Selkies and fear
October 26, 2011 - 11:50 p.m.

c
c

c
c
c

c

c

c

I was walking along the street the other day, thinking about religion.

Not any religion in particular, just religion. Religion and beliefs.

I love this time of year. Autumn is my favorite month, October especially, and not just because it's my birthday month. It is the time when everything is changing colours. I love the flame coloured hedges. They are maybe my favorite, in the absence of maple trees.

Maple trees are still my favorite. I used to walk home from school and pick up all the pretty leaves, and arrive at home with my sweat shirt stuffed with pretty leaves. Literally stuffed. Like a scarecrow.

Sometimes I would press them in phone books on top of the record player, but more often than not I would dump them out on the back step and forget about them.

But I still love maple trees.

Anyway.

I was walking in my rainbow sweater, watching all the leaves fall, and thinking.

I had recently had a conversation in which I expressed a rather passionate response. I can't even remember what it was about, but the person I was talking to was surprised by the intensity of my reaction.

"I didn't know you believed that," they told me.

And it got me to thinking.

We all walk around, clothed in our beliefs. Some of them are given to us by our parents, some are chosen by ourselves. Some of them are pressed upon us by society, and we don't even notice.

But we all walk around draped 'round in believing, protected from the world by a thin layer, much like clothes.

And I thought: what a thing it would be to walk around believing in nothing.

Only the strongest man could walk around believing in nothing. A strong man, yes, but a foolish one and a naked one.

On the flip side, there are those that use their beliefs as an armour against other ideas, other people. These people are just as foolish as the naked ones. These people don't allow any new ideas or new beliefs to touch them.

Without growth, we are dead.

~

I bought a shirt the other day.

This does not sound like it should be news.

I'd had a discussion with my buddy Caitlin, after a play opening. I was expressing a desire to change up my style. I've slipped so hard into wearing work clothes around, that I no longer feel attractive.

She was delighted. A little too delighted, perhaps.

I went to the mall the other day, to buy a christmas present for Kelly. While I was there, I did a little bit of clothes shopping, but quickly got depressed.

I have a very large chest. The rest of me is a very comfortable size 14, but my chest is...well...

I was in the gay bar once, and a cute little gay man that I'd never met used my breasts as bongo drums, while loudly proclaiming that they were the biggest in the whole damned room.

When I'd protested, the room agreed with him.

So I have a hard time buying tops. Either they fit in the chest, and look like a sack around the waist, or fit around the waist, and look like they're going to split across the chest.

Life, eh?

So I bought a top. I went to Winners with the idea of buying a new bra, and just browsed the rest of the store. I picked up this red shirt with flowers around the neckline and thought:

"This is a really pretty shirt. This colour would look really good on me."

And caught myself halfway to putting it back.

And I thought to myself:

"Why am I putting this back? This shirt would look good on me. It's only twenty-five dollars, and this is a good quality shirt."

So I put my foot down on myself, and hung the hanger off my wrist. And just to prove to myself that I was a lovely human, I chose about six other things, including a lovely black and white knitted skirt.

Well, the skirt looked okay, but only okay, and itched like a sonavabitch. Who doesn't line a wool skirt? Seriously.

But the red shirt...I put it on and looked at myself in the mirror.

The colour *did* look good on me. It was my shade of red, a kind of coppery orange-red.

The flowers around the neckline hid how big my breasts were, and pulled focus up to my face.

The length was perfect for me, hitting mid-hip, so it would never expose belly when I lifted my arms.

So I bought it.

Mark once told me that I'm self abusive.

I'm afraid he might be right. I try to stop when I catch myself.

~

I was talking to my mother on the phone the other day.

"You gotta get out of dodge, Rosie," she told me. It surprised me; I don't get a lot of advice like that from my mother.

Usually it's: Career, career, career. Stay where you are, work your contract, get married, have babies, career, career.

"You know you can ask me for money," she added.

"I don't like asking you for money," I said, and I don't. It makes me feel like I've failed as an adult. Not to say I haven't done it. There's been once or twice that cheques were late coming in and I desperately needed to pay rent or buy a bus pass to get to work, but I like to think those were acceptable times (and it hasn't happened in about four or five years). The rent I paid back, but the bus ticket money, my mother put in a birthday card and told me to have a happy birthday, even though it was the middle of August.

"What ever," my mother snorted. "You can always ask, you know, and I can always say no. But you can always ask."

"Huh," I said noncommitally, without any real plans to ask her.

"You know," she said, "I gave your little brother ten thousand dollars to buy a house..."

"SHITBALLS," I exclaimed. "Give me ten thousand dollars!"

My mother laughed. "Not until you have something worthwhile to spend it on. Like a house. Or travelling."

Travelling...

But I have my plans.

My plans I've done nothing about.

I'm so afraid.

I'm so, so afraid.

I'm afraid of change, I'm afraid it won't be as good as what I have now. I'm afraid it will be better than what I have now, and I'll forever regret not jumping sooner.

I'm afraid, but I'm fighting it.

Stuff needs to get done.

~

I'm writing another story. It's been in my head for a long time.

It's about a very depressed woman whose aunt dies, so she takes her mother and goes to her aunt's seaside house to clean it out. While she is there she meets a young man and starts up an affair with him, and shortly after discovers he is a Selkie.

While bathing one night she finds a short black hair growing from the back of her neck. She plucks it out.

She finds her aunt's journal hidden and discovers that she is descended from a long line of Selkies, most of whom have given up the ocean and no longer even remember what it was like to be a seal.

She finds another black hair. She plucks it out.

She finds her aunt's seal skin stuffed up the chimney. It's burned beyond using. Her mother put it there, because she knew and didn't approve of her aunt's choice.

The young man tells her if she stops plucking the black hair, she will soon grow a sealskin of her own.

She has a fight with her mother, who has seen her with the young man. Her mother threatens to disown her.

She finds another black hair. She stops taking her anti-depressents, plucks it out, and leaves her mother in the house alone to complete her life under her own terms.

Yeah. It doesn't sound too interesting, but I like it. I like Selkies.

And I also like bed.

.

~Rosie.

Before&After