Monday Musings: "Automatic Regret Machine"
Today I am going to discuss my poem "Automatic Regret Machine." I want to note that in my book I have tried to go through each poem as they appear in "The Bright Side of Dark:Collected Poems", with the exception of the already discussed "Freshly Recruited:Nature Abides." I am going to skip two poems now that are more to do with a love and fascination of Shakespeare and his plays and themes and less to do with my chronic illness stuff, though I may come back around to these in the future, they are called "The Dread-Bard William Shakespeare" and "William Writes and I am Hamlet" just for reference.
Now back to Automatic Regret Machine. The meaning behind this poem is quite simple. I tend to be so guarded about my physical body that my mental/emotional defenses are on high alert at all times. I have had so many bad things happen to me in my life, I know what will make me feel worse and I have learned from past experiences. These past experiences often hinder any growth that I might achieve. I am afraid of letting people into my life because I have been hurt so badly in the past. I have been abandoned due to Ehlers Danlos and all my complications. I often get into the mindset that maybe I should be alone, maybe I should just push everyone and everything away and live in a little world of my own creation, static but not worse. Being static extinguishes all hope of a better future as much as it protects me from things getting worse.
This poem is talking about relationships that never were because I was too afraid to try, I talk about "shooting the prince from down below", saying that I shoot down any prospects because I am afraid that they will leave me in the end or they wont understand what I am going through at all. I say "wallowing in the futures I destroy" because I don't want to be static in my life, I want a future that is better. I want a husband and a family and to be of use someday...I think about futures that I could have all the time. I think about the futures that I will never have all the time, futures that Ehlers Danlos has automatically eradicated. The last two lines of the poem are the most important, they say "wasting my strength going against the flow, wasting all my winter afraid of the snow." Basically I am stating that I know that I am eating up my life by being afraid and unwilling to take a chance. I don't want to live this way but it is so hard not to.
Finally the title is called "Automatic Regret Machine" because that is what I have become. I have become someone who automatically regrets not taking chances. I have become a machine who has guarded itself against potential viruses. I am a princess who is afraid to meet the prince because he might lock her in a tower of a different kind, a tower that is worse than the one she is living in now where she is always in pain. This tower is one I know, I know what to expect, but I have no idea what could be waiting in me in a different tower. It's all a metaphor for being static and afraid to move because something bad might happen. For me something bad happens quite a lot, but at least I know what the bad things entail...but one shouldn't live in fear and I try not to every day of my life but it is a battle.
