Mandrake

The mandrake.

Genus mandragora.

Mandragora officinalis and Mandragora autumnalis.

The plants famous – infamous perhaps – for their hallucinogenic qualities, their narcotic properties, and their alkaloid nature that can choke and asphyxiate the unaware or foolhardy.

One of the most folklore-laden plants of all time, the mandrake is said to induce fertility, act as an aphrodisiac, and aid in exorcisms. It is also said to scream and scream and scream when touched or uprooted. The sound is said to either kill the unlucky immediately or induce extreme pain. Death is said to be preferable.

Of course, this is all nonsense. Not the science part, I mean, but the part about the plant creating death and agony with its scream. The idea is patently absurd. Legends from a time that knew no better. We, naturally, do.

Our mandrakes are not plants. They aren’t physical objects. They can’t be tossed away or used to create potions. No. Ours are different. Internal. They don’t kill, not immediately.

Oh, but how they scream and scream and scream.

Mine is in my head. It infects my mind and turns it to something altogether more unpleasant. It puts in thoughts and threads of consideration that salt the earth so that no joyful flowers may grow again. It yells until it becomes overwhelming and nothing else may cut through its noise. There, it lays its burden down and waits.

It is the part of me that creates an impossible paradox. It demands that success is the only acceptable outcome for whatever I do. Career, writing, love. All of it must be a success or it is a failure. I am a failure.
So, I try. I consider my options and do my best to achieve success in every way I can imagine. The degrees that hang on the wall, dust covering their triumph. The personality built to serve others, even to my own detriment. The giving, the selflessness. Changing course when something does not quite work. Flexibility becomes standard, necessary.

But life does not provide guarantees and effort is oftentimes left idle to rot.

Thus, the mandrake screams that I have failed. I am failure.

It does not encourage me, though. It does not drive me. It poisons the very effort it demands from me. Every step in a direction is met with derision and a certainty of failure. Why bother, it will ask. You won’t succeed. You can’t. You don’t.

Hence, the paradox. It demands that I achieve success while at the same time assuring me that success is not possible. There is no scenario in which I ‘win’. Only returning over and over to the same spot of failure.
It is the part of me that does not allow me to feel worthy of love. Worthy of interest. It drips a steady stream of venom into my ear, driving my internal value into the dark, wet earth.

You are too old. She’s young and vibrant. What are you?

You are too fat. She’s attractive and put together. What are you?

Your job is dead-end. She has her whole life ahead of her. Do you? Do you even have half of it left?

You live with your family and you’re almost 40. It writes itself.

You’re dark and bitter, masking it all with fake cheer. She’s bubbly and attentive. Opposites don’t attract that much. It’s not like magnets. It’s oil and water.

You are too inexperienced. Who would want that? I mean, you’re nearly at the point that a movie was made about you. What does that say?

You don’t know what you’re doing. You never have. You never will.

That’s to say nothing of the fact that you don’t know that she would even be interested. Likely not, but you don’t have the experience or knowledge to read any sort of signals or lack thereof. Remember literally every single time you’ve fumbled the ball? Every single instance you thought someone was or wasn’t interested? Your track record speaks for itself and what is says isn’t a good thing. You have been wrong and wrong and wrong over and over again.

What makes you think this time is different? What makes you think this time is somehow the magical time that she’s into you and you’re into her and all it takes is just asking her out and it’ll all be good? What possible proof do you have? What singular piece of evidence can you point to that confirms doing anything other than leaving the poor girl alone would be the wisest course of action?

None. At all.

Isn’t it wiser to assume she’s simply being nice and walk away? Wouldn’t that be the smarter course of action, especially for someone who thinks he is so smart? Why is that not the only option you are considering?

For that matter, what would you even do if she said yes? She won’t, naturally, but working with hypotheticals, what would you do? How would you react? Would you even know what to do? Doubtful. Like a dog that catches a car, you would freeze. Lock up. Smash into the bumper. Damage yourself and traumatize someone who did nothing but exist around you.

How ugly is that?

Why inflict yourself upon someone, least of all someone you’re interested in?

Why would you do that to her? Why would you make her life that much worse?

Why waste her time? She can do better. You know it, so why would you be selfish enough to prevent her from finding someone worthy of her time and effort?

Why would you be so self-absorbed as to imagine for a single second that she would want to settle for someone like you?

You worry about what she wants – good. That’s what you should be worrying about. What she wants and what’s best for her. What about what you want? Why on Earth would that matter for a moment?

You have danced this dance before and every single time, you have ended up bringing more pain into the world. For you, sure, but you’ve earned every single drop of it for being stupid. For them, though, their only mistakes were allowing you into their lives. Are you so heartless that you are not only willing but desirous of having someone innocent make that mistake again?

You’re not a monster, but you’re not a saint. You’re a mess who refuses to acknowledge it. The sooner you accept who you are and forget the notion that you will ever be better, be more than the wreck you are now, the sooner you can achieve some sense of self-understanding.

You have let down everyone who believed in you being more than you are. Yourself most of all. You had such potential, the world ahead of you. Intelligence on a level most cannot compete with. Power over words and how you use them. You could have been anything you wanted and you’re this?

You’re who you are now?

Look at who you are. Nearly 40 years old, desperately single, stuck in a job you’re underpaid for in a field you don’t love because you hold on to a misplaced sense of loyalty. Three useless degrees and a hundred-thousand-dollar debt you’ll never repay. Forget retirement, forget savings, forget buying a house and starting a family. All of that is beyond your grasp. Frankly, staying out of default is your closest achievable goal. That’s the best-case scenario.

And you want to put someone in the line of fire for that? You want to ask someone to take on the monumental disaster that is your future and what do you offer in return?

You’re funny? So is every man with a slight personality.

You’re kind? So are dogs.

You can cook? Congratulations, you can do the bare minimum of being an adult.

You’re loyal? Dogs again.

You can write? Debatable and mental illness doesn’t exactly scream ‘benefit’.

You’re honest? Except with yourself, clearly. Or with anyone who scratches to get beneath the surface of the carefully constructed persona you’ve built for yourself.

So, to recap, nothing you offer on the ‘positive’ side is something she can’t get elsewhere from someone younger and better than you without the negatives of you being you. Yeah, I can’t imagine why she wouldn’t want to push her chips in and go all in on the 2-7 offsuit hand that is your life. You gamble. You know a bad bet when you see one. Why don’t you see that in the mirror every day? Or if you do, why does that not make you kill that part of you that imagines things being different? It seems like masochism.

And on and on and on. It does not stop.

This mandrake screams over and over and it’s difficult to not listen. It knows each and every one of my insecurities and plucks those strings like a guitar virtuoso. The cruelty is imaginative and finds new ways to worm into my sense of being to attack it from inside, a disease eating away what value I find in myself.
It does not kill. It doesn’t have to do so.

It just makes life that much more of a chore and drains the hope from my veins.

Worst of all? I have no room to complain. I have a job. I have a home. I have a family. I have creature comforts that so many people could only dream of. I have no room to hate myself, not really. I have no standing to talk about how unhappy I am. There are trump cards abounding that nullify any gripes I may have.

There lies the true genius of my mandrake. It grinds me down with hate after hate after hate but then admonishes me for feeling it. Berates me for daring to feel bad when there is so much more pain out there. What right do I have to anything other than numbness?

In short, I cannot win.

Not ever.

My mandrake is too smart for that. I am too smart and so it is too smart.

It will scream and tear me apart inside and demand I be grateful for it not being worse.

I’ll go to sleep and wake up and it will begin again.

But it could be worse.
​
I could be dating me.