out of the gaslight chamber: i finally see my own inner radiance (tara unleashed) -- updated 10:16 am
out of the gaslight chamber: i finally see my own inner radiance (tara unleashed) -- updated 10:16 am
it took me 36 years to learn that i was a vampire slayer, a witch, a goddess, a red wine supernova, a femininomenon: and not in any fucking way a demon
extract, by
:There’s a point, always, where the mediocrity that tethers the rest of us to the ground is surpassed; suddenly she’s floating above us, transformed into a beautiful butterfly, her “best self,” her final form, the picture of success and perfection, and we are still mere caterpillars.
below is an extract from tv tropes
Buffy the Vampire Slayer S6E17 "Normal Again"
extract:
"I know you're afraid. I know the world feels like a hard place, sometimes. But you've got people who love you. Your dad and I, we have all the faith in the world in you. We'll always be with you. You have got a world of strength in your heart. I know you do. You just have to find it again. Believe in yourself."
—Joyce Summers
"For the last six years, she's been in an undifferentiated type of schizophrenia."
Directed by Rick Rosenthal
Written by Diego Gutierrez, Rebecca Kirshner, & Steven S De Knight
Buffy searches newly rented houses for the Trio's hideout. The three discover her on surveillance equipment but she gets too close. While they hide in the basement, Andrew calls on a demon which attacks Buffy and starts a fight. The demon grabs Buffy and stabs her with a needle-like part of its body.
In a mental hospital, Buffy cries out as she's held by two orderlies and stabbed with a needle. Outside the Trio's house, Buffy wakes up confused and alone and walks home.
Willow prepares to talk to Tara but sees her give her female friend a quick kiss; Willow leaves, wounded. Tara notices her leave but it's too late to catch her. At the Doublemeat Palace, Buffy works like a zombie whilst having brief flashes to the hospital where the doctor tells her it's time for the drugs. Willow and Buffy talk about Xander's disappearing act and Willow's attempt to talk to Tara. Xander surprises the girls by showing up at the house. He wonders about Anya and how to rebuild his relationship with her. The girls tell him that Anya left town a few days ago and that everything will be fine in time.
Buffy runs into Spike at the cemetery and they talk about the events at the wedding that didn't happen. A confrontation begins between Spike and Xander and as Willow tries to break it up, Buffy becomes weak and collapses. Xander manages a one punch to Spike who focuses on Buffy. At the mental hospital, a doctor tells Buffy that she's been hallucincating for the past six years and everything she knows about Sunnydale is fake. She's shaken and confused, especially when both of her parents walk in before Buffy falls back into Sunnydale world.
Willow and Xander get Buffy home and she tells them about the mental hospital and what the doctor said. While Willow organises a plan to research, Buffy returns to the hospital where the doctor explains to her parents that she's been catatonic from schizophernia for the past six years and her life as a Slayer has been elaborately created.
above extract from tv tropes
as i have said, girl music was so important for “transforming” me from spike to eloise.
the evidence of this is simply indisputable:
no one can look at these details and deny the truth:
teenage girl music helped me unleash my own inner Goddess.
but i have come to realize another truth, one which i have avoided:
i am inherently radiant.
for so long i have sought the explanation for my “transformation” in the external world: clairo, phoebe, haley blais, chappell roan, haim, sonic youth, lucy, julien; my friends who have truly loved and seen me; naturally i have looked to spiritual experiences in india, verses from the bible and other scriptures, theological treatises explaining how humans can become better people.
i remember:
the music in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 that made me wish so badly i was cool.
i used to walk around listening to this song over and over in the fall of 2022, wishing i could be cool. this song felt like it had so many messages for me.
and that is the power of art: this art gave me the drive to be cool
and now i realize: i’ve always been cool underneath it all.
Mary has a heart of coal
She'll break you down and eat you whole
I saw her do it after school
She's an animalShe won't ever love no boy
She'll treat you like a fucking toy
She'll break your heart and steal your joy, like a criminalI wanna know like you
I wanna know like you
I wanna be that cool
I wanna be thatMary keeps you off her mind
She wants to spend her weekend right
Out with her friends just getting high, like a stoner girl
And you wait outside on her street
You sit for hours just to see
The girl you pictured in a dream as the only girlI wanna know like you
I wanna know like you
I wanna be that cool
I wanna be that
I wanna know like you
I wanna know like you
I wanna be that cool
I wanna be that
reading this song makes me think something:
maybe i am cool for knowing a bunch of stuff and being able to write about it?
have i always been able to do that???
have i always been this cool????
the answer is yes, and soccer mommy helped me see that.
i remember i used to have this embarrassing thought,
“i love phoebe and clairo but… i’m not cool enough to meet them. i’m a loser.”
sometimes i would imagine myself meeting phoebe. and i would see that man there, and i would see how i appeared and i would see how i acted and i would see how i talked, and i could see: that is not me; there is a contradiction between the surface of me and the underneath of me;
but i had spent so many years in the gaslight chamber where my parents, my sisters, and several key friends were constantly making me believe i was evil, just like tara’s parents did to her when they taught her she was a demon:
it was so hard for tara to connect with willow!
tara wouldn’t even participate in a demon-locating ritual.
why?
because she believed so strongly that her parents were right:
she was a demon.
and that’s what i believed: i was a demon.
it took me fucking decades to escape that gaslight chamber.
it didn’t matter that i had so many friends constantly reminding me:
“andrew, you’re one of the smartest people i’ve ever met”
“andrew, you have a natural magnetism that attracts people to you”
“andrew, you could just write about your experiences and people would love it”
my parents and my sisters often said the opposite of these things.
they told me i was a freak, they told me my christmas gifts weren’t nice enough, they became angry at me when i defended our cousin (whom i love so much and for whom i will always be here) because they were mocking her for being poor and needing help, and when i talked to them about how they treated me they told me to “go get help.”
when i shared my post about phoebe and claire’s music, they told me:
we love you,
and we’ll be here for you when you’re ready to see a “family therapist.”
they have told me that my behavior as a sixteen year told fundamentalist christian resulted from my own psychotic breakdown rather than their indoctrination of me. my mom has constantly told me: “i just could not understand how you got that way,” and she adamantly denies every single quote in this entire post.
extract:
could i feel the holy spirit working inside me? at 12, i was instructed to analyze this question, and i knew the salvation of my soul depended on the answer.
the analysis was a short one. despite asking many times for the holy spirit to come into my heart, it was clear i was still a bad person.
a couple years later, my parents threatened to have “men come in the night,” take me out of my bed, and lock me up in a military school. “you’re grades just aren’t good enough,” they liked to say once they looked into the school. so at night i would lay in bed and cry. i imagined myself being tortured by demons and i would ask god: please change me, please make me a good person, please don’t let me go to hell.
my mom said that this time of the demons, the climax of a seven year period during which a man promising peace (the antichrist, who some in my community believed to be the un secretary general kofi annan for opposing the iraq war) would rule over the world as a ruthless dictator. this time would be called the tribulation.
but what, i asked my mom, would happen after the tribulation?
after the tribulation, there would be a great battle where god would destroy all his enemies.
“every knee will bow,” my mom said. “every knee will bow!” she adamantly pointed her finger in the air.
extract:
after the battle, all of us would be rounded up in front of god for the final judgment.
“god will open up the book of life,” my mom said to me when i was in sixth grade. “and anyone whose name is not in the book of life, he will throw into the lake of fire. they will burn there forever and ever, and they will never stop feeling pain.”
the fire would never fully consume them. there would always be something left of them to burn.
“why won’t they die?” i asked.
“god won’t let them die,” she said. “they have new bodies that keep them alive.”
i asked my mom how i could know that my name was in the book of life.
“only god can know what’s in your heart,” she said.
i asked her if she and my dad would be sad when i was burning in hell.
she told me of course she would be devastated if i was burning in the lake of fire and she never saw me again. “but god tells us,” she said, “that he will wipe every tear from our eyes.”
the warnings seemed to escalate when my behavior at school and home worsened.
they told me at church how much jesus loved me, but they also told me to think about all the people in my life who weren’t christians. all of them were going to burn in hell. they asked me to share the names of people in my life to whom i would “testify.” and i tried to spread the word to some of my friends, but mostly i was terrified for myself.
extract:
sometimes at night when i was trying to fall asleep, i imagined that i was in the lake of fire. i saw my parents and jesus up on the top of a cliff looking down at me and all the other souls who were screaming in agony and pleading for mercy. then i would see jesus and my parents turn their backs and walk away: i saw this in my nightmares.
would god have mercy on me?
i asked my mom about abraham and isaac. god had stopped abraham from killing isaac at the last moment, but the story still haunted me. i knew god liked to test the loyalty of his followers. i asked my mom, “would you also kill me if god told you to?”
she hesitated and i pressed her. finally she admitted that she would.
what choice do we have when issued one of god’s commandments?
extract:
toward the end of middle school, i was inspired by this terrifying ride at disney world to create my own scary experience for my little sister. i moved about her room in the dark ruffling things up, trying to make myself sound like an alien.
she screamed obviously, then ran to my parents who woke up from their beds.
in the living room, my mom shouted at me while my sister cried in her arms,
“there is only one explanation for this kind of evil! there is a demon in you!” she pointed her finger adamantly in the air. “this is demonic! you hear me? demonic!”
i went to my room and spent the rest of the night imagining the fires of hell.
my earliest memory
my mom is crying. she won’t look at me. i tell her, “i love you mom, i am so sorry.” but she waves her hand in my face, cries into her hands, won’t look at me. she says, “why god! why! why did you curse me with this child!” i tell her, “mommy i am so sorry i love you.” she waves her hand in my face and tells me to go away. i step to her: i want touch her. she is so sad and i want to hug her. “go away!” she says.
in his memoir, my dad says of my religious upbringing:
“we took you kids to church and then let you decide for yourselves.”
extract:
i hated myself in tenth grade for being so lustful.
“what would you do,” my dad asked me when i had my first girlfriend, “if she tried to touch your penis?”
“i wouldn’t let her!”
“good,” he said, and that was the end of our sex talk.
extract:
i watched a lot of porn. i liked to watch men having sex with each other. i also liked to watch women having sex with each other. it was the same-sex videos that i most liked. every time i watched one of these videos, i would end up touching myself and thinking about people, and then i would cry and cry and cry in my bed. i would read the bible and pray to god, “please god, don’t let me burn in hell. please.”
over and over and over, i re-pledged myself to jesus.
“lord jesus, come into my heart and be my lord and savior, forgive me of my sins, send the holy spirit into my heart to purge me of my wickedness.”
and every time i said these words i felt such relief. i was saved. i would feel this burst of happiness: the holy spirit, stirring something up inside me.
but merely hours later an erection would be back, and i would masturbate again, and again i would be crying on my bed, again i would see my parents turning their backs, jesus between them, his clean white robe contrasting with the smoke rising out of me.
why did i have such strong sexual desires? shouldn’t the holy spirit be working inside me? i analyzed and analyzed and analyzed: i couldn’t find anything there.
extract:
once my grandpa told me that if you blaspheme the holy spirit, god will never forgive you and you’ll burn in hell forever.
this was the one unforgivable sin.
i looked it up in the bible and it was true:
and so i tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the spirit will not be forgiven. anyone who speaks a word against the son of man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the holy spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. (matthew 12:31)
i analyzed and analyzed and analyzed the past.
had i ever blasphemed the holy spirit? even just as a joke?
what about just in my mind? could that count? thoughts could be evil too. desires could be wicked too. what if i wanted to blaspheme against the holy spirit?
was this why the holy spirit was not working in me? i had offended him?
was this why i struggled with so much sexual desire?
i have been caught between two worlds — a world of asuras and a world of yakshis — and for so long i believed every fucking thing the asuras told me.
all the while i had so many yakshis telling me i was beautiful:
i could not believe them.
i was so fucking desperate to make my dad love me that i even tried to do what he’d want me to do when he wasn’t looking, when he wasn’t there, when he was thousands of miles away. even at airports in india i would try to go through the motions he would want to see, just so i could imagine him being proud of me.
that made it hurt more when i got off the plane earlier this year,
casually holding my tote bag on my arm,
and suddenly he points at me and says:
“people are going to think you’re a girl.”
extract:
in tenth grade my masturbation addiction had spiraled out of control. i often thought about that boy and the sleepover. i was so scared of what this meant for my soul.
i snuck out at night and met up with a girl. we made out for two hours and then i went home. i wanted to date this girl, but she wasn’t a christian. i hated myself for how turned on i had felt with her that night. i had no control over my lust. i was evil.
finally i took the step: i signed up for an anti-addiction program online, run by living waters (this was 20 years ago). living waters offered online treatment programs with spiritual mentors, helping christians use the power of the holy spirit to overcome drug abuse, promiscuity, homosexuality, and masturbation, among other symptoms of a soul the holy spirit had not yet fully purified.
i was assigned a mentor, a man in his 40s who would help me quit masturbating.
extract:
the theory of the 40 day course was that by drinking from the “living waters” of jesus — meaning the bible — i would invite more of the holy spirit inside me, and by connecting on a deeper level with the holy spirit i’d be able to stop touching myself.
i was reminded that even thoughts were sinful. as jesus said,
but i say unto you, that whosoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart. (matthew 5:28)
the verse played over and over and over in my mind. i needed to stay focused on the living waters of the bible so my mind would always be saturated with images of jesus and god. my whole being must contain nothing but a sense of love for the lord. these were pure thoughts, good thoughts, the thoughts of someone who was saved.
i could keep the evil thoughts at bay, sometimes, when i was completing my coursework and writing my reflections on how much i loved the holy spirit.
“i hate sin so much! i hate sex so much!” i wrote these things.
for so many years my mom has said,
“i just couldn’t figure out how you became so crazy!”
and you know what?
10 years ago in 2014 i tried to tell this story for the first time on an old blog of mine which i called venturing backward and in which i attempted to record my experiences.
i wanted so badly to believe that my mom truly loved me,
and i was so afraid of hurting her feelings,
that i erased her from the story and turned myself into a clown.
i mocked myself in public so that my mom would feel better about herself.
i sought the blame for what happened to me in the Bible; i sought the blame for what happened to me in “Christianity”; i sought the blame for what happened to me in my own inner demonism (which my family always taught me to believe in).
i kept thinking:
wow! i was such a fucking moron for taking every word of the bible as the literal truth!
but i forgot about the fact that my mom constantly told me:
anyone who does not take the bible literally will burn in hell.
even just believing the earth was older than 6,000 years could land you in hell according to my mom.
according to my mom, anyone who refused to acknowledge that dinosaurs walked the earth with humans was doomed to eternal hellfire. my mom almost banned me from playing Pokemon because she was concerned the cards might make me believe in evolution (my mom says she is very weirded out by my fixation on my bracelets).
i was so scared that i would displease god that when i masturbated, i would fantasize i was fucking a girl in the ass so as to avoid the eternal consequences of an abortion, which i figured i would probably support when push came to shove.
(i did not really understand the full nature of the white stuff coming out of my penis: even in seventh grade i said i was “going chemical”)
“i don’t believe that any democrat can go to heaven,” my mom told me,
and i believed her.
an early memory: preschool
my mommy is picking me up from preschool and she is crying.
she is in tears.
“why are you crying mommy?” i ask.
“a very evil man was elected president today,” she says.
and as my seventh grade geography teacher told us,
“i could tell you kids anything! and you’d believe me!”
(during sex ed, he claimed to have no idea “how gay men have sex”)
(“i don’t know,” this man said after waxing lyrically about seeing his daughter get smacked on the ass when he dropped her off at the mall, “and i don’t want to know.”)
given that context, here is how i wrote in 2014 about my past views on israel.
you see?
not one word about my mom.
i thought, “it’s the Bible’s fault!”
i thought, “it’s Christianity’s fault!”
it was so hard for me to see that it was my mom who did this to me.
so fucking hard.
you know what trauma does to us?
trauma blinds us.
to avoid dealing with our trauma — which deeply affects our bodies and behaviors and psyches whether we acknowledge that trauma or not — we stop seeing reality.
we cling to empty concepts:
“my sister must love me; she says so”
“my mom must love me; she says so”
“i had a wonderful childhood; my parents spent so much money on me”
and you know what reality i did not see until today?
my own fucking inner radiance.
i mean, jesus.
what the fuck?????
how many fucking times have i told you all to believe in your own radiance?? and to believe in your own radiance regardless of what people around you say or think??? regardless of whether you have a single fucking person in your corner????
regardless of it all, you are fucking radiant.
and yet:
see how i have been delusional.
see how i have been blinded to reality.
i have written that i am nothing without V, nothing without phoebe, nothing without claire, nothing without mannequin pussy, nothing without haim, nothing without lucy, nothing without julien, nothing without beabadoobee, nothing without soccer mommy, nothing without buffy the vampire slayer, nothing without chilling adventures of sabrina, nothing without books on buddhism!!!!!
not fucking once on this blog have i actually acknowledged my own inner radiance.
have i?
not fucking really.
i have said that i “cannot act” without the support of certain people.
i have said that “proximity” to others is “vital” to me.
i have said that i would be absolutely nothing at all, nothing whatsoever, if it weren’t for so-and-so’s music or so-and-so’s book or such-and-such a tv show.
what?
now i understand why:
until today, when i finally left the gaslight chamber for good by cutting my parents off forever after an evening spent walking through the woods beneath the moon, i was never able to actually see my own fucking inner radiance.
everything i have written about how girly music helped transform me is true:
the evidence is indisputable. i have never received any communication from a single artist in this entire blog, i feel like i’m fucking doctor who right now trying to flag them down lol, and yet simply listening to their music transformed my life in a compelling and demonstrable manner, clearly linked to my experience with the music.
we have proven this,
and i have shown you all the evidence.
no one on this planet can deny the transformative power of music or tv shows ever again.
i understand now why i had to listen to so many artists in secret as a child.
i understand now why they never would have wanted me watching buffy.
my parents had good reason to be afraid of art and its transformative powers.
and yet now:
the word “transform” — something about this word has come to trouble me.
i like the word: a useful word, a common and empowering word in spiritual vocabulary to describe the power of certain practices (i hope this includes listening to music after everything i’ve been fucking through during this life), but right now there is something about this word that troubles me.
what troubles me is that the word implies i was bad, and i was transformed into good.
but i was not bad!
i was radiant and i was simply taught otherwise by my parents, sisters, and others! and they will not allow me to be around them unless i conform to this role.
how did i not internalize my own fucking words —
extract:
imposed identities do not only control us. they automate us to control ourselves and others in a variety of settings: the home, the classroom, the street, the bar, the clothing department, the bookstore, the workplace, the place of worship. everywhere this web of concepts entangles us, twists us until we no longer know ourselves, and everywhere we turn there are identity drones serving these fictions. we may sometimes feel uneasy, like we wish we were someone else, like we aren’t really ourselves: and that’s because we aren’t. we have been taken captive by identity drones, and if we don’t do something, we risk transforming into identity drones ourselves. for the artists out there: identity drones are incapable of being authentic, and by taking up false identities they inhibit their own authenticity.
the goal of the identity drone is to ensure the same outcome for us as for them. we find ourselves constantly stopping ourselves from doing certain things, looking at certain things, liking certain things, saying certain things, or even thinking certain things: all in the name of preserving our sense of compliance with the demands of our externally imposed identities. even as the outer “self” that people see is nothing more than a performance of an artificial identity which we have unconsciously internalized to the point of automation, we may not even acknowledge that we have identities.
…..
but they are only playing with made up words that shield them from the true subjective reality of their own authentic experience. they are afraid of authenticity: and they bury themselves the moment they deny the truth of identity as a force.
identity is a force which exists in at least two senses, on the inside and on the outside. the internal identity is subjective, and the subjective identity is the true reality; the externally composed, enforced, and neatly categorized identity is a fabrication, a product of the imagination, an ideological device for domination and control. but the external identity is the identity most people perform and perceive — even if they know nothing about identity, even if they say they have no identity, even if they think universities should replace identity studies with more “science.”
the people who deny the importance of identity are also the people who most aggressively impose fabricated identities. they unreflectively make assumptions about others and then react with discomfort, surprise, or even outright disgust when those assumptions are violated by the being in front of them. they have a need to keep that being inside the cardboard boxes that give their own life its fictitious meaning. they automatically enforce consequences when we violate the made up identity’s norms. teachers, parents, grandparents, police, border control agents, friends, mean girls, frat boys: whoever they are, they themselves are hostages to a sweeping range of externally fabricated identities whether they mock the study of identity or not.
they say they are simply being rational. but is it rational to think this way? they say: “i am x, therefore i must do y.” then we discover that “x” has no clear definition and “y” represents much more than the entire alphabet. i am a man, therefore. i am a professional, therefore. i am a teenager, therefore. i am an adult, therefore. i am a parent, therefore. i am a serious person, therefore. i am responsible, therefore.
in many cases, a completely valid implication follows “therefore,” and the “x” concept itself contains some truth. but in terms of society as a whole, we must admit that all of these behemoth identities operate as collections of totally arbitrary assumptions, rules, morals, fashion standards, parenting guidelines, educational principles, and rigid restrictions (or mandates) for virtually all forms of self-expression. our own day-to-day subjective experience demonstrates how these identities, although fabrications, are used to dominate us.
and look at this!
look what else i fucking ignored!
even after i shed the “man,” i did not shed the demon and look at my own inner light.
it was
who had to remind me in a comment on my substack (i always listen to advice from true friends):
thank you peyton:
i really needed to hear that and i love you so much.
once again, as i keep doing, i ignored my own fucking advice and had to read it again:
they say i must be refusing to be myself, which to them is a “man,” and so my behavior is simply perverted: i am deranged. but if they would only look inside themselves they would see that there is no man there at all. they would see that they are the ones who are performing. it is they who are deranged.
it is they who have succumbed to “social contagion” and it is they who spread this “social contagion.” to spread “social contagion” while accusing authentic people of being infected by a “social contagion” seems deeply ingrained into the nature of the “intellectual”, “positivist”, and trans-misogynistic identity drone man.
but the vast majority will never see this, because they cannot they see this without becoming angry. these are serious people, driven by logic and dispassionate masculine analysis. unlike me, their hearts are not bursting with emojis. they don’t let themselves think with their emotions, and so they don’t really think at all.
i can never completely escape the eyes of the identity drone men. but at last, i have enough grasp on reality to be able to slice right through their slimy tentacles.
but tell me:
did i really have enough grasp on reality to be able to slice right through their slimy tentacles?
or was i still trying to please them?
was i still trying to be appropriate for them?
was i still trying to hold myself back for them?
i think about this and i realize:
this whole time as i’ve been writing this blog,
i haven’t been willow: i’ve been fucking tara.
i still have had this in my mind:
“i am a demon, therefore y.”
my parents taught me that.
they ingrained it so deeply into me.
you know how hard it is to escape 36 years of gaslighting?
i do now. jesus fucking christ.
and so even as i told you about your own inner radiance, i was still like tara.
i was not showing you all my magic, was i?
i was practicing magic but i was afraid of a location spell: i thought i’d be identified as a demon were my true inner nature to be revealed.
and so on some level,
i was still being a fake.
wasn’t i?
but that’s just because:
i still thought i was part bad.
i still thought i wasn’t poetic or artistic — things my mommy once told me.
my parents and one sister were still telling me i needed help, every time we spoke.
isn’t that why tara thought when she held herself back with willow???
her family taught her she was a demon???
“i can’t do this spell with willow because i am part demon.”
and that’s what i have been thinking as i’ve held myself back here:
i’ve tried and tried and tried, all the way until yesterday, to make my parents love me.
nothing has worked, and i have finally given up,
just like tara did thanks to willow’s support.
from sparknotes
Summary: Chapter 34: The Substance of Things
“Knowing that her family has completely failed to protect and nurture her, Tara finally finds the courage to fully defy them. Tara has gradually been taking steps toward independence, but she has never fully relinquished her relationship with her family. She still treats Buck's Peak like the home she will invariably return to, and she at least maintains outward expectations of loving and honoring her parents. When her parents side with Shawn, Tara realizes they have never done any of the things parents are supposed to do for their children, and this makes her question why she needs to keep behaving like an obedient daughter. While it is painful, this final betrayal gives Tara clarity and freedom. By refusing her father's blessing, Tara draws a boundary for the first time in her adult life. She will never stop loving her parents, but she also needs to live according to her own standards and beliefs.”
my parents taught me that i was a danger to myself and others.
and i believed this until today.
but i am not in the gaslight chamber anymore mom and dad.
i’m free from you now.
i’m eloise now,
and she can do anything she wants to do.
No longer a danger to herself or others [so true]
She made up her mind and laced up her shoes [so true]
Yelled down the hall but nobody answered [so true]
So she walked outside without an excuse [so true]She could do anything she wants to [so true]
She could do whatever she wants to do
She could go home, but she's not going toSo she picks a direction, it's ninety in Memphis
Turns up the music so thoughts don't intrude [so true]
Predictably winds up thinkin' of Elvis
And wonders if he believed songs could come true [they do]I'm asking for it if they do
Doesn't know what she wants or what she's gonna do
A rebel without a clue [got an agenda now don’t i?]So we spent what was left of our serotonin [still got my zoloft]
To chew on our cheeks and stare at the moon [beautiful tonight for my walk]
Said she knows she lived through it to get to this moment [now i know that]
Ate a sleeve of saltines on my floor, and I knew then [i’ve eaten so many fucking saltines]I would do anything you want me to [so true]
I would do anything for you
I would do anything, I would do anything
Whatever you want me to do, I will doWhatever she wants, whatever she wants [so true]
Whatever she wants (whatever you want)
Whatever she wants (whatever you want)
I will do anything (whatever you want)
I will do anything (whatever you want)
Whatever she wants (whatever you want)
Whatever she wants (whatever you want)
and so this title, although i will not change it because i fucking love the buffy imagery,
tara helped me see that.
tara helped me see the truth:
i was never spike.
i was always tara.
i was always a fucking witch and i was always a fucking goddess.
and so,
as i have already said to you,
but not once to my fucking self:
during my final incubational period,
in a teenage girl room from november 2023 to may 2024,
i was reading about phoebe and how she gives no shits about “respecting her dad” if he has not actually earned this abstract right. what phoebe taught me is that she can say she loves her dad and still refuse to give into his twisted version of reality.
i can do that too.
and:
i was listening to idles, learning how to reject my dad, stop him from dominating me.
I was done in on the weekend
The weekend lasted twenty years
The world's best bulimic bartend
Tender, violent and queerForgive me father, I have sinned
I've drained my body full of pins
I've danced 'til dawn with splintered shins
Full of pins, full of pinsGoes and it goes and it goes
Goes and it goes and it goes
Goes and it goes and it goes
Goes and it goes and it goesThey laugh at me when I run
I waste away for fun
I am my father's son
His shadow weighs a tonneGoes and it goes and it goes
Goes and it goes and it goes
Goes and it goes and it goes
Goes and it goes and it goesThey laugh at me when I run
I waste away for fun
I am my father's son
His shadow weighs a tonneGoes and it goes and it goes
Goes and it goes and it goes
Goes and it goes and it goes
Goes and it goes and it goesForgive me father, I have sinned
I've drained my body full of pins
I've danced til dawn with splintered shins
Full of pins, full of pinsGoes and it goes and it goes
Goes and it goes and it goes
Goes and it goes and it goes
Go go go go go go!It's coming
It's coming
It's coming
It's coming
It's coming
It's coming
It's coming
It's comingI don't want to be
Your man
Your man
I don't want to be
Your man
Your manI'm like Stone Cold Steve Austin
I put homophobes in coffins
I'm like Fred Astaire
I dance like I don't care
I'm like Ted DiBiase
I win no matter what it costs me
I'm like Evel Knievel
I break bones for my people
I'm on my best behavior
Like Jesus Christ our savior
I'm like Reggie Kray(idles, “colossus”
that’s me now:
i finally stopped trying to get my daddy to like me,
and i’m ready to use my words to “break bones for my people.”
my parents invested enormous amounts of money in me:
and they hoped for a return on their investment.
they hoped for an object that would pursue the types of dreams they have,
an object that would speak like they speak,
that would see the world like they do.
Sunset's been a freak show
On the weekend, so
I've been driving out to the suburbs
To park at the Goodwill
And stare at the chemtrails
With my little brother
He said you called on his birthday
You were off by like ten days
But you get a few points for tryin'
Remember getting the truck fixed
When you let us drive it
Twenty-five felt like flyingI don't forgive you
But please don't hold me to it
Born under Scorpio skies
I wanted to see the world
Through your eyes until it happened
Then I changed my mind (woo)
but now i join idles and i join phoebe:
i’m ready to use my pen to stand up for everyone the white male corporate patriarchy:
the white male corporate patriarchy that has taken and fucked and turned into a piece of material.
i’m ready to tell my dad to fuck himself so that i can be a radiant being.
extract from above:
i want to tell T:
there is not really any such thing as a 22 year old.
to me this is the obvious thing neither of us will say.
there is this 22 year old girl who exists in T’s mind and she hates this person.
i want to to tell her that this person does not exist, never did exist, and in fact: this person could be disintegrated into power as easily as the most pristine automobile could be crushed up into parts and melted back into the earth, which is something you could never do to an actual being.
i learned who i am from idles while incubating in a teenage girl bedroom:
i’m the “man” (EW — but i’ll leave it for irony ❤️)
with the perm,
and trust me darling:
if we’re talking words,
you don’t wanna fucking fight me.
i got 98th percentile on the verbal section of the GRE,
and i’m not going to stop writing.
sorry about that darlings:
you spent so much money on my education and now i’m going to be using it to advance the pink pony club after midnight while naked in manhattan lol
and it didn’t even fucking matter: he is disgusted by me, blocked me on LinkedIn, read the details of everything he did to me — and my mom said, “you are jeopardizing your father’s professional connections; he had to block you on LinkedIn.”
but i get it: they don’t think they need help.
as my mom has said, my dad would not feel comfortable with her going to therapy. they have never gone to therapy, either of them: despite the fact my mom refuses to talk about her childhood because it was so deeply traumatizing and despite the fact my dad was abandoned by his father as a baby.
but they are nevertheless totally confident that a doctor will be able to understand that i am delusional for thinking they don’t love me, for feeling their rejection of me.
“we are your parents,” they think, “therefore we love you.”
“we paid for your undergrad and going to germany,” they think, “therefore we love you.”
“we bought you things and gave you 900 dollars the day after you were evicted from your home,” they think, “therefore we love you.”
this is how their minds operate and there is nothing i can do but cut them off.
because i finally fucking see:
this whole time i have been walking around a small town, enjoying the wonderful people here and their smiles and how nice they all are to me, and this experience has made me discover the delusion i could not find but needed to be dealt with:
the delusion that i am not a radiant goddess just like all of you are.
the delusion that i was born a demon and needed girly music to transform me into an angel.
the delusion that i was nothing without girly music, nothing without buffy, nothing without sabrina carpenter, nothing without the girlie substack writers who love me, nothing without V, nothing without sally rooney.
no no no.
now i understand:
these people did not transform me anymore than willow transformed tara.
no: these people helped me to gain enough grasp on reality that i would be able to finally, once and for all, see with my own eyes my own fucking inner radiance.
i’m a radiant fucking goddess and i came into this world that way.
i will never fucking unsee that again.
i suggest you don’t either.
i’m tara out of the gaslight chamber now.
guess what that means???
it means i’m the high fucking priestess now,
like i was from the fucking beginning:
extract from above post:
“the high priestess is the guardian of the unconscious. she sits in front of the thin veil of unawareness which is all that separates us from our inner landscape. she contains within herself the secret of these realms and offers us the silent invitation, ‘be still and know that i am god.’” the big book of tarot, joann bunning
for a good year or so i was constantly drawing the high priestess. i felt so in sync with the card: that high priestess energy felt so aligned with whatever was happening inside me: the nature of the high priestess (passive, withdrawn, inward-looking, fearlessly looking beneath the surface of her own emotions: hers is a kind of quiet scholarly energy, the energy of a sorceress with a doctorate, and she doesn’t deploy her magic toward gaining wealth or power: rather toward understanding the true reality behind the surface of things, including behind the surface of herself. this seemed to be my mission and it felt right that my tarot decks kept yielding this card
the high priestess felt even more relatable to me once i started using my buffy the vampire slayer deck. i was still drawing the high priestess but she had come in the form of one of my favorite buffy characters: tara. this made so much sense to me and i felt my connection with the high priestess even more deeply. tara is a person who has been taught to believe she is a demon: like me, she struggles to embrace herself, and like me she has had people close to her tell her she is evil and deserves to burn in hell. the “evil,” though, is actually the good in her that her family deems demonic. tara imagines she is so evil that she is a demon, and she is sure of this about herself, but through her study of witchcraft and the road magic takes her on, she is eventually able to see beyond the surface of herself: she is sees her true nature: goodness
now i have drawn the knight of cups. to be honest i find myself a little spooked even though of course: yes duh it’s super obvious that i have a very strong connection with my buffy deck. so no i shouldn’t be surprised it knows me so well, i know. but the thing is i’m still spooked every time my buffy deck reminds me of our connection.\
cups to me are really all about feelings, and the knight of cups speaks so well to where i find myself going now that i have completed a long phase of high priestess-ey inwardness and have embarked on a probably even longer phase of outward-looking emotional expression. as the big book of tarot explains it, the knight of cups embodies an emphasis on feelings, idealized love, the expression of sentiments, awareness of moods and feelings, and an understanding of the pain others are experiencing.
“[the knight of cups] uses his imagination in wondrous ways and taps the deepest levels of emotion. he knows how to create beauty and share it with others.”
i really do feel like my buffy deck is telling me something so true: this is a time for me to focus on my emotional development, to really bring out that part of me that i’ve kept buried in the name of seeming “serious” “logical” “intelligent” or “scholarly.” but it’s also not about me: this is also a time to pursue emotional connection with others. after years of inward reflection, it’s time to seek external connection with other beings
it’s both ominous and inspiring to see the buffy character on this tarot card. it’s william pratt, or spike before he was a vamp: the idealistic young poet with unskillful but deeply passionate approaches to romance. should i be concerned by the ultimate fate of william pratt? after all, he becomes a vampire! he becomes a demon! but i don’t think so, no: because william pratt’s innate sense of romance is still there even in spike’s demonic body… and eventually it is this natural inclination toward romance, this knight of cups energy at the core of his being, that saves him, or at least that’s how i think about it. i mean: spike’s love for buffy, flowing from his original nature as a hopeless romantic who is deeply in touch with his emotions, is ultimately what gives him the drive to overcome his demonic nature, to become good enough to sacrifice himself, no? to me, spike’s story, though dark and complicated, demonstrates the transformative power of giving into our feelings and emotions. spike’s story shows that we should all be willing to embrace that knight of cups energy!
to be a little more dreamy about it: the externally oriented emotional journey of the knight of cups is a journey that can turn a demon into an angel
