Bitter
Let's talk about children. Let’s talk about sticky fingers and messy faces and fantasy worlds built on green lawns and in old houses. Let's talk about games and stories and relatives sneaking you bits of sweets and extra dessert. Let’s talk about star gazing and thinking of the world's found in story books.
Let’s talk about being the oldest girl. Not being the oldest mind you. That’s Peter’s job and boys are allowed to be boys until they are made into Kings. Boys are allowed to be children- even when they are the oldest.
“Sit quietly Susan.”
“Don’t mess up your nice dress Susan.”
“Help your mother Susan.”
“Don’t be silly Susan.”
“Mind your sister now Susan.”
Let’s talk about spending her entire childhood cutting and clipping bits of herself away. Let’s talk about becoming who others need her to be before she even knows who she is. Let’s talk about becoming a Queen before blood ever stains the inside of her thighs.
Blood has always been the mark of womanhood. Girls are not allowed to shed an enemy's blood to save themselves or their families. Women are measured by the blood in their wombs or blood staining their marriage bed. Their lives can be boiled down to stained sheets. Men are measured by what they build and women are measured by what they bleed.
Let’s talk about titles. Let’s talk about bestowing ideals unto children, growing them to become morals and stories as they become Kings and Queens. Peter became the Magnificent King. He stood in Aslan’s glorious brilliance and ruled with light blessed upon him. Edmund became the Just King. The sins of a boy who accepted kindness and sweets into his scared little heart now weighed the rights and wrongs of the people of the country. Lucy became the Valiant Queen with her pure and faithful heart and her sharp tiny dagger. She rode on to battlefields and healed the sick and dying.
Susan was Gentle, mild tempered, tender and kind. There is strength in kindness but what about when it is the sum of one’s entire being? She had a bow and shot arrows into the heart of men who committed no greater sin than obeying their king. She learned how to arrange her face into cold impassive features as ambassadors tried to woo her for the benefit of their lands. But she was still the Gentle. The title had been bestowed on her by a god and became the sum of her being. What a prize, the Gentle and beautiful queen. Mild, calm, moderate in action, soft. Susan put everything she had into her country and she still cut bits of herself away to be what everyone needed from her.
Let’s talk about war. Let’s talk about how the skies above her burst into flames as another country tries to cause as much destruction, as much death so they can kill anyone who does not look a certain way. Let's talk about how these countries fight over these invisible lines called borders. Let’s talk about how death is weighed against profit and the sacrifice of the poor is considered minor loss. Let’s talk about fathers who come home from the trenches broken in body and mind. Let’s talk of news of death camps and wondering who was next.
Let’s talk about children. Children sent away from exploding skies to the country. She’ll be safe she’s promised. The sky won’t light up with fire, rocks and debri won’t fall from the sky and crush her and her family. Or at least not her brothers and sisters.
Let's talk about children sent away from one war and promised to another. Let's talk about children who think they’re safe for a few short months even if their mother and father aren’t. Let’s talk about the youngest child. The one pure of heart. The one who falls through a wardrobe and finds a new world. Let’s talk about the youngest boy. The one who feels lost in the middle, his brother the leader, his sisters the responsible little mother and the youngest dreamer. Let's talk about someone noticing him first. Someone talking to him first. Someone valuing him first. Let's talk about the oldest, the leader, the idealist, the promised High King.
Let’s not forget the oldest girl. Let’s not forget the responsible little mother. The one who is forced to be practical in this strange fairy tale world. She helped Mrs. Beaver bundle food and supplies as they fled the house. She found them jackets in the wardrobe. She asked questions.
Susan had nightmares for the entirety of both of her childhood's. Blood, gore, broken bodies filled with griffin fletched arrows or riddled with bullet holes. It sometimes seemed her entire life was measured in blood. When her cycle came there was talk of finding an alliance with another country. She killed men in defense of a country she didn’t know existed before she ever bled from her womb. When she was shoved back into her twelve year old body she was shoved back into a country in the middle of war. The sound of guns and bullets replaced the thump of arrows in flesh. The broken bodies of dryads, fauns and other fairytale creatures were replaced with men she saw wandering the streets of London once they returned from exile.
Fifty years after she returned from Narnia PTSD was added to the American DSM. Susan read the articles and the studies. She remembered being a child, before puberty, before she kissed a boy, before she kissed a girl, before she felt the strange stirrings of lust, before she grew breasts, before so many things she killed men in defense of the country she was promised to. She remembered fleeing a strange land because a man would force her to be his husband. She remembered dancing with both her feet and her words as she learned politics from a centaur and history from a badger.
She remembered the nightmares that plagued her life for fifteen years in a magical world and fifty in England. She remembered how it was thirty years before she could look at a train without feeling her breath jerk from her body. She thought of how she hadn’t set foot on a train in fifty years. How she couldn’t bring herself to reach to the back of wardrobes or closets. How she held her breath when she walked too close to the forest. The tree’s didn’t move in this world and she always thought they might at first. Even fifty years later.
She thought of night terrors and panic attacks that she hid from the world. She thought of how she refused to marry the boy who loved her because he too might be taken away. How she refused to stay the night with the woman she met in a dark house party because she couldn’t sleep without the little knife tucked under her pillow.
She loved her country, her land, her people, her family and they were all taken away from her.
There was only so much pain a woman could let herself go through.
At twenty-seven Susan became twelve again. At thirteen (really it was twenty-eight) she was banished permanently, at twenty-one (thirty-six) every single person she loved was taken away from her.
Let’s talk about loss. Let's talk about how nine (twenty-four) years of nightmares makes one bitter. Let’s talk about how the loss of one’s family, one's childhood (both of them) pounds whatever soft and gentle bits a person had into sharp edges. When Gentle is her legacy and it’s never enough she can cast the title off her shoulders.
Let’s talk about being a Child Queen but never a Princess. Princess’s are raised to be Queens you see. They pass each mark of childhood knowing the responsibility that will one day shroud their shoulders. Let’s talk about learning state and politics from the cradle. Let's talk about how Susan never had these lessons. She went from being responsible for her little brother and little sister to being responsible to an entire country. A country she had known for less than a week.
Let’s talk about becoming bitter.
Let’s talk about how after the death and destruction of war, let's talk about after the death and destruction of countless tiny wars fought over fifteen years. Let’s talk about sacrifice. Let’s talk about cutting passion from her bones and laying it out on the sacrificial altar to become the beautiful, the Gentle. Let’s talk of creating her entire being into what a country needs.
Let’s talk about being banished.
Let’s talk about trying to find her place in this old strange world where still still has to sacrifice her passion but there is nothing given back in return.
“Susan, don’t challenge your teachers.”
“Susan, be a good girl won't you?”
“Susan what happened to you?”
She couldn’t scream at them. She couldn’t tell them how she grew and became a Gentle Queen. She couldn’t say she rode with a Lion, look at his deathbed and combed his hair. She couldn’t tell them she had fled from Kings who would force her to be his Wife. She couldn’t say she’d killed more men than she could count in defense of those who depended on her. She couldn’t tell them she might not know the number but she could remember the sound of an arrow hitting flesh. She couldn’t tell them that the memories rolled around in her head until the drove her from sleep and running to the loo to retch up whatever she managed to eat that day.
Let's talk about how the Gentle Queen learned to understand the Wicked Witch. Let’s talk about how she could see how Jadis had become who she’d been destined to be. Let’s talk about reaching the point where there is nothing left to give and everything she gave still wasn’t enough.
Let’s talk about shoving twenty-seven years of memories into thirteen years. Let’s talk about bleeding for the first time a second time. Let's talk about leaving a lover in a cold bed. Let’s talk of nightmares that feel like prophecies of her country falling to strangers, of Animals being tortured, of banishment, of everything she built falling into ruin. Let’s talk about begging a Lion to spare her people and hearing no answer.
Let’s talk about going back and finding her dreams were kinder than anything she could imagine. Let’s talk about wandering through the ruin of her castle, finding her chess piece. Left over from a time where she could do something.
Let’s talk about being the last one left. Let’s talk about spending nine years jerking awake in a cold sweat. Let’s talk about nine years of trying to forget everything she had been and trying to settle for what she was. Let's talk about all of this.
Let’s talk about becoming cold and bitter.
Let’s talk about taking a diplomat's tongue and turning it into a reporter's pen. Let's talk about doing whatever is needed to find about backroom deals, scandal and powerful men who forgot their duty to the ones who put them in power. Let’s talk about sharpening a knife and a pen and destroying those who refuse to do their duty.
Let’s talk about seeing those in power and knowing she could do better.
Let’s talk about hardening her heart.
Let’s talk about Susan.
Let us not redeem her from forgetting but let us not damn her either.
Do not force Susan to apologize for surviving. Give her the dignity of her choices, the few she had.
Let’s talk about Susan who did not choose to become Queen, who did not choose to become the little mother, the Gentle, the Damned, the Banished, the Retuned, the Banished Again, the Last.
Let’s talk about Susan who did not choose to go to a magical land but choose to be what the land needed her to be.
Let’s talk about Susan who did not choose to leave but choose to live anyway.
Let’s talk about Susan who had everything taken from her and survived.
Let's talk about Susan.