Underlying psychosis

I received my long-awaited copies of Sweet Charlotte's Seventh Mistake today and was consumed with reading every single page the moment I got home.

"Wow, I've never seen you this way before" Said Hubbie.

"That's not true; I was like this when your mom turned me on to the Octavia Butler books. Remember? It was before Twig."

Reading the Flowers in the Attic books as a teenager, I was exactly the same way. Compulsive and mesmerized.

This is the same. But different.

I'm mesmerized by the story not just because it's written by someone I know. But because it's the story of someone that I know that I knew way back when. No, more like she knew her.

We're not them anymore. And still she can't be conjured up (or maybe she won't be conjured up). The compulsion centers on the possibility that reading and re-reading her memories and studying her photos will miraculously allow some deeply buried memory to break through. To allow a breakthrough - before something unexpected surfaces and she rages like she would have, way back when.

It's got me thinking... maybe she can't remember for the same reasons her memories are so vivid. Could it be that each is a form of acceptance of what was and what could never be?

No. Her fears have been faced; published for the whole world to see. She's simply afraid to unearth... something...