letters to the pomegranate seeds (and my anger)

Sometimes, when I look into the mirror, I see someone I know in pieces. I know her through so many eyes, but the eyes I see her in the least are my own.

How many times will I abandon myself for someone else? How many times will I say “never again”? Because it’s starting to feel like all I mean is, “until next time.” I walk away from something or someone, telling myself that I am done accepting the unacceptable, only to walk into the open arms of the next unacceptable love.

When we're all born, Saturn's somewhere, And the Saturn cycle takes around about twenty-nine years. That's when we gotta wake up and smell the coffee, Because if we've just been sort of relying on our cleverness. Or relying—, you know, just kind of floating along, Saturn comes along and hits you over the head. Hits you over the head, hits you over the head, and says, "Wake up"

— Diana Garland in Ariana Grande’s Saturn Returns Interlude

Is this normal?

Does everyone look at themselves and see so many people?

I see someone who is almost always herself but also almost always only fragments of herself.

I see a person for every person, and one of the consistent threads of all of those women is someone who is exhausted.

The anger boils inside of me when I see her.

It’s unfair to be so angry with other people who never asked me to hide myself. They didn’t ask for it, but they do benefit from it.

I’m not angry at them for wanting me to hide, but I guess I am a bit angry that they like it. And angry that they hate it when I stop it.

Perhaps the person I am the angriest with is me.

I’m angry that I felt so unlovable, so insignificant, and so unimportant that I had to give other people the keys to the vehicle of my life.

I want to say that I allow myself to be pushed and nudged and prodded by others who don’t have much regard for how I feel. I want to say that people care about how I feel only when I make their lives easier, more palatable, more vibrant. But when I need the same inconvenient love, I am left alone.

Those are the words of a victim.

I was once a victim, in my girlhood, unable to choose my safety, unable to have boundaries or to view myself as my own person.

But I am not a victim now.

I’m not at mercy to the whims and decisions and reactions and expectations of others. In fact, I do that to myself.

I make myself other people’s savior and a victim of their actions.

In ways, I grew up quickly, turning 11 but feeling 25. While this may be true, the opposite is then also true: what about the growth that is supposed to come from 12-24? Maybe in those years I was supposed to have were when I would have experienced the liberated freedom of choosing myself. Instead, I learned how to choose everyone else. I grew up fast, but maybe I also matured slowly.

I’m not a stranger to this anger, but others are.

Sometimes, I feel like the only time I am connected to all parts of myself is when I feel this anger. It feels so horrible, so alien, so uncomfortable, and even though anger comes to visit me holding hands with guilt, it also feels… good.

My Saturn has returned
When I turned twenty-seven
Everything started to change
Took a long time, but I learned
There's two kinds of people, one is a giver
One's always tryin' to take
All they can take

— Deeper Well, Kacey Musgraves

It’s like I’ve been on a strict diet, allowing myself just a little bit of anger, when things are really wrong, or just when I need to binge after restricting.

It eats the backside of my flesh and burns my mouth, needing to get out.

The problem isn’t that I feel anger.

The problem is that I should feel more anger.

Even now, I glance at myself in the mirror, adorned with my new cat-eyed glasses from Costco, eyeshadow smudged to look like winged eyeliner, my newly cut hair messy and greasy, weighed down by dry shampoo. I see her pain, but I don’t see her anger. I see her sickness, but I don’t see her rage. I see her emptiness, but I don’t see her wrath.

I should feel the urge to burn my world, which is mostly built to appease others while hiding myself, down, more often. I should feel the heat in my chest when someone says something hurtful. Instead of the familiar feeling of labeling myself as wrong, I should allow my anger’s fire to turn it all to ash.

Does anyone really respect the woman who follows everything up with I’m sorry, or even, god forbid, Nevermind?

Too long I've been afraid of
Losing love, I guess I've lost
Well, if that's love, it comes at much too high a cost

— Defying Gravity, Wicked

Does anyone believe the woman who cries wolf about deserving better, when she always buckles under the weight of her own horror at saying no?

Does anyone even see the woman who purposefully stayed away, out of sight, out of recognition?

And can she even be angry that they don’t?

When she herself is running away, then miserable that no one chased her?

When she wanted to play hide and go seek, but never asked anyone to come and find her?

I’m angrier more and more often. Anger is acting like my polymer fibers, stitching the broken parts of me back together. I’m still jagged, and I don’t fit together quite right, but I’m starting to see a full woman in the mirror, even if she does look like a patchwork doll.

I’m a patchwork doll, and sometimes I want to pack a suitcase into a car and drive until my foot on the gas pedal goes numb, and othertimes I want to sit in silence, as I watch the people around me show themselves to me. Maybe the fire pit of my anger is not overtaken with rabid flames, but it is simmering, sizzling, hot to the touch.

I’m Persephone, and I’m choosing to eat the pomegranate seeds. Many writers or storytellers like to say that she was tricked into eating those seeds, but I don’t think so. My sovereign goddess empress can’t be so easily fooled.

They think that just because you’re a maiden, you can’t make your own decisions.

The only way that a woman would choose to rule the Underworld is if a man made her, right?

I don’t think anyone forced Persephone to do anything,

I don’t think anyone could.

It doesn’t mean I will no longer feel the magic of spring’s breezes ruffling my hair as I laugh and lounge. It means I will never let myself laugh and lounge with handcuffs on.

I no longer laugh to comfort someone else; I laugh because I’m laughing.

I no longer smile when I feel like screaming.

I no longer whisper when I feel like sobbing.

I no longer wait at the porch of your house with my best outfit on, offering you everything I have to give, only for you to make me sleep in the garden.