The Lie of the Dice – Deborah May

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

The first time I rolled the dice I left work, not knowing, beyond caring about lady luck or lord muck. I turned the key, locked the door, stepped outside and, for the first time ever, felt free.

‘You’re like a butterfly’ they said as I fluttered weak fragile wings. No longer squished, squashed, constricted in a cocoon that kept me safe. And small.

There’s a Japanese saying that when a butterfly flutters her wings she causes a hurricane somewhere else in the world. The hurricane winds of change blew reshaping the less fledged form of a previous life. A life shattered by the nuclear fallout of that first failed relationship, leaving me with a baby I barely knew, could hardly hold and came to love like no other.

A roll of the dice, this life, or so we think. We live on luck and chance for happiness, sorrow, love, redemption and salvation.

We barely notice our wings glued, clipped and cobbled or blinkers that blind us, bind us and keep us in shadow.

But eventually, surely, we learn that our lives do not depend on the roll of that dice. We won’t be rewarded by a sparkling red and gold and black badge pinned on our lapels on a podium in front of the flag of those whose land we think we own, oh, and the blue and red and white flag of those, us, who took it from them.

Neither will we be punished, caned or rebuked for our sins.

Eventually we learn, surely, that our life is a story. One we inherit and shrug ourselves into, or make up and believe in as if it is true. ‘Our lot,’ all that can be expected because ‘this’ is who I am, all that I can become.

When do we notice the lie? When do we recognise that we are more than we ever imagined we could be? That we don’t have to rely on the opinions of others, or on what we have learned about ourselves, from those invested in keeping us small?

We hold onto our stories as if they are true. We have a beginning, a middle an end. When do we learn we can write our own middle, live our own end?

That we’re free to be ourselves, or this little piggy who squeals all the way home, who can build a house of straw or wood or brick or glass or whatever the fuck we want? That we no longer need fear the wolf at the door because that wolf is nothing more than the manifestation of our own mind’s imaginings. Minds distorted by lessons and lesions of lives and lies swallowed, digested and regurgitated as truth.

Aaah yes, you say, you know that song, the one you sing, the rocking rolling ballad of bullshit, the lullaby we sing ourselves to sleep with each night as we lie on a pillow wet with tears of yet another betrayal, another insight into our own foolishness.

Until suddenly we’re no longer able to stay inert, attempting to feign sleep. We wake up and remember from somewhere deep inside, that no one is always loving or kind, or generous or honest. And we notice the bile, the hate, the vitriol, the rage and fury that has never before been unleashed. And doesn’t it feel good, oh, so fucking good? No longer disguised or distorted by rationalisations that manifest as guilt, blame, depression, suppression of something we have hidden, forbidden: our internalised shame.

They say that even the things we brag about to others, the virtues we extol, our optimism and idealism, the self-righteous pride of working hard and exercising, are all just other ways to disguise what’s there, to keep us from knowing, from seeing what we’ve learned to hide.

Mere strategies to avoid the depth of our feelings, the truth of our knowing about who we really are, how we really want to be, what we really want to say. About our lives, our experiences, our treatment at the hand of another, the ravaged fragments we’ve salvaged from the tatters of a life.

How freeing it is to be unshackled, unbridled, unleashed!

To see beyond the lie, to feel the freedom of wings unclipped, unfurled. To become unstuck to a life that’s shaped by roll of the dice at the hand of another.

My turn to rattle and shake then throw the craps, and choose how many steps to take forward, backward or sideways. Or not. My turn to decide when to stop, slow down, jump over, push through or fly.

Fucking fly.

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