Dear Reader

🖋️ Argumentative, antithetical dream girl. I am a dog mom. I listen to Taylor Swift every single day. One day you’re going to see my name on the cover of a book 📚

[mirrorballtales]

Rare are the nights I am moved and overcome with a sense of light, darkness, love, ire, a whiplash of pain and pleasure but I found it in a petit show, Interview With The Vampire. I have seen the film. Never read the book but it will be remedied this fall, and in the matter of glances and words, cadences and dances of sentences and delivery of lines I fell in love with tortured characters, two monsters that possibly painted the most accurate picture of what it means to be human but never escape the love and hate we harbor and refuse to throw to the wayside.

Apart from the beautiful men that captured my heart frame after frame, Jacob and Sam with their brilliant dedication and morphing of characters, Eric and Assad, Bailey and Delainey’s Claudia, Ben's inviting Santiago too, this ensemble brought to life sentences that have (yes I have to use the pun I’m so sorry) punctured themselves like fangs of impassioned lovers, into my neck, sucking the blood coursing through my veins, and in its place, left me with a thirst for more, and a satisfaction of one of the most beautiful tales created.

It’s the acting. Yes. But it surpasses this realm. It’s more. It’s the way they both hunted each other, Louie and Lestat. It’s the way Lestat is powerful one moment and succumbs to his absolute need for Louie. The weakness and adrenaline love envelops us in. How he unknowingly surrenders himself to Louie for eternity and they both discover that to love each other is to also hurt each other. To destroy and to break. To be left to the will of years and anger and passion and loneliness.

You have to know, although I watched the film adaptation many nights ago, I knew the premise and knew the ending. And still, the weaved fabric of their dreams and desires, their darkest secrets enveloped me and lulled me into beautiful New Orleans and the glowing city of Paris. I felt like a third-wheel, watching two people course through life, a maze, meeting each other, and taking wrong turns, and my only wish, my want, my carnal need became a reunion.

Every episode felt like a crescendo. An increased thirst and hunt for the truth, a truth I myself could not understand but Daniel (Eric) so beautiful uncovered question after question. It seems clear one moment, like Louie and Lestat were endgame, daylight in eternal darkness but perhaps that’s the most human aspect of it all, the need for companionship, the need to be understood with glances and subtle hitches in breathe, for someone to understand a change in cadence, and adjustment to tone, the slight twitch, or perhaps the annoyance that comes with allowing someone to know you. Louie and Lestat are the personification of “Tell me every terrible thing you ever did, and let me love you anyway.” And I think when we fall in love, when we are in this cloud, we mean it, but how much terrible can you take, how much darkness can you carry and let go of? I think Claudia’s birth was an answer to that. The surprise child. The loved and resented burden. In Louie’s desperation for a semblance of humanity he “saved” Claudia, and damned her to eternal infantilization. Lestat in his desperation for the human folly of wanting to not lose Louie, he acquiesced and turned her. Both guilty. Both giving birth to a child that encompassed their emptiness, the wrong answer to what they both sought.

I think that’s what is so hauntingly enticing about this story, the warfare that took over. The parental carnage they dealt with. Then the betrayal. The pain of knowing you no longer belonged to the coven of two, or three, and the ultimate act of love. For both Claudia and Lestat. Louie destroying him for Claudia and saving him for himself. In turn betraying everyone.

I could surmise Assad’s (Armand) role but he deserves his own discourse. Yet, I would be remiss if I did not include the psychological mindfuck of Armand on Louie, Lestat, Claudia, Daniel, and myself. His tortured soul, engrossed me, I believed him, or maybe I wanted to believe him. That love can be a straight line, that we so desperately want to be loved that we blind ourselves. Ignore that whisper that screams so boldly what we already know.

In all the events, I felt myself, at times angry with the transgressions of Lestat, then felt compelled to defend him, his aura, his charisma, overpowering a perceived good deed. I found myself struggling between what I wanted for these characters. One moment Armand seemed like the savior, others I doubted Louie’s memory, and Lestat remained a constant shadow, much like in the second season. Only to come back, and solidify that he truly loved Louie. With every flaw he carried Lestat carried Louie in his heart. And the person who should have remained impartial uncovering it all. Unfolding in front of me and Armand casting a spell of distractions and doubts.

I want to say that the trial might be one of the best episodes of television but I cannot write words to invoke the pain I felt as Lestat played his role. I’d like to point out that I always believed it was Lestat who saved Louie but to be gaslit and then to be proven correct. I nearly fainted. Mouth agape, my heart in my stomach, and the panic and rage of lost years. A life built on resentment and lies.

My heart broke. It mended and it broke a million times more and yet I remain in love with the story. The characters. And the people who brought them to life, a welcomed monster, or monsters. Rice, a master of her craft.

Louie and Lestat are us. They are humanity. They are the best and worst of people. How much can you love someone if you cannot hurt them?

Lestat is by far the most complex, but torture begets torture and my tortured heart is moved and mended.

He carried his name. Near his heart. Where he always belonged. Louie. Lestat.

[mirrorballtales]

There is a sort of exhaustion that has taken over. I feel like butter spread too thinly across toast. Enveloped in the sad sack of sheets, unable to move. Daylight rises and consumes my hollowed heart, and in the dark, when all is calm, when the tide rises and the moon calls, do I see the light of pain. Like a sort of beacon, a lighthouse calling to me, as I lie shipwrecked, all the waves tossing me, and in my malady I manage to swim to the place that will harbor me. Alone. Again.

[mirrorballtales]

I don’t think this malady will ever be cured. I take my chances and they take their time with these games they play. I told myself to let love in. I’ve told myself the only way to feel anything else is, to see anything again, is to let love in again.

[mirrorballtales]

“Whack job” “bat shit crazy” “neurotic” because I am a woman that sung their chorus too loud.

[mirrorballtales]

It only hurts this much right now, was what I thinking the whole time.

Breathe in. Breathe thru. Breathe deep. Breathe out.

I’ll be getting over you my whole life.

Help, I’m falling in love. Oh no. I’m falling in love again.

[mirrorballtales]

I’ve been waiting around to die again. I’ve slowed down this year it seems. I’ve never felt as lonely as I did that night in my bed. The darkest night, the moon hiding behind the cloud of confusion you gifted me so freely.

Everyone told me the shape of you was jagged and weak but I stayed. I let all your damage, damage me. Let’s not talk about timing in times like these. Do you want me to be your future history? Is it anxiety stopping you from giving me everything, or do just not want to? Do you not want me? You’re demolishing me, squeeze my hand as I carry your baggage up my street of half-lived dreams.

Had I known I was going to get cuts from your broken pieces I might have stayed away. Is it insensitive to say “get your shit together” so you can start loving me?

I’l let your damage, damage me. I’ll carry your baggage down my street. We can go a long way. Don’t let the anxiety get in the way of giving me everything, unless you don’t want to. You need somebody. Let it be me.

[mirrorballtales]

Holy Ghost stories never scared me. I watched the paradox of a devout Christian bow her head at her savior’s home and worship the devil at home.

What a mess she got caught up in. Prisoner to her own cell. And here I sat, in the corner of her guardhouse, spinning the keys of a lock I can’t find.

But she screamed. Said I was free to rip myself off the vine. Like a bee that stings, what was the cost of freedom? I walk with the dead and the living, unbeknownst to me that the grave and the hearse have already been picked for me.

[mirrorballtales]

I feel like a stranger in my own bed. Hostage to all and wanted by none.

I want to ask them if they feel ashamed, when they hear my name.

I’ve carried the weight of the rift, always pulled them in tighter every time they started drifting away. How much sadness did they think I had in me?

[mirrorballtales]

In all my recollections of endless nights of rumination and redrawing the board, I found myself starved from the only medium that feels whole. I spill out to the ether, begging for some sort of hope that someone will listen. It's so alien, so foreign to want to be known. Yet I beg for it. Howl to the moon, sounding like an infant, wasting away the very last drops of the ink pen. Do I look unstable? Gathered around a sorcerer's table?

[mirrorballtales]

I haven’t talked about Sophie in so long. It’s been a really long time since I’ve said her name and it’d been attached to her. It’s like I’ve denied her ghost exists.

I erased any evidence she existed. I have but a letter left from her, begging me to be quiet. Begging me to make it go away. If I could have I would have. No one wanted that more than me. I want to say “fuck you” to her. I want to say “I’m sorry.” I want to say “I hate you” and I want to say “I know” but my anger lacks courage and so I harbor it and it turns into nightmares I can’t escape. I see her blue eyes, and then I see her brother’s. I tell myself you sided with him because blood reasoned you into doing so. I tell myself if I were in your shoes, I would have been you. But I’m not.

So things are left unsaid, and I wish the wind would carry it towards you. I wonder if you ever talked to him. If you ever said you knew and a debt would have to be paid. I wonder if behind closed doors you cried for me too. Whenever I dream with him, there you are, whisking him away to safety like I was the monster.

I wonder if you have children now. If you made him an uncle. Did you have any girls, is this the oath you take when you share the same DNA. It took seven years for me to know every cell he touched was dead.

[mirrorballtales]

I know it’s was not my fault. Do I need to preface this? Or did you always know? I know I am not blameless. I’ve carried the pain until it stops. Undressed it until it’s nameless. Starved myself hoping to rid myself of you. I know it’s not my fault but it sometimes feels like I did this. Something in me made you do all of this.

Someday I’ll be able to let it go. To let all you did fade into my rear view mirror. Someday I’ll be kinder to myself. I’ll find my feet and get out of this vortex. I’ll remember who I am. Someday I won’t remember your name. But right now it’s so hard for me to forget the slamming of the doors, the hospital trips, the knife to my neck, the screaming in my face, the way it felt to be with you, so awful together, and how I could finally breathe apart. The way you shredded me into pieces, a crumpled piece of paper, torn apart, a letter of absolution written with the last drops of ink of my blood and tears begging to be saved from whatever monster you’d become.

Over and over again, I got on your carousel ride. Im sick to my stomach that I paid for that ticket. Over and over again. I should have come to my senses but you knew I didn’t have them. Not then. Somewhere I lost them. Maybe when all of you saw flesh and bones. I’m trying to find the lesson in it all, but you were wrong. This was all wrong. Taking me and forcing me into absolute darkness. Wondering why I sought light far away from you. I didn’t know it would be this hard to air my grievances. Maybe I don’t think you were ever good enough. Maybe.

[mirrorballtales]

Sometimes I wish I were an alcoholic. Or some sort of addict that found the cure to the malady of my destiny.

Sometimes I look in the mirror and it’s like I’m looking at someone I don’t even know.

Sometimes I lie in bed and tell myself I’ll shake all of this soon.

Sometimes I wish someone would spread me open and really see everything inside of me so I don’t have to.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever find the cure to these flashbacks.

Sometimes I wonder why they don’t care.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only one who’s lost her mind trying to make sense of it all.

[mirrorballtales]

The moment passes me by, I tell myself it’s better if I move on, but the sense of injustice nearly paralyzes me. I ebb between disdain, disgust, lack of control, anger, and envy. It sends me into a tailspin of confusion wondering why I can’t let it go. I ask myself if it’s because I lost myself somewhere out there, hidden in shadows and secrets, and now he parades his sick fantasies in daylight. He makes declarations and everyone applauds it while I sit here consoling the 13 year old who didn’t ask for this.

I become irate and blinded with a rage for this girl who has to watch him get away with it. I cannot for the life of me just let it go. I can’t. I think about it more than I inhale air.

[mirrorballtales]

A hundred thrown out speeches I wrote to you and none of them ever capture what you really put me through. I pace across my room, in the dark, wondering how and why you let this happen. I look to the mirror for answers. Wondering if there was a remark that gave you the green light. I tell myself I’m angry because I was thirteen. You bruised my soul but these memories feel like weapons too. And they only hurt me. You have a warped sense of reality and I cannot for the life of me move forward knowing you don’t get the agony I’ve been in. So here’s the message to the smallest man I’ve ever known.

I’m going to write a book. One you never could. Maybe in fifty years this will all be declassified and you’ll confess why you did it. I was willing to die with your sins but I just died inside. You deserve prison but haven’t done time. You crashed my life. You said girls like me deserved this. You tell them all you’ve changed but I know you. You hide in plain sight but you are what you did and as long as I breathe you will not forget it.

[mirrorballtales]

“Time heals everything”

You have my forgiveness. I’m offering it freely but I will never forget this. Every time I remember the ridiculousness of this I think about how angry I am about ever believing you or trusting you.

I am mad as hell so might as well lay it all out. You know my history. You knew. I made my bed the day I went against every screaming siren and defended you. I should have known I was nothing but a plotted investment that you guys played. I’m disgusted.

What did you think? That I was going to stay quiet. No. Never. Not me.

[mirrorballtales]

As we close out the era of The Tortured Poets Department and we begin to get color back in our faces, I sit here with a mending heart. Sometimes, oftentimes, we don’t opt in to join clubs of broken hearts. We find ourselves conducting post mortem after post mortem. I wonder how much sadness people think we had in us, how much tragedy we are willing to take. As if they didn’t know I can do it with a broken heart, always.

I’ve lived so many lives since that fateful April night. The double drop of a lifetime. My joys, my Alchemy turned to loml, to The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, to healing with Robin to falling in love with life again. Wise men might think I’m the seed that destroys the garden, a temptress better off in a tower locked away, persona non grata, howling at the moon, running away to the secret gardens in my mind.

[mirrorballtales]

I come to you my old friend.

I found myself in the abyss of missing them. My longing for an answer, ocean deep, in cursive letters I’ve given my soul and more. My nails hail his skin, my white knuckle dying grip never enough to hold on to his. Everything I have ever loved has claw marks. Yet, scratches, I have none.

In my tired state of being, how many more times do I ask, if I’ll ever be loved so wholly, that I’ll never question death? Does knowing me more lead to them loving me less? How many times do I get on my knees and try to change the prophecy? Why do I catch lightning in the bottle, then it’s gone again?

Why must I feel so deeply that even when I feel nothing, I feel that deeply too?