Romantic Discretion

In 2008 I was commissioned by myself to get a Tattoo in recognition of the English writer William Shakespeare. He was known greatly as the author of such works as Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Julius Caser, Hamlet, and The Merchant of Venice to name a few. His plays are considered to be classics- sometimes compared to the brilliant works of the ancient Greek play writers, such as Socrates- the kind of literature that teachers introduce to you at a young age and can motivate and change you to follow a certain path in life. Many of his plays, or sonnets, are about romantic passion, falling madly in love and fighting for what you believe in. In designing the Tattoo I had simply wanted to tell Shakespeare’s story which, in my mind, was as passionate and mythic as the love he expressed in his sonnets. My pursuit of William Shakespeare did not originate when I began his biography. It started in 2000, before I even knew who he was, before I had even read a single word he wrote, before I had considered him a role model. The truth was I thought his writings were outdated, having never read anything he wrote, my understanding of him was through gossip of the uneducated masses that attended public school along-side me.
I had entered High-school with little aspirations, I strived for nothing more than a passing grade in my courses, I attempted little more than that which was asked of me. My English 8 teacher, Ms. Zagar, assigned a play for our class to read, Romeo and Juliet. The name of William Shakespeare has surfaced in my educational career- the play had brought forth a new inspiration for me. Suddenly I had to know how he had imagined these tales, for it seemed to me so real that I presumed he must have lived its story of love and loss.
I wrote of him. What I said I can no longer remember, and when I think back on it, nine years later, I assume it was not the literary genius I presumed it to be at the time. It wasn’t an important part of my role model.
I continued to read Shakespeare’s plays as I moved through high-school. In grade 12 I was introduced to the Sonnet’s of William, by yet another of my teachers, Mrs. Birce.
Though I wasn’t in pursuit of knowledge or insight into my own life at this point, I can remember thinking about my own attempts at romance and poetry previous to this moment. I certainly never got around to copying his formula for sonnets about romance. Perhaps I just wanted to imagine myself to be his mistress, I was not in need of my own. His words reminded me of a line I had once read in one of his plays; “What’s in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” I did not realize then that that particular phrase would be the answer to what I needed to know about love and hurt later on in life.
I had placed that first encounter with William on a recessed shelf somewhere in my mind. It would be half a decade before I would realize that, in one play, he had offered me all the inspiration I would need to move forward in my own life.
When I was but eighteen, I travelled the globe in search of meaning for my life, there are still photos to prove it. I remember my mother was happy, as any mother would be, at the growth of her child. I wonder if it seemed as though I was growing up, or was she surprised this child of hers trying so diligently to travel on her own. I travelled to London, William’s stomping grounds, in search of more insight into myself. I new there was some sort of connection between the two of our lives but I could not quite establish just what it was. When I discovered that the globe theatre, Shakespeare’s beloved place of work, had burned down multiple times, I knew that that meant. It was as if it was a metaphor for myself that I would be burned or fall down many times, when men would take advantage of my sweet demeanour, I would feel abandoned but for some reason there would be the ability to rebuild.
Freedom was something I never really understood. My lesson was really quite simple, how to say I DESERVE BETTER THAN THIS, something I hadn’t been able to do before. In the end it didn’t matter whether I got it or not. In the end, in fact, I was lucky I did because if I had settled for what I had and accepted defeat, I may not be alive today. When a relationship was over in 2008 and the lies and mask were stripped away, the person standing there was a stranger. For abusive relationships- all of that is most dramatic, indeed not love at all, and unrecognizable is you. I weaned myself of his obsessive owning nature, in my endless counselling sessions and meetings with the police; I discovered the word “abuse.” I had to accept the fact that I had allowed abuse to manipulate my life, I was a different version of me than the greatly accepted and happy version I had previously been. Depression is not a life solution. I had fallen under the illusion that someone claiming to love me would never mean to physically or mentally hurt or crush me. I discovered life was much wiser than I was. A Year later I would find myself in court facing the creature I had allowed to ruin me. I answered the questions from his lawyer, and cried uncontrollably. I felt a wonderful sense of closure, laced with pain, at the intensity of knowing he would be held responsible for what he did to me. As Dr. Seuss once said, “Be who you are and say what you feel for those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
Do we allow others to belittle us because we have learned it from literature? The story of abuse had to start somewhere. One might say males have always abused us. But the rarely get caught doing it. The trick is that they somehow know just how to manipulate us into believing we are but nothing. It always confused me how women would allow themselves to become victim, to allow themselves hurt and why they would chose to stay with someone that treated them in this matter. Women haven’t grown strong enough I thought.
If I had not been in pain, I would have seen what he was doing to me. For abuse seems necessarily to be built on deflation, the crushing of ones aspirations and soul. The abuser seems always to be a frenetic trickster, a shape-shifter. In abuse, if you are a woman, you always seem to be forgiving someone. A man presents his life to be perfect and you are made to believe that you are nothing. He becomes the centre of your world and you are made his servant. In my own case, I am appalled in retrospect to think how familiar the abuse was. He was exactly like my step father. Not that he’d ever abused me, I remember his treatment of my mother; never physical, but emotionally draining. He called her names. He picked apart her looks to make her self conscious. I believe that he feared were he to stop belittling her, she would leave his pathetic ass; no love. But I could never have let this happen to me. Like my mother, I had lost myself. Meanwhile our pathetic dance continued; he attacking: physically and mentally: me believing I was nothing and truly deserved his treatment.
My story with William Shakespeare picks up at the end of this pathetic relationships life when I left him after a year and a half. I can remember once crying myself to sleep and he tuned me out and said, with complete sincerity, “Nobody cares.” I still did not know it was Shakespeare’s words that would keep me from allowing him to hurt me, six months later, I commissioned an idea. Then I headed back into the world of Shakespeare, retracing his words significance.
I think of my allowance of abuse and my existence dwindling. As I said, it framed my search. Shakespeare understood that we would feel pain and hurt in our lives. I was still wrestling with the quote that best symbolized me- not the deflated, but the stronger version who believed in herself. It is not easy to escape abuse, but we must not allow hurtful things to break us, no matter what is said or done to us we are still ourselves. If I need a reminder; I am “a rose by any other name.”