Monologue

It’s cold.  Furled inside a ball of protective blankets, I sit on my giant suede couch and prepare for battle.  The two sides of my mind are armed and ready at the front.  I think about which side will win; will it be the underdog, vulnerability or will stubbornness prevail once again?  A flux of sardonic and apprehensive thoughts, flood into my mind.  The first fire has struck and the war begins.  The offensive starts tryingly strong, leading my compliant mouth to say: “Hey, my name is Reina and this is who I am, five-foot-four, and donned in black.”  Except that I wouldn’t really be clothed.  I’d be naked, stripped through my skin and thick layers of flesh until all that’s left would be my likes and dislikes, my childhood memories, my family history, and my integrity.  Maybe they’ll be told in story-form like, “I remember that day when he left us for good…” or through allusions like “I wear this gold necklace everywhere I go…” The defensive side laughs.  It’s all too clever to be duped.  A master at diversion and swerving carefully around fragile obstructions, it starts to chant: “You open one door and it leads to another!  You start a sentence with ‘I’ and you’re done for!”  With deflection as its shield, walls shoot up, and resistance strengthens.  The war between being honest and being ambiguous escalates into a bloody uproar leaving a slew of carnage, a slew of questions.  Should I talk about my heritage?  Should I tell them that I’m an older sister or confess that I’m a smoker?  Do these things make me who I am?  What makes me who I am?  What makes anyone who they are and why would anyone else even care?  My mind is in anarchy as the battle cries ring.  I put on my headphones, hit play, and continue to sit.  Like an eddy the sounds pulsate and assuage the chaos.  It’s a mental dialysis; tunes pump in and thoughts pump out.  The battle is over.  With a beat and a melody, nothing really matters.