cocoon

It was fear. I was afraid of the men I was with.

I don’t believe I’ve ever been in love. Not fully. I only knew how to fawn.

Fawning felt good. I could blink big doe eyes and roll over and show my tender belly and say yes please let me please you, while in my head I created a cocoon of fantasy about all the ways the lost boys would love me.

It didn’t matter that they hurt me. It didn’t matter that they used me. In my waking dreams they came around to the light, they saw me and saved me and let me save them. In my secret internal world we had conversations, adventures, laughter, connection. All the essentials needed to make me feel safe enough to stay with the cold and bitter reality of their true selves.

I was crazy. Nobody knew this. Not even me.

It was my way to survive, as far back as I can remember. I built my drug, my daydream endorphin escape route, to save me from uncertainty and instability and fear. My little child’s brain grew and developed around this addiction. When that brain was mature enough to help me flee the matriarchal madhouse, I had the drug to keep me safe.

I had the drug when I moved in with my handsome and talented alcoholic boyfriend who cheated on me and belittled me and told me that women shouldn’t vote.

I had the drug when I went to the bar and let myself be picked up on by men that I will never be attracted to.

I had the drug to carry me from one heartbroken and half-crazed musician to the next, and the drug to make me walk willingly into eight years of absolute chaos with a man whose abounding narcissistic insanity surpassed even that of my mother.

Escapes into my cocoon of accommodation were an integral part of my existence that made it impossible for me to feel comfortable with good people. There was no reason to trust what they had to offer when what I had to escape to was infinitely more dependable and pleasurable. And so I continued to gravitate towards the ones that turned on the opiate inside me. It took years of hard work and brutal self-honesty to finally climb out of the cocoon.

I thought I was free. And then one day I climbed back in.

I’ve worked so hard.
I thought I was done.
I want to be done.

burn the cocoon

_{All pictures and words copyright Anna Horvitz (me) and cannot be used without my consent.
Crow featured is JJ. She's here with matches and moral support.}