Dancing at the End of a String

We Do What Has Been Done to Us Until We Don’t

Photo by Sivani Bandaru on Unsplash

Controller. Controlled. A dance.

One tied up through manipulation helplessly manipulates. The other is dangling from those strings flailing but entangled. Both are vying for freedom yet unsure where to find it. They seem incapable of untying the knots.

I watch the dance and see a trainwreck coming. One sucks the air out of the room. The other is gasping for breath.

Who is really trapped here: the controller or the controlled? They reenact the same sequence of steps again and again. They appear like mirror images, where one is in reverse. Unsure where one ends and the other begins since they’ve yet to find the boundary line, that crucial distinction.

I am not here for you to be you. You are not here for me to be me. At some point those words need inscribing on their bones. More than words, it’s relentless action time and again until they are able to believe what the other is saying.

For now it is not inscribed. That’s why the words come a mile a minute. That’s why the conversation always boomerangs backwards. On display is the brittle illusion of confidence. A paperthin wrapping of bravado. All the big words aren’t there to inform. They are pirouettes waiting for applause.

This masks the discontentment and the raging wound that has healed around the edges but the oozing center of it is still evident. Who did the voodoo dance to keep it intact?

I watch as the volcano continues its slow eruptions. I feel the lava flowing every time her children walk into the room.