Therapy

Right now, I'm in the middle of rereading all the Madeleine L'Engle novels I own, which is almost all of them, I think, and I am having such trouble getting through A House Like a Lotus.

I haven't reread it since before I came to the full realization that I was a giant dyke, and it might be because of the thing that happens to Polly at the end of the book (but toward the beginning of the chronology of the story).

I was almost going to go into a long explanation, but let's just cut to the chase. Basically, Polly gets sexually assaulted by her mentor, a wealthy, sophisticated lesbian named Max. Now, Max is painfully dying of cancer (or some other wasting disease--I forget, and I can't bring myself to look it up right now), and she's out of her mind with pain when she attacks Polly, and Polly escapes into the arms of Max's partner, Ursula, but still. The predatory lesbian thing. It just...

I feel like Madeleine L'Engle has betrayed me. When I read the book for the very first time, I was too young and naive to even really grasp what Max had done. By the time I did, I wasn't really out to myself, and now...

I don't want to read my literary idol, my never-fail source of comfort, telling a story of the predatory lesbian, no matter what Max's excuse for her behavior might be. It hurts it hurts it hurts.

This all may seem melodramatic to you, but Madeleine L'Engle has had an enormous influence on me as a human being, and books in general can affect me much more deeply than anything else in the world can, and I just can't bear this kind of story coming from her--when she has no other positive homosexual stories to balance it out.

I almost feel like Polly does, unable to stand the thought of Max, even though she's brought so much good into her life and meant so much to her.

It hurts it hurts it hurts.