I'm So Confused

"You are so confused," she tells me.

"Clearly," I laugh, "That's only been the point of this whole fucking conversation."

I catch that she winces. I don't think she likes it when I swear and in the moment that makes me glad. I count a victory in upsetting her and I think I know why.

Resentment spurs up. It rears it's angry head.

It's her fault that I'm here. Partly, at least.

Baba Yaga chooses to be the bigger person here, moving past it.

"No you don't understand," she goes on, "Though that is a part of it as well, but still. You don't understand what joy is out there for you, because you've narrowly restricted your focus to one small part of it."

The Baba Yaga shakes her head and leans forward and I can feel her presence. My eyes drift over the layers of thin and ratty fabric that cover her body, reading the language of her physicality beneath it. And so I feel her imploring me to listen, to understand, to open myself up to the possibility that she just might know more about me than even I do. I let her lead me down the path and I do my best to be a passive observer, to be open to following her words.

But I'm fighting against my innate instincts here. I don't want to listen to her. I want to rage against her wisdom.

"You're not living. You're not enjoying. You're not embracing this new life."

I scoff, chuckling half under my breath and shaking my head, "Doesn't seem that way to me."

"Of course not," she remarks, "You're in it. You don't have the perspective, the distance, to be able to see things from a bird's eye view but if you could you would see just how much you're narrowly focused on only one small part of things."

"But I don't-" I start, and abruptly she cuts me off by holding up her hand.

It isn't so much that she compels me, or that she takes away my voice. Her hand more just fixates me and focuses me, as I stare at the surface of her palm.

The lines unfamiliar, shifting like the ripples on the surface of an unstill pond. All of it following along the ley lines of her life and her being but at the same time subtly but undoubtedly moving.

Her hand, the only part of her that I've really been able to make out tonight, a shifting memento and symbol of her whole reality. It is uncertain just like she. It is her and not, all at the same time. The tone and tenor of an impressionist painting coloring the atmosphere and her within it as she settles down into the weathered palm of an old woman.

And I get the sense that I see it that way because I need to see it that way. Because that is the way that I can understand her.

Because my needs are built by my comprehension of the world, familiar archetypes dictating that with age comes wisdom and enough of it that I will sit up and shut up and take notice. Only someone who has my respect can earn my silence, even if it is only temporary, my acknowledgement.

"You are narrow in your focus and your thoughts. You are fixated on one aspect of this new life, at the detriment of so many others. To put it simply, my dear, you're looking at the world through the eyes of a man in spite of the fact that you no longer are one.

"An oversimplification? Perhaps. Playing into stereotypes? Undoubtedly.

"But the fact remains that you're thinking with your cock and you don't even have one anymore. Put simply my dear you are so fixated on getting off that you never stopped to ask if there was more than that in life."

Denying it is my first instinct, but it only lasts a moment. Forcing myself to confront her words forces me to acknowledge truth in them and before I know it, my perspective shifts.

I wanted to get off. I needed to get off. But I didn't know if it was healthy to have such a fixation on that.

I swallow, speaking quietly with a voice that is thick with fear half because I truly do believe her, "But I was never like that. I was never that kind of guy. Sex... it never really meant that much to me. Not to the point where I would ignore everything else."

"So why are you letting it dominate your thoughts and your ideas now?"

"I don't know," I reply.

"I do," she smiles knowingly.

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