Meisje

Hello everyone,

I’ve been continuously urinary incontinent since birth because of a congenital issue that has so far remained untreatable.

I guess that I’m lucky that I managed to adapt to this with no major dents in my self-esteem! That’s mostly thanks to my supportive and sensible parents.

It’s probably unrelated to that, but I experience myself as a grown-up child. I don’t mean that in the sense of age-play, but as in how I function. I can present myself as an adult, but it doesn’t come naturally … my executive skills are that of nine year old, my social group skills are even worse.

But the difference that makes me sometimes consider if I might be an alien, is how many people seem to be obsessed with anything that’s dark, horrific and generally unpleasant.

This is pretty much universal and seems somehow connected to being an ‘adult’: whether it’s death/dark/black-metal lyrics, tv shows, literature or modern art: grim-dark practically equals ‘serious’ or even ‘palatable’, suggesting that anything without would cause acute saccharine poisoning.

I’ve always felt that that was nonsense. And after taking the effort to consider if there might be something in it after all, I also thought that it’s nonsense. People seem to confound ‘not closing your eyes for the reality of life’ with ‘let’s ALL zoom in on the worst bits to avoid being disappointed’ and conclude that failing to do so is somehow morally and intellectually suspect and cowardly. What baloney. 

I’ve always felt drawn towards qualities that are dismissed by the grim-dark mindset as childlike and immature: beauty, grace, kindness, friendliness … that sort of thing. Our ‘higher selves’, as it was known before silly postmodernism turned that into just another social construct. 

That’s not because I wilfully ignore to acknowledge that life isn’t always sunshine and roses; but because I know damn well that it isn’t. Sulking over it won’t improve it, let alone wallowing in it. You can only hope to accomplish something good if you acknowledge its existence in the first place.

Or as JRR Tolkien phrased it in a poem written to CS Lewis:

Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme

of things not found within recorded time.

It is not they that have forgot the Night,

or bid us flee to organized delight,

in lotus-isles of economic bliss

forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss

(and counterfeit at that, machine-produced,

bogus seduction of the twice-seduced). 

Such isles they saw afar, and ones more fair,

and those that hear them yet may yet beware.

They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,

and yet they would not in despair retreat,

but oft to victory have tuned the lyre

and kindled hearts with legendary fire,

illuminating Now and dark Hath-been

with light of suns as yet by no man seen.

I sincerely love happy endings, and I don’t have any problem believing in fairy-tales that might come true, despite everything.

And with that, I embrace anything that’s girly and gentle and innocent and pink. 

I will never surrender.