piece, deciding whether: 1.) My choice of words is distinct and impactful; 2.) The order in which I’ve arranged those distinctive and impactful words is distinctive and impactful in and of itself; and 3.) No one else has arranged their distinctive-er and impactful-er words in a more distinctive and impactful way—it won't matter whether I’m in pain or suffering. I can still write about it, so it must not have been that bad. Art only takes on value when the cause of it results in death, marking the end of a hypothetical recovery. In death, we (and you) strive to find reason and meaning.
Exhaustingly yet unsurprisingly, the egotism, selfishness, and self-serving lens of the HE-brain have taken over again. Above, we can witness the infestation of HE-ness (sounds similar to heinous). The HE that, in a world of tragedy, focuses on greatness for the self and the sustenance of personal dreams. It’s disgusting, honestly. Of course, Dream Girl deserves my dream life because Dream Girl cares about life. Plath cared about life, right? Until she didn’t. But that’s when we started caring.
See, I just don’t get it. I have all the components, all the right pieces, to construct and become and enjoy the embrace of my HE-brain aspiration puzzle. The pieces just don’t seem to fit together, though. Their edges have been sanded down, manhandled, manipulating the ease with which they would otherwise fall into place.
I can see it as a product of lacking the she-brain touch. The lack of she-brain sensitivity, which made Plath stuff towels and cloth in the gaps between the doors and floors of her kitchen before she placed her head in the oven. The she-brain gentleness of allowing myself to believe in good. The she-brain generosity of Dream Girl.
Imagine if this whole thing was simply just gay panic… a do I want to be her or do I want to be with her dilemma. It’s probably in the making, up there. My she-brain puts HIM to what never felt like work to her.