The Price of the Ticket

Well, boys and girls, tonight Cupcake is having a Bad Night.

It's four a.m., and in the cellar of Cupcake's emotions, fierce dogs are barking. Their howling is high-pitched, intolerable and loud. Cupcake wishes fervently that she knew someone else who stays up as late as she does (i.e.-- pretty much always)-- because then she'd call that person and bawl her eyes out. However, it's a casualty of aging that, as time passes, one's friends grow older and inevitably go to bed earlier. Even Cupcake's friends in California will have long since turned out the lights.

No real reason for this Bad Night. At least, no new reason. It's simply the Price of the Ticket.

That's the bit of consolation that's keeping Cupcake at the keyboard instead of perched on the railing of the Bayonne Bridge.

What price? What ticket? Oh...It doesn't matter.

A friend said to Cupcake recently on another Bad Night-- "But didn't you know, somehow, when it began, that at some point you'd be standing exactly where you are?"

Cupcake admitted that yes, that had crossed her mind.

"But even so, you needed to be there, right? To see what would happen?"

Cupcake admitted that that too was true.

"Then," said Cupcake's wise friend, "At least you know that this was a choice. This pain wasn't thrust on you accidentally. You knew you'd end up here. And knowing that you'd end up here, you still thought it would be worth it to see what would happen if you went after the thing you chose."

She was right.

This wrenching agony Cupcake feels is simply The Price of the Ticket.

Was it worth it? Kinda. Sorta. You betcha.

If the thing Cupcake chose hadn't have happened, her life would be so boring that -- well, she doesn't know what. But it did happen. She swallowed the red pill. And here she sits, agonized but at least alive.

Because the opposite of Death is Pain, right? William Goldman wrote that, in The Princess Bride.

He also wrote, "As you wish." The sword upon which Cupcake has fallen.

Wrong time, wrong place. Fuck. I should have been born in a different time, and then the way I feel would make sense and I wouldn't have to defend myself constantly to the few people who know what I'm talking about in these rambling posts.

The Bayonne Bridge is looking better and better.

Just kidding. Kinda. Sorta. FUCK.

I hate you for this. I HATE you. (Don't worry, readers. Not you. The person for whom those words were written will never read them.)

And Cupcake's going to stomp off to bed and growl alongside the tigers that come at night with their voices full of thunder. It's not that she thinks she'll fall asleep. It's that she's a practical girl, and a somewhat lazy one, and she knows that if she gets horizontal she'll probably not find the wherewithal to drive to the Bayonne Bridge. At least not before sunrise, and once the sun rises all this shit will seem less important. Kinda. Sorta.

I hate you so fucking much, but I can't stop crying.