Episode 34 - Patterns

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Welcome back! To what some might consider to be trauma dumping. Not that I’ve actually been hit with that accusation yet. I just know that it’s probably coming. It is likely something I have earned, and I can admit that. I know what this show is meant to be. And I know that I have tried, in so many ways, to hide the truth of it from you. And yet, I have not. It just isn’t obvious. There is a part of me that wants someone to figure out what it is I’m trying to say. There is a part of me that is begging for someone to take notice. But it’s not the whole of me. 

Okay, look, maybe “part of me” is just an expression. And if it is, fair enough. Language is meant to communicate ideas. It does not have to be literal, and there is definitely a use for or power to figurative language. Sometimes a meaning or idea cannot be spelled out, and it has to be revealed or indirectly communicated instead. The expression “part of me” is probably like that. I mean, when I say it, I am still a full person. I am completely whole in mind and body. I might feel fractured, but I am not literally fractured. Or that’s what I want to think, anyway.

But okay, the point. Maybe it is just an expression, but you know what it points to? The reality that I have different parts of me that do not work in perfect sync. That each have their own concerns, motivations, and end goals. They may have an outright disregard for the other’s needs and preferences. That’s all a possibility. So there are ramifications to that. 

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In this case, the part of me that is desperate to be seen, desperate to have my heart break noticed, acknowledged, and spoken of, is competing with the part of me that is desperate for all of this to remain hidden. And let me tell you, that need to hide is strong: stronger than it has any rational business being. It’s wrong, I can tell you that. It should not be listened to. And yet, it’s the only part of me I ever actually pay attention to. 

Come to think of it, that whole bit could be called trauma dumping by some standards, right? So maybe I do have something to apologize for. But not all the parts of me realize it. 

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The king was dead. But long live the king. Such is the paradox that comes when thrones change hands. For one can never truly be empty, can it? What would it mean for a seat of power and authority to be vacant? I think many of us have suspicions. Many of us may have answers or arguments, but in reality, we cannot truly now. 

If you had asked the new queen, not the queen mother but the new queen consort, sitting at her husband’s side beneath a crown that felt much too heavy for her neck, she would tell you that she did not like to generalize or speak in absolutes. And those around her would murmur about her brilliance and wisdom in this. You see, they would say, the gracious Queen Evanora was not just kind and merciful but wise as well. She and the king were the wisest in the land. They saw the truths that no one else could, and they did not fall into the traps that so many others had. Those sycophants of the court would go on and on like that, repeating the whispers they had uttered about the former king and queen but changing out the names so they would feel fresh, just as their parents before them had done. And their parents before them. In a pattern that had endured as steadfastly as the throne itself had. 

It was simply written into the human’s heart, Queen Evanora would want to say. But she would stop herself. It would only start the cycle of whispers anew, and while there were those kings and queens who enjoyed such affirmations, those words only reminded her how heavy the crown was. Perhaps this is what she should have expected when she married a prince, the more critical might say, but had she known about the blood that sealed the jewels of her crown in place, she would not have agreed to the match. There are simply some things that only reveal themselves in freshly drawn pools, of blood or otherwise: a surface that–in its novelty– can show you so much of what is otherwise kept hidden. It can show you the sort of family you married into, as an example, and the unwinnable games your husband may find himself playing.

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You know what I think is the… Well, there’s no good way to phrase this. So let’s start with the premise. I know none of us get through our childhood completely unscathed. Even in the best of scenarios. We are born into this world a blank slate only to have lessons and views imprinted on us, some of which we may spend decades taking off. Once the surface has been written over, those marks can be interpreted or valued in any number of ways. Some are worth something. Some lessons are useful or make us ‘good’ people by any number of definitions. Sometimes, we’re just dealing with wounds that will never fully heal. We’re dealing with the scars from battles we should have never had to fight. And the thing about those scars is that their damage is somewhat compounded. Not only are they there. Not only did we have to suffer through whatever put them there. But they also take up space that could be used for something more beneficial to us. Or beneficial in the long term, anyway. A lot of the extra baggage in my head was about survival. And survival is important. So there’s that. 

But now I feel like I don’t really know what ‘beauty’ is. Outside of the commercialization of it: the marketing techniques, the commoditization, the ‘hate yourself so we can sell you something,’ you know what I mean. That salesmanship technique works so well because it points to something within us, right? Or that’s what I’ve always assumed. It’s easier to twist a need already within us than to completely construct and then push a new one. But I don’t know what the initial thing, the thing that was twisted, was. I don’t know what ‘beauty’ is supposed to be.

Sure, if you show me a sunset, I can tell you that it’s beautiful. Let me hear a child’s laughter, and I’ll smile. But it feels like I was only taught to do those things, you know? If they are supposed to be instinctual or reflexes of some kind, that whole process in me is broken down. And I don’t know how to rebuild it.

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Queen Asha did not grieve as a wife would for her husband but as a queen would for a king. She went through the motions but kept her face set in an unreadable expression. She wore the traditional black veil over eyes that did not shed tears. She shared fond memories of him and kept the worst parts of his nature out. All the while, she surprised herself. Despite never having lost a husband before, she was going through the motions like an expert. She wore the colors and marking of grief well. And maybe, on some front, it was really just relief, veiled as grief. 

It was not that she did not love her husband. Rather, love was irrelevant. For them as a couple and for her as a queen, there was simply no time for it. The entire kingdom was at their mercy. Every citizen needed them to act, to play a game that only royalty could play. There was no room to discuss how important or necessary that game really was. There was something blasphemous about that, there was something sacreligious about that, and there was something necessary about it as well. 

Princess Eathebel could speak to that part. For all that she had done wrong, for all her sins and broken nature, she knew of love. Or the need for it. She knew how truly needed it was in the castle, how she had needed it from her mother, and how the loss of it brought havoc down on them all. 

And much like her mother, there was this sense of relief that overwhelmed her when her father died. Not only because it meant an end to the proposal or because it meant Lord Hicket would now be sent far away, not to his family estates which would soon be stripped from him under some pretext but further away than that. Rather, Princess Eathebel felt relief that her ordeal might be over, that the love her brother had for her might mean a change of things, that he would understand, or that he would listen.  

“The world will be golden now,” she had once whispered to her brother. They stood together at his coronation, overlooking the crowds of cheering peasants who did not understand the differences between kings, only that they now got to see one. 

But to her words, King Ezin did not react. 

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And to preempt a question, no, I don’t know how I failed to learn something so fundamental. Or I’m assuming that was the follow up question, if you had one. Maybe the actual question was why you should bother caring, but that’s not something I can answer. You’re here, listening to this podcast, and that was a choice. You continue to make your choices by coming back when new episodes are posted and staying to listen when you have started one despite not liking what you hear. I can’t do anything about that. I can’t make your behavior make sense to you. 

So back to the question I can answer. How do I fail so fundamentally at something considered a basic human function or instinct or fail to acquire what should be considered basic human knowledge? To tell you the truth, I don’t know. But come to think of it, I think that maybe I did learn it. At least on some level. Because when I was growing up, I did see love. Love is beauty. Or the act of loving someone is beautiful. But I saw how easily it could be twisted. I saw how easily a small drop of malice could twist it and rip it apart. So maybe I just don’t trust it. Maybe that’s my problem. Or one of my many problems. 

Maybe it’s not ignorance but distrust.

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The role of queen mother is not a position known for its power. Or–at least–it was not by its design. But there was something to be said of the hold a mother could keep over her son, particularly the son who still believed, on some level, that she was basically good and who still wondered what happened to his first love whose death never made that much sense to him. It remained a string tied to his heart, one that she could gently tug to get her way. 

“She should be married off,” Queen Asha stated to him while Queen Evanora fussed over the infant princess in the corner of the room. “You’ve seen how your sister can be. How jealous. It was why she killed the girl, poor thing, and well… I won’t accuse a mother of harming her own child, but I fail to see what other explanation we have.”

The queen mother sold the story well, as one does when they have thoroughly convinced themselves that things are true and no one rises up to contradict them. Queen Evanora inhaled sharply at the mention of the baby, but the king did not pay her mind. After all, he thought, was she not just a new mother sympathizing with a heartache that no soul could imagine? 

“Jealousy is not a crime,” the king said. His voice had risen to meet his new title, and he carried himself more boldly than he had before. To many, he looked like a different man, and perhaps, he could be considered one.

“But not protecting your daughter is,” his mother spat. “She is the one thing keeping your sister from the throne. Until you have more children. Then they will join her as barriers, but the problem still stands.” 

The king sunk down a bit. That was the truth, not in a subjective way, but written in the laws of the kingdom. The throne would go onto his children, and if he did not have one able to take the crown, it would go to his sister and her children. It did not matter that she did not have any of her to speak of. The kingdom would be hers for the moment if his family were no more. 

The queen mother saw her opportunity, saw the small bit of progress she had made and seized the moment it had presented her. “Give her a family to fawn over, a duchy over to rule in her own right. Give her that life so she does not feel the temptation to take away from your daughter what is rightfully hers.”

Queen Evanora watched her husband, watched another twisting and turning of his mind, watched her mother-in-law pull him into another unwinnable game. He could not see what she could see. He could not see his mother’s scheme gently stitched in her mind’s tapestry, in a language of threads that only a woman could read. There was much about the fight of female royalty that the king could not understand. And yet, he would never be the one to pay the price.

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There are things I do know, okay? I’m not all doom and gloom,= woe is me. It’s just that on a podcast that I write, record, edit, and produce, I get to talk about the things I want to talk about. And this part of me and my story is the sort of thing I’m expected to keep out of polite conversation. Or all conversation. 

I’ll admit that I don’t like all social rules or etiquette, and that probably does not surprise you. Yes, it is important sometimes, sure. And I will also admit that having set parameters or patterns or expectations can certainly be helpful for many people who have the right to tools that make social engagements easier for them. But at the same time, sometimes I need to be outside of that. Sometimes I just need something different or something else. There should be alternatives, is what I’m trying to say. 

And is that what TikTok is to me? Maybe. You’ve got to admit, it’s a completely different world out there. Online in general yes, but TikTok just bends to a certain type of anarchy. The whole has rules and structures, but its algorithm will take you to the pockets that don’t if that’s really what your heart desires. And maybe that is what it desires. What mine specifically desires.

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How can a mother make peace with the woman who wanted her daughter dead, some might wonder. I would venture to say that it is much easier for a woman to do when it is the other’s daughter who died for all the scheming. There are some tragedies intense enough to break the ledger, and certainly this was one. 

In any event, they both had their wounds. They both had their fears. They both had their vulnerabilities in a world that was ready to set upon them and tear them asunder for the simple fact of their sex. Or of the princess’s birth one might say. Princess Eathebel’s birth, that is. For if she had been born in any other kingdom, she would have the freedom that Queen Evanora had known in her youth, a freedom that she had taken for granted and had been stripped from her when she married into this world. No matter how well things are in the beginning, they could always get worse for a woman, the queen had learned. She knew what could happen to a young girl if no one was looking out for her. And undoubtedly, Queen Asha would not look out for her daughter. King Ezin would not know how. So who did that leave? The infant in the cradle who could not truly know what fate had almost befallen her, no matter what Queen Evanora thought she heard in those jumbled cries? No, it would have to be her. And it only needed to be a quick message right? No suitor had been picked. But one would be coming. Soon. 

The eyes in the shadows followed her as she strolled to her sister-in-law’s chambers that evening. Wane did not know what to make of her, but he knew not to blame her for what might come. She was, after all, only a woman.

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