Ripe Chestnuts for Bear Cubs

"I want out," I said to my husband.  It was one of those terrible nighttime rants he endures from me, when my own endurance is gone, my bladder wakes me up to my exhaustion, and my misery bursts loose like pus from a wound.  "I want out.  I have lost any sense of ability to make any of my dreams happen, to make life better in any way, I can not even see myself as of value to our boy anymore and that hurts the most, and any time I have time to feel anything I just want out."

And back to bed.  And on to another day of what needed to be done.

What needed to be done that day included a visit to a friend's house, time spent with two children with whom I used to spend a great deal of time.  In the middle of my visit the younger child-- the one we fear may either take over or destroy the world-- suddenly looked up at me and shouted, 

"You're a unicorn!"

At which point the older child spun and said, "Oh my gosh, T is totally a unicorn!"


Stop. All. Buses.


So at this point it is relevant to say that I grew up back before unicorns were cute.


I grew up when unicorns were serious.

Unicorns were sublime.

Unicorns were untameable, incorruptible, miraculous, and potentially deadly.

I was a hideously alienated child with no sense of ownership of my body.  I didn't think of myself as human.  My first counselor would later comment that I did not live in Reality, I visited sometimes. Throughout my formative years, where I really lived, I was, of course, a unicorn.

So suddenly being called a unicorn was kind of like walking down a hallway and falling into the ocean.  It took me a moment to get my head up out of the water enough to say,

"What?"

Then they showed me this little laminated card that had shown up at birthday, identifying all the important characteristics of unicorns.

Unicorns don't cheat.  Unicorns think of others.  Unicorns help when needed.  Unicorns aren't late.  Unicorns respect the earth.

So I'm reading this...

and I am thinking about how this is clear use of marketing techniques to incentivize mature behavior for a segment of the population that has heretofore been trained to get their kicks being self-indulgent princesses...

but I'm also thinking, "OMG THIS IS ACTUALLY ME I REALLY AM A UNICORN"...  

and at the same time, my brain is all over the direct connections between this and my struggle to reframe self-worth as valuing what is ordinary...

and I'm also standing there with the fact that this is what these two particular children with whom I have spent so much time-- these two children who have fought with me, screamed at me, ranted at me and railed against me, locked me out and lied to me ad infibium, these children with whom I have tried so hard and felt such failure-- this is what they think of me.

And, standing there with that piece of plasticized, mass-manufactured pop culture claptrap in my hand, I stopped wanting out.

I stopped thinking I was worthless.

Maybe Elwood P. Dood is right.  Maybe sometimes the necessary end to the struggle with Reality is to win out over it.

Time to remember: I am a unicorn.