Been broken

Excerpt 1, from article in a magazine on feminist issues:

Been there, been broken. I identify, before woman, before heterosexual (just a little), as Broken. A broken person who is also a woman, which is adding to the impression of brokenness. 

Excerpt number 2

Also, an inclination, one the opposite of suicide, consciously or unconsciously, tries to utilize breakage as an event or action that leads to new connections. Heals, guides, strengthens the phoenix. 

I had been reading the magazine and got to thinking about how we are hurt and how we heal. How some people make it and others don’t. I spend a lot of time thinking about things that break and when they break. Who does it and why? Where does it happen? In public or in secret?

I like secret and I like strong, on my terms. I like eliminating, casting aside, making room for younger and stronger, smarter people.

If you want to look at it that way too, it might help you understand me a little better. Or possibly not. Most people never get to know me. They read about me, read me in a book, and I instantly inspire rage in them, thrown against my own rage. They see me, see me on a screen or in a photograph, and they screw up their faces wanting to erase me from their eyes. Yes, I know that I inspire disgust, that I represent the abject in people’s lives, meaning I am what they do not want to see, nor be. Detritus, human offal. See how many ways I can portray myself to fit what everyone thinks of me? I have many other descriptions, but that’s beside the point.

What isn’t beside the point is how I came to be the way I am, which is something far different if you see it through my eyes. Perhaps you would be willing to try?

You see, I can’t help myself and I know there’s no cure for me. From the very beginning everything that was good and human was denied me. I had people around me who were supposedly family, but there was something not right about them that I was never able to identify. Their faces had no expression, so they never smiled, but neither did they signal anything positive through words or touch. Neither did they show anger or any other negative emotion. We all just inhabited the same house and got along, and did things to help others get along, meaning, survive. We had no feelings, which paradoxically hurts more than being overly sensitive. We were, with our own things and spaces, we were.

You’re probably wondering, or maybe you’re wondering, who I am and what led to me being broken if nothing was ever done to me. I wasn’t molested or worse, wasn’t slapped or slugged. However, I must have been born different from the rest, and that swaddling emptiness or lack of humanity I’ve just described made my family so cruel. I had to get away from them, had to learn to feel things. I broke away as cruelly as possible, trying to outdo my parents. My farewell note was exactly that: FAREWELL. 

I really wasn’t prepared for the world of emotions, sexual innuendoes on all fronts, dangerous to go out alone at night things, super-consumption of inedible junk. It made me angry and I learned from tv and films that anger generally goes hand in hand with violence. Violence, in turn, tended to be directed at another person or group of persons, many of whom ended up dead. Screens were red all the time and films were full of shouting, clashing, smashing events, fast and furious.

I studied the types of violence, or rather, made up categories of my own, some of which the lawyers probably have already created. As I was doing this, I found myself especially drawn to the harm done to children and the elderly, thinking how that could be gotten away with. Because I knew already that was going to be my focus: kids and old folks, who are the weakest extremes. How could I achieve this goal?

I thought it was way too easy. Just act like you’re a caring person, a healer, someone who can be trusted. Then you have all the opportunities in the world to inflict pain on a person. It was my only chance to survive in the world outside my family. I even did it legally: I did a Nursing degree at a very good state college and got such good grades and recommendations that I could get a job anywhere. Which was fortunate, because as I became better at putting babies and doddering men to sleep (I prefer that very over kill), I had to move more often so my presence didn’t get linked to their passing.

I don’t think I’ve actually introduced myself yet. i’m Ms. Wilkes, but I prefer to be called just Annie. You may have heard of me, read about me or seen me in a movie. I was quite shocked at how famous I became, but that’s more proof that Mr. King is a fine writer. He has made me feel important by putting me in his book

Mr. King knows I want to continue to survive in this world, but that I’m very conflicted concerning how to go about it. When I try to control things or people around me, that usually means I just up and kill them or I make them do exactly as I say. Babies and old folks don’t know enough to behave, but middle-aged men like Paul Sheldon does know. He’s a writer, an important writer. Mr. Sheldon, I mean. Mr. Sheldon created a famous heroine, Misery Chastain, and with his work he created a whole world for me, my own little house, something I knew well. 

Misery, so beautiful, lived for me, to give me life, and I loved her like a, like a… friend. 

I could not live without her, because without her I had to be me, itinerant assassin, or me, member of a family which I had cruelly abandoned with that single word, farewell, and which would only shun me. 

You can’t imagine how frightened I was and how I had to react in the face of such a loss. All I know how to do is enforce my requests with a knife, drowning or poison. Nothing complicated or high tech. I gave Mr. Paul Sheldon the double whammy; I went after his extremities to keep him immobile and I went after his mind with doses of painkillers I’d learned about in nursing school.

I couldn’t, and can’t live without Misery Chastaine. I have learned about Victorian romance and it suits me well. Yes, I know I panicked slightly and chopped off a few things more than I should have, but he’ll be fine and I’m really a healer, I will stay by his side and nurse him back to health. I know that’s the only way he can write more Misery and put it out in the world. Don’t get me wrong, I’m talking about the books, not the feeling. I’m a sensitive person myself now that I’m away from my family and I feel badly for people who are troubled. I want to help them feel better, relax.

I believe I have the mind of a nurse, think and act like a nurse. As long as I have Mr. Sheldon, author of Misery.