down the rabbit hole

A Chapter by rachelgeorgina

Prefaced with a small extracted from Sexton's "Letter's to Dr. Y" to highlight the nature of dying - of disappearing and of disconnecting from the world, this extract explores the ambivalence of change with some borrowed likenings to images from Carrol's

Oh there is no use in loving the dying
I have tried.
I have tried but you can't,
you just can't guard the dead.
You are the watchman and you
can't keep the gate shut.
- Anne Sexton, "Letter to Dr. Y"

I find myself, once again, craving my dream world - to be Alice, falling down the Rabbit Hole, never once stopping to consider how she might get out again. From here in the Real World, I find myself turning around & staring back Through the Looking Glass, longingly - lovingly? Sometimes I find it hard to remember why I lingered on so long there, but at other times, like today, it's harder & harder to remember why I ever decided to come back from that brink at all. I recall the lingering - the senselessness of remaining alive while gradually dying. Recollections of the dizzying hospital lights that hurt my eyes in their vivid intensity & the Cheshire Cat grinning at me from his place above my bed - or was that only inside my head? - are like an uncompromisable burden. You want to give it up, & yet, you cannot let go.

It strikes hard, violently, like a punch - in the middle of the night, with an erratic pulse & broken breaths: there is no use in loving the dying. The pull of Wonderland - with all it's spectacular colours & absurd ideals: the belief in the impossible & the nonsense of rhymes - is a cruel struggle. This, this is the ambivalence. It comes before the Formal Feeling but after the pause - the lapse in time when you consider the possibility of maybe... maybe, of giving it up. & it's a minute before you decide to try to catch your breath, because you aren't at all sure whether you want to or not. The Looking Glass World has a certain allure to it - something promising, something enticing. It's not the easiest thing, to turn around & say no, when Through the Looking Glass you see every promise fulfilled, every dream lived... It's hard to keep in mind that she is trying to kill you - that thing inside you - when she has such a soft, enticing voice, whispering the secrets with the answers you always wanted to hear. Somehow you have to find the strength to say no, to take your next breath & to continue living - living in the Real World, instead of on the other side of the Looking Glass in Wonderland, with shrinking potions & talking flowers where life is a game of chess & there is a strange freedom in having nothing left to lose.

There is an interesting & incredibly precarious balancing act - tipping the Looking Glass World against the Real World & trying to find a medium where I can climb out of bed in the morning with a reason to live & a way to coax my breakfast spoon into my mouth. It can be glass-half-full or glass-half-empty, there doesn't seem to be any sort of happy medium to this game. It's a constant measure of one force against the other, trying to maintain an equilibrium that allows me to live. Or at least, allows me to get up in the morning & still be alive by the time I can crawl into bed again at night - because the question still begs an answer: do you want to live? because you just can't guard the dead.