this may be hard for you to hear but...

So a time when I felt like I couldn’t be myself. Or was myself…
Okay
Go.

I used to be really good friends with this girl. We did just about everything together. I’m pretty sure we both thought nothing was going to break us up. We laughed, we had fun, we joked around, we sang, we danced, we experienced life together. We were there for each other. Or, I was there for her. I soon realized that for this friendship to work I had to be fully aware and conscience of her feelings. (duh Jordan you are supposed to do that in friendships , right? Yes you are right, but I am talking about OVERLY sensitized feelings) The slightest thing would set her off. She would be upset. I found that we were no longer having fun, but that I was constantly altering what I did or said or how I acted in order to keep her happy. My extreme sarcasm bothered her, because it hurt her feelings. (sarcasm wasn’t her thing) She always thought I was making fun of her. I wasn’t. And she thought I wasn’t considerate of her feelings, when that’s what our entire relationship was. So I wasn’t really being myself. I was being the version of me that tended to someone else’s every emotion. Now try to tell me that’s not emotionally draining. haha

the fool.

Sooo I lost my short stories. And I knew one was one by Kate Chopin. So I read Beyond the Bayou. And I really really hope that’s it. But if it isn’t, its still by Kate Chopin so I will still compare it.

Okay so here we go. This story is similar to The Awakening because it is about a woman who is out of the ordinary. She is big and stronger than any man. They even call her “La Folle’, the fool, because they think she is crazy. She has lived almost all of her life in fear of what was beyond the bayou, and would never cross it. But when she is faced with the fact that she has to cross it or her beloved Cheri will die, she does it almost blindly. She closes her eyes and lets her senses guide her, out of fear. The fear is what drives her forward. The fear of what will happen to Cheri and the fear of what is ahead. This is a lot like when Edna swims out into the ocean because its empowering and no woman has done it before. She just keeps swimming. They are both very similar in that regard, but Edna dies as a result, and La Folle, conquers a fear.

lame.

So basically, she leads him to the tiger. Now I know that it doesn’t really matter which one he picks because he is going to be screwed over in the end. The point of this story is that you wont be happy either way. But anyway, she sends him to the door with the tiger. She knows that the lady is someone she despises and wont let her lover ever be with her. She would rather him die than let him be with her.
She also wants to punish the lady and have her be rejected.

This story was ridiculous. Not a fan. I don’t understand how it was six pages long. It could have been condensed into just one page. It isn’t that the story is so bad. It isn’t even that the message is that bad. Its just that they write what the message is at the end of the story. THAT RUINS THE MESSAGE. Saying what the message is ruins the message. That is soooooooo lame.

ocean complexity

So basically this is how my mind is. Its not a storm. Its not even a calm before the storm and then a storm. Its not calm either. Its like, the ocean I guess. It comes in waves. Not that my mind works in waves, but that sometimes it is stable, like the middle of the ocean. And when nothing disturbs it and there is nothing but sunshine it its calm and smooth on the surface. Underneath, under the surface of the water there are fifty different currents going fifty different ways that no one ever really sees or thinks about.

Then it starts to rain, and the rain screws everything up because it messes with the surface, and brings the currents up and the waves start to crash, and its no longer calm and smooth.

The rain just drains the ocean. It is water that has been collected from the ocean in the first place, and has been waiting up in the clouds and now, it all comes back down and adds to the volume of the ocean. And then it can’t do anything else but crash on the shore at high tide.

cordelia the best child in the world.

Oh little Cordelia. Her dad banished her from the kingdom and now she is stuck being the queen of France. What a hard life that must be! I’m sure she has heard of the news that her father is being basically overthrown entirely by her sisters. Because she is disgustingly loyal she would probably want to help her father and let him know that she is still there for him and that he could stay with her if he wanted. She will still support him and recognize his Kingship, even if he really isn’t the king anymore. Why is she so loyal? I don’t know. I think its has to do with the fact that she is fairly naïve and young. She just wants to please her father.

She would tell her sisters that they were betraying their father and that they should be more respectful to him and that he doesn’t deserve to be treated that way. She is very protective of her father. Basically I jus think that Cordelia needs to get some guts and stand up to her father, and tell him to get over himself and do things for herself, but she wont ever do that.

oh hey 'dad' im just going to take your kingdom now...

Personally, I would say that the reason these girls have turned against their father is because he wasn’t really a father to them. The back-story that I made up basically goes like this. The first two girls are born. Lear is like, “oh cool I have daughters.” But in reality he really just is into being king, so the girls just see him as king. He is also probably more controlling and protective of them because they are his daughters, but there isn’t the love and the bond of father and daughter between them. So then when they are older and greedy and want the kingdom for themselves, they have no emotional attachment to Lear and don’t feel badly when they take over all of his power and take his knights and kick him out of their houses.

Then Cordelia comes along and she is the baby and is favored by her father and has a ‘normal’ relationship with her father and its treated like a daughter and not just some random girl that hangs out in the kingdom. The other girls are jealous that she gets this attention and then when they get their part of the kingdom they become greedy. And then they want power because they have been denied any sort of power before. And now they have a little bit and are going to stretch it as far as they can. And they have no real connection with their father as a true father so they have no guilt in doing this. So actually if you think about it, its all Lear’s fault. He could have prevented this in his early years as king if he would just have paid attention to his daughters.

oh daddy you're the best.

Cordelia and Lear have the relationship that most girls have with their fathers. They love each other because they are supposed to, but it is still genuine. Cordelia knows she is adored by her father and wants to express this to him as honestly as possible. But considering her father is so crazy obsessive with himself and his pride, he cant see past her lack of words to her love. He thinks that if she really loves him she should be able to say all the things she means, because everyone else does. But what he doesn’t realize is that no one else actually loves him and that is why they can say all those great things about him.

When people want something, especially someone like the other sisters, they will do anything they can to make sure it happens. People act out of their own self interest. They aren’t thinking about their father and his feelings or pride, they are thinking about what they can get out of him, and that is why they do not have a hard time lying to him. Lying comes naturally to a person who is that desperate and power hungry.

Everyone ‘plays the game.’ Even if you are just changing the tone of your voice, or the wording of a question to get what you want you are playing the game. If I know that if I yell something I wont get what I want, I will speak in a calm voice. Something as simple as that is playing the game. At least that’s what I would consider to be playing the game. Everyone also loses the game at some point because if they are talking to you like that, and tell you what you want to hear, you are of course going to give into it. Its human tendency.