The Unicorns On The Wallpaper

 Content warning: suicidal ideation. 

I am in the process of redecorating my bedroom. Three of the walls are painted, but on the fourth wall, on smooth, pure white paper, are detailed, silver images, drawn exactly like the old pen-and-ink illustrations one often finds in classic children's books such as Alice's Adventures In Wonderland. Unicorns with feathered wings and lush tails stroll contemplatively beneath ancient, craggy trees; swallows zip through the air in pairs; families of rabbits dwell on the grassy banks of streams; mouldering castle ruins lift their proud heads to the scudding clouds; pairs of flamingoes stand delicately in ferns and long grasses, bills close in intimate conversation. Nature, fairytales, history, and mystery, all depicted in unembarrassed, unselfconscious, unironic, sincere detail. The designs seem like they are from another time.

The wallpaper is perfect; exactly the kind of thing that I would have loved at any age; a representation of so many of the things that make me who I am and symbolise the things I have always treasured most. I had searched online for weeks for the right wallpaper for the wall in my bedroom, found this one while I was searching for a different design, and knew immediately that I had found "the one". 

"My younger self would be so happy," I said to myself, when I chose the paper, and again when it arrived. What I didn't realise was how happy, and how significant the unicorns on the wallpaper would be. 

Many months passed before I was able to redecorate my bedroom and put the wallpaper to use, but eventually all was ready: the room was prepared, the wall was primed, and the paper-hanger did their work.

When the paper-hanger had left, and the wall was finally complete, I stood and looked at it. 

And I started to cry. 

Twice I went into that room and looked at the fresh wallpaper, and each time I cried for at least half an hour.

Because, suddenly, for the first time in several years, I was glad that I had survived. I was glad that I hadn't killed myself when I was younger. For some reason, the unicorns on the wallpaper made me feel that I had arrived somewhere. Something was complete. Something had come full-circle. After years of unpacking psychological baggage and trying to heal the damage done to my mind as a child, I realised, quite suddenly, that I had achieved a place where my younger self and my adult self could both be happy. Despite the horror and anguish and grief of the last five years, the dead-end blandness before that, the frustration before that, the trauma before that, and the anger, depression, and despair sprinkled throughout all of it, we had both survived. 

We carry our younger selves within us. The fears and hurts that we suffer as youngsters, as our brains are forming, become part of us, and inform everything we do for the rest of our lives. Most of our deepest wounds are inflicted when we are most vulnerable and least able. My inner child has spent most of its life crying, full of anger, hurt, and grief. I have spent the last few years trying to "fix myself" — in other words, trying to heal the wounds I suffered as a child; wounds which drove me to think how much better and easier life would be if I didn't have to live it.

The unicorns represented something. I would have loved to have unicorn wallpaper when I was a child, but my parents mocked me for liking unicorns. (They mocked me for almost everything.) So I read unicorn books, and looked at unicorn pictures, in secret. Perhaps these unicorns, blazoned serenely and unselfconsciously in silver on my wall, signified that I could now give my younger self all the love and acceptance and joy that it had been denied by the people who should have supplied it.

And I said aloud to my younger self, 

"Kid, it will suck. There will be moments that are so bad that you feel half dead already. There will be whole years like that. Years whose only colours seem to be grey depression (undiagnosed and unseen) and black despair (silent and suffocating).

"But there are unicorns on the wallpaper. 

"Someday, there will be unicorns on your wallpaper. And we will be glad that we survived. 

"Was it worth it? 

"All the suffering — was it worth it? 

"Honestly, I don't know. I don't know if all the suffering was worthwhile. 

"But the unicorns are the crowning decoration on a cake that, when I stand back to look at it, is pretty damn glorious. 

"We made it, kid. We stayed alive, and now there are unicorns on our wallpaper, and in this moment I am glad that we survived.

"There may be miserable days ahead, for the dark voices are many, and endlessly persistent, but in this moment, I am glad that I did not die; that I did not surrender to the grey and the dark and the despair and permit them to overwhelm me beyond all recovery; that I kept breathing even when I was drowning. 

"And no one else will quite understand how precious, how special, those silver unicorns on our white wallpaper are; no one else will fully understand what they mean. But we will. You, and I — my past self and my present self — will know."

As near as I can recall, a few days after the wallpapering was completed, I chanced to discover this video:

(A link, in case the video above doesn't work: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bon37lZ5ZYA>)

And the euphoric music and the tender lyrics and my beautiful wallpaper and several other things I have been thinking about all coalesced into an almighty sense of love for my younger self. 

For years I have wished I could go back in time and hold my child-self and tell them that everything will be all right; that we were right about everything and just needed to stick to our guns; that our life would become better than we could have imagined and that, impossible though it seemed, our heart's desires were out there and would materialise at the right moment ... 

I have held so much grief for my child-self. 

But after listening to this song, I feel so much love for them, too. That young person is not gone: they still live inside me, with all their hurt and suffering, passion and anger and drive and desire. The unconditional love that I extend to certain people in my life, I can extend to my younger self, too. I can love that young person the way they should have been loved; the way no one else did until I met my soulmate. I can fall in love with my young self and parent them and care for them as they deserved.

(This all sounds so terribly abstract. One of my great frustrations in life is that no one, not even one's soulmate, can truly understand another person's heart; no one can live your life, feel your feelings, and fully, utterly understand what and why and how things mean to you what they do. These bizarre paragraphs about wallpaper and a child-self and a YouTube video are the closest I can come to conveying to anyone else the shift that I have felt occur inside me.)

If you are a young person who is contemplating killing yourself, I urge you to reconsider. Because someday, in five, ten, twenty years' time, there will come a moment when you realise that you have become the kind of person your younger self would think was awesome. 

But you will never have that moment if you tap out now. Your silver unicorns, or whatever the equivalent is for you, are waiting for you; there will come a day when you can be loved as you cannot love yourself now, and you will be glad that you survived.

All you have to do is hold on. 

Poem: Without You

Without You

17 March, 2007.

I am restless without you. 

I wander, over hill and dale, 

Seeking you, seeking you. 

I thirst for you, for your presence, your touch, 

Yet you are not there. 

 

You are gone, my lonely star, 

Gone beyond my reach and beyond my call, 

And though in my dreams I see you, I hear your voice, 

When I reach for you, you are not there. 

 

My hand falls on empty air. 

 

And somewhere inside me, I am crying. 

 

For life is dark, and good things are less satisfying, 

Without you. 

 

———

This kind of sentiment can be found, I daresay, in all languages. Grief for the loss of a beloved one is universal. I am doing nothing original with this poem ... but is anyone, ever?

A few of my personal pet peeves in fiction

The following is an incomplete list of my personal pet peeves in fiction.

• Spontaneous manifestation of fate or destiny. Concepts like fate and destiny imply that the world is organising itself in a certain way, enacting some master plan independent of the mere humans who are participating in it. Things don't spontaneously enact a master plan by themselves; if you want to have fate and/or destiny in your book then you need to explain what those things are and how they can exist. They have to come from somewhere; specifically, they have to come from some sort of intelligence that is running the universe — presumably a deity of some sort. Fate and destiny are forms of predetermination: so who, or what, is doing the predetermining? The involvement of reincarnation or a similar concept can allow a story to get away with invoking fate and destiny, as characters conforming to the actions of their previous lives or archetypes can be used to imply that there is a pattern or rhythm to history, but too often, "fate" and "destiny" are code words for Writer Wants To Handwave Why Stuff Happens The Way It Does But Doesn't Want To Admit To Having A God In Their Made-up World.
• Destiny "having a sense of humour". Pursuant to the above: destiny doesn't have a sense of humour. It's an abstract concept: it can't think and therefore can't have a sense of humour. If I have to read or hear something about "destiny having a sense of humour" one more time I'm going to scream. Irony doesn't require predetermination: things can be coincidental or ironic or funny without some cosmic force intending them to be so.
  
• Banter. Sassy banter. Oh, spare me. I've written briefly here about why I don't like banter, but the shorter version is that banter is only entertaining for the participants, and, as a reader, all that banter tells me about the characters is that they are witty and Sassy™: but wit is merely intelligence performing for others: in itself, wit does not reveal character; and oftentimes "sassy" is just code for "smug and annoying" (much like "feisty" is code for "character who seems unthreatening by virtue of being old and/or a woman and/or physically small but actually thinks they deserve respect"). I suspect that a lot of authors who haven't explored their characters' psyches use banter and sass in place of personality.
• Too much snark. I love a snarky character or two, but when every character is snarky it makes me wonder if — as with sass and banter — the author is using snark in place of personality, and perhaps doesn't know how to include any other form of humour in their story. Most people in real life aren't in a permanent state of snark, and for those who are, there is a reason why: it's a mechanism of defence or misdirection, and perhaps it has become habitual. A character who continually snarks makes me wonder what psychological fear or secret emotion they are covering, and if there seems to be no reason for the snark, I start to doubt that the writer understands what purpose snarkiness actually serves.
• Villains without convincing motives. Not all villains have to be sympathetic, but I still want to understand why they are doing what they're doing. "Because I really, really want power" is fine, but what will they do with their power once they have it? What do they think "power" is, exactly? What do they believe it will do for them? Will it keep them safe? Bring them revenge? Enable them to live in luxury? Why do they want those specific things so badly? "Because evil is fun" is also a perfectly serviceable motive for a villain, but the rest of their psychology has to align in such a way that I can believe they really are the kind of person who does evil stuff for fun and no other reason.
• A lack of justice. My main objection to Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing is that women's lives get ruined by men who are never punished appropriately. Have your nasty villains, but punish them accordingly. If I wanted to see wicked people get away with their wickedness, I would read a newspaper. I'm reading fiction because I want to see justice done.
  
• Predictable dialogue. Human speech frequently follows patterns; small talk and general conversation often follow a routine. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about conversations that should be enlightening and drive the plot forward, enhance the atmosphere, or develop the characters and their relationships, but instead are a collection of clichés. If I can predict every line of dialogue in the conversation, you're writing a soap opera and you need to stop.
  

Lessons from a brief vow of silence

In September 2014, I decided to take a vow of silence for a week. I was curious to see what it would be like and what I would learn. 

Certain people around me thought it was "weird", but that was not a new experience for them nor for me.

The vow lasted from 19:00 (that is, 7 p.m.) on the 10th of September to 19:00 on the 17th of September, and by the third day (12 September) I had already discovered several things: 

• I talk to myself much more than I had previously realised 
• Half of what I say is unnecessary 
• I often respond to others when silence would probably be more effective 
• Words are surprisingly unnecessary between people who truly know each other well; and
  
• I use talking to myself as a way to keep myself from getting too lonely.
  

According to my notes made at the time, the vow of silence was really only a drawback when I wanted to ask someone a question; however, not being able to talk properly with my animals was annoying, and I missed not being able to sing or hum when I felt the urge to do so, — an urge which, to my surprise, occurred several times per day. 

I e-mailed a dear friend at the time, "This vow of silence is beginning to be a pain, to be honest. I am, however, learning some interesting things, which is what I wanted; and pain can be an amazing teacher."

On the fourth day, I noted that it was surprisingly hard to refrain from using a skill which one has been assiduously learning from birth and then practising daily for one's entire life to date. I wrote, "Today [...] I have spoken numerous times without meaning to, either to myself or to animals and once to [a dear human]. It takes a surprising amount of concentration not to talk."

On the 14th of September, halfway through the vow, I wrote,

I feel surprisingly lonely when I can’t talk to myself. I have realised that not only do I spend a huge amount of time each day talking to myself, completely unnecessarily — if talking to oneself is ever necessary or unnecessary — but that I use talking to myself as a way of keeping myself company. This rather saddens me. I had not realised how lonely I still am. I’m not sure why I should still be lonely.
I suppose, if I think about it, what I crave is someone to (a) listen to me, a lot, for long stretches of time, deeply and unreservedly, the way I listen to myself, and (b) talk with me about everything I want to talk about. So often I have things I want to say, but they’re trivial, or no one except me cares about them, or they’re things I’ve actually said before but haven’t got out of my system yet.
[...]
According to the Internet, talking to oneself is not necessarily negative: it can actually be a symptom of a highly intelligent, active, imaginative, creative, analytical mind. That’s all good; I have a mind that is all of those; but I worry that I’m spending way too much time talking to myself.

On the 16th, the day before the vow ended, I wrote,

Apparently, talking to myself is stress release for me. I was in tears of frustration last night because I couldn’t talk, couldn’t sing … and then when I did sing, I felt much better. [...]  

People don’t talk to one so much when they realise that one won’t talk back. I think this is not because they want conversation or to hear one’s input, but because the ‘reward’ or validation for speaking is that the listener will respond as proof that they are listening. It’s to be listened to and validated that people want, not conversation.

After the vow of silence was over, I discovered that I missed the luxury of not having to respond when people addressed me. Not having to answer when spoken to was actually very freeing and peaceful. In fact, occasionally I am tempted to spend another week in silence, if only to experience such freedom again. 

Would many of us feel freer and more peaceful if we were not expected to speak as often? — If silence and thoughtfulness were more highly valued than they are, and if the chatter that is often presumed to be the mark of participation in social situations were not requisite?

Interestingly, several years later, during the four weeks of my country's total lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, I discovered something similar: that, as an extreme introvert, I find that not having to socialise is freeing and peaceful. (I discussed that experience in this blog post.) 

Perhaps the primary themes that these two experiences and their accompanying discoveries share are "freedom from others' expectations" and "peace in solitude". The latter is probably a direct result of the former.

I recall one moment during my week of silence in which someone asked me if there was any more milk left. He asked me this whilst he was standing beside the refrigerator and I was at the other end of the kitchen. In other words, this person expected me to have specific, current knowledge concerning the ever-changing quantity of milk in the house, and expected me to provide him with that datum, when he could have obtained it for himself faster, more accurately, and more easily, by simply opening the refrigerator door at his side. 

My vow of silence exempted me from having to answer, and he realised this and did open the refrigerator to see for himself; but this minor, inconsequential incident vividly illustrated to me how pointless much of human speech is, and how often we may expect — even demand — that others expend their energy for us when they gain nothing from doing so.

I love manners, politeness, and courtesy. There are many social niceties that are valuable because they make social interaction much more pleasant. But in how many small ways are we expected by others to expend our energy unnecessarily in order to adhere to some social custom which both parties would realise, if they considered it for a moment, is, in fact, completely pointless? How often do we ask someone to perform mental or emotional labour for us when we could just open the refrigerator door ourselves?

Poem: A Reply To People Who Ask Me Why I Care So Much About The State Of The World

A Reply To People Who Ask Me Why I Care So Much About The State Of The World

19 May, 2016.

The darkness' tide we cannot halt, 

But by gum we can stem it. 

We might not vanquish every fault — 

But by gum we'll condemn it. 

History's evil's in the past, 

And we cannot rewrite it; 

Present evil holds as fast, 

But by gum we can fight it. 

I know we cannot save the world, 

But by gum we will try, 

For there but for the grace of God 

Go I. 

 

Still here

Are you still here? 

After all that's happened? 

After all we've been through? 

Wow. I guess we made it. 

This year, I hit a wall. After five years of watching the world catch fire, and watching my own life experience upheaval after heartbreak after trauma after grief, I found I couldn't write anymore. The words just weren't there. That's why this blog has been silent for a few months, and even my Tumblr blog went quiet for eight weeks.

This absence of creativity was scary, but there was nothing I could do about it, and although the frightening thought occurred that I might never write again, my gut knew that this would not be the case. I stopped trying to write, and stopped worrying about not writing. 

For the past five years I had been telling myself, "It's just a Winter; it will pass soon". But the Winter dragged on, and on, and every time I managed to write a passage or a scene I thought, "At last! My Winter is ending!" ... and it didn't. Those moments were but temporary thaws. 

At the end of every year since 2016, I have thought, "Surely, next year will be better."  

And somehow, each year has managed to be at least as bad as the one before.

At last, halfway through this year, I started to conclude that this burning world could very well be the new normal. I decided that I needed to stop hoping that the world would improve enough for us all to get on with our lives, and instead would have to find a way to write, and live, regardless of the anguish, the tragedies, the trauma. 

I didn't manage it. All my energy was going into trying to heal: I had none left with which to create. 

So I have not published a book this year. I have no new story for you. I'm sorry. 

But I survived. You survived. We're still here. Maybe battered, maybe traumatised, maybe grieving. But still breathing. 

Due to certain political changes that occurred in November this year, we have some evidence that 2021 really will be a little better; — not just wishful hope, this time, but some factual evidence. I am tentatively expectant that things will improve. 

But I am not holding my breath. I need that to keep flowing, in and out of my lungs, so that I stay alive for long enough to finish another book, somehow, whether the world is on fire or not.

I don't have anything helpful to say. I don't have any words to make anything better. But I congratulate you on surviving. 

Maybe you don't feel like you have survived. I certainly think that parts of me have not survived. I feel like bits of me have fallen off into the fire. 

But most of me — and most of you — is still here. Let's rest for a while, shall we? If the world gets better next year, great; if it doesn't, we'll need all our energy.

Peace to you. 

On Susan Pevensie

I have been seeing a lot of Tumblr posts about the character Susan Pevensie, from C.S. Lewis' book series The Chronicles Of Narnia, that state, or imply, that Susan was wronged by the stories, in that she — who had helped to save the realm of Narnia and then ruled it as a queen — was not allowed back into Narnia once she grew up.
I feel that the writers of these posts cannot have read all of the books. It is made very clear, in The Last Battle, the final book in the series, that it was not adulthood or femininity that barred Susan from Narnia. Adult Susan was not allowed back into Narnia because she stopped believing that Narnia existed. She chose to believe that all her and her siblings' adventures in Narnia were imaginary games.

"Sir," said Tirian, when he had greeted all these. "If I have read the chronicle aright, there should be another. Has not your Majesty two sisters? Where is Queen Susan?"
"My sister Susan," answered Peter shortly and gravely, "is no longer a friend of Narnia." "Yes," said Eustace, "and whenever you've tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says, 'What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.'"
"Oh Susan!" said Jill. "She's interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up."
"Grown-up, indeed," said the Lady Polly. "I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she'll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can."

(From The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis, 1956, pp. 127–128.)

Narnia did not wrong Susan. Susan wronged Narnia. She helped to save Narnia, became a hero there, grew up there, made friends there, became "Queen Susan the Fair" — and then, when she became an adult in our world, she chose to forget that Narnia had ever been real.
Reading the above-quoted passage in The Last Battle is shocking and horrifying. How could Susan forget something so important — something from her own past?! She was a good, kind, compassionate person — when did she become so awful?! How could she do this to herself, to her siblings, and to Narnia itself?
It is meant to be shocking. It is meant to sting. The author, C.S. Lewis, did not turn on Susan and decide to punish her for growing up, for becoming feminine, for a lack of faith or loyalty, for anything; rather, Susan's devastating betrayal is meant to make a point about how the people we love and trust in childhood can change beyond recognition, and forsake their bonds with us; — bonds that we thought would last forever.
I think that many readers do not understand how Susan could change so suddenly, nor why she would, and thus assume that the author is at fault: that he decided to defame her character — as though the reader understands the character better than her creator does. Their reasoning seems to be, "Susan would never do that: it must be C.S. Lewis's fault. He has told his story incorrectly. He has wronged a character that he created."
But we are not meant to understand why Susan left. That is the entire point. Susan's betrayal is supposed to be incomprehensible.
Why?
Because that's how it feels when someone betrays you like that.
I have had a "Susan" in my life.
I was shocked and hurt when I read The Last Battle for the first time and found that Susan had betrayed her siblings, her past, her queendom, her friends. Every time I have re-read The Chronicles Of Narnia, that passage has made my soul writhe at the wrongness of Susan's behaviour. And now, having had my own "Susan" behave almost identically to Susan Pevensie, I understand why Lewis did what he did.
He knew exactly what he was doing.
(My story 'The Leaving Of Princess Laellinon' (published in Three Short Fairytales) was inspired by the behaviour of my "Susan", and the grief and confusion of those left behind.)
Susan Pevensie is not a victim of C.S. Lewis's writing, nor of Narnia's "unfair" rules, or anything like that. If Susan is a victim, it could be argued that she is a victim of our society, not Narnia's: our society that condemns childlike belief in goodness and wonder, nobility and honour, faith and the greater good; our society that encourages superficiality, conformity, materialism, gender stereotypes, and a shallow sense of what it means to be a grown-up. Our society, which tells young people that they must outgrow fairytales and "face facts", resigning themselves to a cynical existence in which doing good and striving for a noble, joyful, virtuous life are considered, at best, childish and immature or self-righteous and moralising.
But primarily Susan is a victim of her own lack of inner strength and faith. She could have chosen to keep believing: all of her siblings did, despite being under the same societal pressures as Susan was. She did not have to turn her back on Narnia. She chose to do so.
Just as my "Susan" did.
If you find that Susan's betrayal shatters your understanding of her character, then congratulations: you understand the pain of the remaining Pevensie siblings.
May you never have a "Susan" in your life. May you never be betrayed thus. But don't blame C.S. Lewis for defaming Susan's character: Susan did that by herself. All Lewis did was use Susan to make a point about something that real people do — just as he did with every other character in The Chronicles Of Narnia.