Her Dark Lies

If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own Village, she must seek them abroad.” —Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Love is simply a word we use to explain the biochemical nature of species propagation. It’s something we use to justify the base desire to experience pleasure with another person when in fact it’s just about making procreation more palatable. We say we’re in love, but what we really mean is we want to connect so we don’t feel so alone, and in so doing, create stronger familial constructs that allow us to fend off other familial constructs who want to take what we have.

We all want to be remembered for something. We have children, we paint, we write, we fight, we conquer. We leave behind marks on the fabric of humanity, and while some are content to stay in the background, some of us want to make those marks as vivid and overwhelming as possible. We don't just want to be remembered. We want to be unforgettable.

a shot from one of the Villa’s many terraces with the caption: It was a dark and stormy night.

Life is a series of chance encounters that arrange themselves into meaningful moments on a sliding scale between happiness and sadness, and then you die. We all die. Deal with it.

Ah, but look at you now. You learned a very hard lesson, and you changed. You altered the course of your life, by choice. Many, many young women would have plummeted, would have been dragged into the abyss. But you didn’t. You showed great courage, my girl. It takes grit to change.

I don't remember. Three words, so simple, yet so duplicitous. What is memory anyways? Echoes of reality, twisted and molded into what we want to believe. What we want to remember. Our brains allow us grace to cope with trauma. They give us space to heal, to come to terms with our actions, our fears.