Hi Stacey

Hi Stacey–

I’ve never actually seen the movie The Man in the Iron Mask, but I’d like to. Leo: who says no?

I’m thinking about it now, as yet another example of the whole upstairs/downstairs of persona and self. (Or is it persona and ego, and self?)

FYI, perfect writing conditions tonight, Stacey. It’s a windy autumn evening. I have the screen door open to the balcony. Listening to Debut and eating some leftover Digiorno pizza.

Been thinking about my subconscious, which could or could not be you (we’ve been over this). She’s been coming to the surface more in the past several years. I get the sense most girls experimented with anger more in teen years. I’m kind of late. I remember at my 36th birthday specifically talking about this. How I’d spent 35 so angry. Bad mood 24/7. I could sense the adolescence of it all, but I didn’t understand, certainly couldn’t explain it.

Now, I think I have an idea. I think I repressed my anger when it was first supposed to come online for me. I was just not an angry teen. Zany, studious, romantic, creative, and privately sad–but not angry. Anger wasn’t really welcomed in my religion. So I just shut it out.

When I finally left my religion, there were a lot of surprises. Anger was one of them. Without my faith conditioning me to shove anger away, I started holding space for it–and then expressing it. It was ugly and embarrassing. Still is.

The huge con is I’m navigating adult experiences with a teen emo palette. While I’ve matured through all my other emotions, I’m way behind with anger. And that’s, like, canonically the worst one to not handle well.

But the pro is, I feel so powerful. This teen anger has shown up when I know so much more than I did at 16 anyway. I have so much shit to be angry about. Really, truly, mindbendingly angry about.

Girls have that anger for a reason. They’re just coming to terms with how unfair the world is for them, and then the anger cooks and fizzles under pressure, when it should fuel them to rebel. But, like, whatever, we’ve been hijacked so the patriarchy has trained us to aim that anger at ourselves and other women, mostly.

So while I very much would not choose to be going through a teen drama moment, it is interesting to have access to this anger while knowing I am actually right to be so angry. It’s definitely my bad I’ve reacted so angrily at people when they were just representing the system I hate. …But I don’t know. When is the appropriate time to express anger at a person who is casually upholding a system that is killing me?

To be more direct, Stacey, how about this? When people, even friends, interact with me while representing capital, they’re allowed to be cold and selfish. Because capital is cold and selfish, duh. But if I am cold or selfish in response, that’s suddenly a character flaw of mine. Even though I too am an agent of capital, Stacey. I don’t want to be, but they made me one. And then they’re offended when I act like it.

I asked Dern the other night if he’s two people or one person. He said two people, but the differences are slight. His example was playing video games alone vs. with me walking around, how he’s a little more settled knowing he will be unobserved, even when it’s just me strolling by with headphones in “observing.”

madwoman and Persona are much further apart. My writing partner revealed something kind of funny, after I’d met her friends at the local wine night in the art park. She told me they were all surprised that I as personable with upbeat energy. She had cocked her head to the side and explained, “Yeah, she’s a theatre kid…” But clearly the way she’d talked about me was not “theatre kid energy.” If I had to guess, she’d probably more likely mentioned how difficult it was to close our deal, and how mad I was about it, how I have essentially no sense of humor to spare for men.

Writing with Alison has been so important for me. I’ve asked her the same question before–if she felt she was two people. She’d just finished talking to me about how an awards party was the most fun ever and also she couldn’t wait for it to end the moment she’d arrived. She told me she didn’t think she was two people, but she did have a rest mode. She returned the question, and I said yes, I am two people.

If I recall correctly Alison told me she didn’t see two people in me, and I was almost too quick to explain, “My persona doesn’t come here. My persona doesn’t really write.” (I don’t think I’d known Persona doesn’t really write, until then.) I told her she’d met Persona once, the day we first got coffee. I’d smiled a lot and wore a tight denim jumper.

When I think of the two gals, madwoman is in a basement and Persona is in the living room. Sometimes Persona is on a rainbow in a cloud and madwoman is at the foot of the stairs’ landing. It smells like cat food, just as it always did when I was a child.

xoxo

Alice