But I don’t tell her any of it because I know that she knows what it’s like. So I don’t tell my mother about my hair and how I had to cut it all off because... Nor do I tell her that even though it is now cropped almost to my ears, even these days, sometimes when I wake up, it seems to me that there are still bits missing and I don’t know how that is possible. That I dare not make any accusations at this point in case I am wrong. That I better not call the police because, shit, what on earth would I say: “Officer, someone cuts my hair in the night, how perverse?” and we could have a smoke and a laugh at something so not funny I could cry.
So I’m telling you all of this now. I’m telling you now because I’ve gone along with this charade for too long (years) and after I got a divorce, I kept telling myself (and this is the really scary part) that it all must be a “good” thing (this, I told myself, was The American Dream when really, it is sort of a hybrid of The American Nightmare). That it was the Big Get Even or that, if only I went along with it long enough, something positive might come out the other end because I like Obama and I like the whole notion of hope (or Hope) and Bob Dylan who also gives and gave me a sense of Hope and of fearlessness. So I thought maybe other people have it worse (they do) and that I am lucky (in some ways, I am) – and so I ought not complain, because the first time, after I did “See Something, Say Something,” I was wrong or maybe wrong or anyway, I’ll never know. So where does that leave us then, America? Or where does it leave me?
And so, “If the police don’t believe you,” my mother says…
Actually, I think the police do believe me. Or I think they want to and so they do. It leaves me, who really ought be writing about Dylan and other matters, with only “A restless hungry feeling that don’t mean nobody no good…”
Thanks for listening,
Article comments
1 - Baronius
I've known bipolar sufferers. See a therapist. You're completely misreading the situation.