the cheese stands alone

Pea Soup

This time of year, thoughts turn to candy, to extravagant costumes, to jack o'lanterns... to exorcism.

Not Linda Blair doing herself with an oversized crucifix type of exorcism. I'm thinking of personal ghosts, and how we handle them.

During a recent phone conversation with my sister, she mentioned she had a little research project for me to do in my spare time. She wanted to find the whereabouts of a long-gone ex, the boyfriend who was almost more. Being a bit more googley than she, I found his current address and phone while we were still on the phone. Amazed at how easy the body was exhumed, she rushed off to call him up, to say Hey, how ya doing? What's been going on with you?
She called me back with the report that the whole thing had been... "less than satisfactory". Reunions never play out as well as they do in your mind.
I told her what did she expect? Everything stinks after its been buried a while.

But this is how some people deal with the past. They let it simmer a bit then stir it up again, over and over, until it cools sufficiently to put it away or toss it out altogether.
Not me. I have my own ways.

I see dead people.

All those people who wronged me in the past, who I had an uncomfortable history with, who I'd cross the street and cover my face like an accused in a perp walk to avoid.... they're all dead.
I killed them.

Okay, I don't mean your lovable Cheese is a serial killer. There's no actual blood on my hands, no weapons stashed amongst the cutlery. But these people- these troublesome, annoying, embarassing bits of my way-back-when... I murdered them all, one by one.
In great, gory, excruciating detail, in a manner befitting each one's particular memory stamp. All in my mind.
One ex-boyfriend was a bit into bondage, so he died most embarassingly at his own hands in a misguided episode of autoerotic asphyxiation. I didn't like his mother either, so she found him and collapsed of a heart attack over his body. Oh, the scandal when they were found.
A girl who'd been horrid to me in school and who was most well-known for her very prominent nose died under the plastic surgeon's knife, so horridly that a closed casket was necessary but photos leaked to the tabloids anyway.
A man who'd slandered me died of burns sustained in a house fire. Liar, liar, pants on fire.
All of them, one by one, suffocation by dismemberment by rabies... gone.

Everyone deals with the past in their own way. They go to shrinks, or they tell all in agonizing detail on their blogs (which I have never understood, though I read them all with a sick fascination usually reserved for train wrecks and Michael Jackson documentaries), or they go on, repeating mantra-like, "I was a better person for having known him/her/it."
Regret is for pussies. Guilt is for wimps.
My way, I get to go to a lot of interesting funerals in interesting places, and it's all over, fini, absolved, dirt-nap-done.

And I look damn good in imaginary black.

Posted by LeeAnn at October 30, 2003 06:52 AM | TrackBack