I went to the city!!!! It turned out pretty much how I expected it to turn out. Allow me to explain how something everyone takes for granted always becomes an adventure for me.
Note: I don’t have this problem at any type of shop, say like clothing stores, shoe ware stores, food vendors and so on. Its just banks and government offices that constantly trigger my anxiety something awful.
Its important for me to continually step outside of my own self and analyze who i am and what triggers me from sort of a 3rd person perspective as doing so helps me understand the kind of girl I am and how to best adapt and live with not only myself, but hopefully someone else and not irritate them with my mentally divergent behavior.
Because ultimately, I’d like to NOT live alone as a recluse for the rest of my life. I’d very much like to have human companionship. But it’s very clear to me that before I can do that, I have to continue with this experiment on myself so that I can develop a sort of rule set to live by.
Believe me, I’d like nothing more to be a normal every day girl. For me though, that’s like a person who knows she turns into a werewolf on every full moon to wish she was normal. I guess I can be thankful that I only annoy people and don’t devour them under the pale moon light.
Again, from a 3rd person’s view, the root of what happened today stems from me being used to controlling people, specifically men who are willingly subservient to me, every day for the past 13 years. I believe living in that distorted version of reality for so long has made living in the real world, now that I haven’t been a Mistress since my mental breakdown two years ago, a much harder thing to wrap my head around.
So as I type this to you, imagine if you will, me as sort of a female anime character having an internal battle with who I am and the monster inside who is trying to break out. If you think of me like that, you’ll better understand the heightened dichotomy I have to deal with on adventures out into the real world as like what happened today.
I had to go into the city because I needed to sign off on the paperwork revolving around both my student loan and the bank’s lien on the land, two debts that I had paid off in full before the deadline on December 31st just passed.
That required a stop off at the government office where the paperwork for my now paid off student loan sits and to the bank that controlled the mortgage for the property that was once my parents and is now mine via all that rigmarole / long drawn out saga that happened last year.
Two places that couldn’t be more confrontational to the Mistress personality that resides within me.
Why? Well for one, there’s a dress code that employees who work in those places abide by. Society’s fake wants and needs dictates it to be so. I couldn’t give less of a fuck about what I wear when I go out, especially now that I live in farm land 35kms from civilization.
Now, that’s not to say I went to town looking like Daisy Duke, complete with a piece of hay sticking out of my mouth, chewing on it like a cow in heat. No, as you can see, I was sporting a black tank top and a pair of ripped jean shorts all frayed at the edges, oh and a quaint brown purse as well. Even with the makeup I had on, first time I’ve put on makeup in 2 whole years, I still very much looked like the country mouse visiting the much higher class city mice.
I had Mr. Nice, who’s number I have on hand, come and pick me up in his nice black Nissan SUV and drive me into town. But the moment I got out and walked into Central Plaza Mall I was immediately hit by sensory overload. Keep in mind, for nearly a hundred days now, I haven’t seen a soul. Society has existed as a fading memory in my mind and oh how quickly that memory was repainted anew.
The first thing to hit me like a fat kid smacking me with broccoli was the noise. Strange huh? But I’ve been living in absolute silence for three months now, save the crowing of the roosters and the rustling of the falling leaves in the forest surrounding my remote rural home. The murmur of the mall, pierced by the girls on the megaphones all at once trying to over scream one another to sell the Honda cars on the first floor and luxury Sealy Posturepedic Mattresses on the 2nd floor, was staggering.
It literally staggered me as the moment I reached the main stretch of walkway inside the mall I came to a complete standstill so as to process all the noise.
I don’t know if the megaphone wars is unique to malls in my country or if it happens elsewhere, but I’m now ashamed that was my job as a student in college. Put noise pollution near the top of my list of things that annoy me to no end.
Once I grew accustomed to the noise I actually did a little experiment with it. I wanted to see if there was a zone of incomprehensibility between floors one and two where the two girls, separated by one floor and say fifty meters or so, had their words conflict with one another over the speakers that nothing made sense. And I found it.
On the escalator, about half way up, I started walking backwards so as to maintain my position, annoying the fuck out of everybody behind me, and for about a whole minute I maintained my position between floors trying to make sense of the barrage of noise, focusing on either of the girls to see if I could make out what they were saying. I could not.
It’s terrifying how quickly ninety days of silence can rewire your brain. Isolation strips away the social filter, and suddenly, normal human behavior looks like a performance I forgot the script for. There were moments, heh, like me walking backward against the escalator’s current, where the illusion broke. They looked at me like I was a glitch in the matrix. I looked at them like they were a swarm.
Speaking of swarms, if the main part of the mall is the hive, then the bank’s stuffiness and utter silence by comparison is like stepping into a pressurized airlock. The air is thinner. The gravity feels heavier. And everyone inside moves with the slow, deliberate terror of someone trying not to trigger a motion sensor. You go from the chaos of the hive to the sterility of the lab, and suddenly, you can hear your own heartbeat a little too loudly.
Mine was already sounding like a jackhammer in a library when the bank’s computerized speaker droned out in its Orwellian, dystopian monotone:
“Maai-lek… 1 – 8 – 4.”
“Pai thîi chông P-sǎam.”
Go to booth P3.
I couldn’t get it out of my mind. It’s a tiny bank. There are four counters in front of me and two to my right. Why the letter P? Why not just say Chông 1, 2, 3? I had a brief, delusional Seinfeld moment on stage in my head. What’s the deal with the P? Is it for Peasant? Pauper? Please God let me leave?
My internal stand up routine was cut short by a shout.
“Pii! Maa nii!”
A woman, definitely ten years my senior, which is saying something since I’m forty six, was waving her arms at me like she was guiding a plane onto a runway.
There were only two people waiting. Me and an old man one row up. I had intentionally arrived moments before closing to avoid the crowds, precisely to avoid scenes like this.
While “Pii… maa nii” technically just means excuse me, come here, the tone was abrupt, loud, and jarring. It wasn’t an invitation. It was a summons. It was the voice of a woman who wanted to go home and saw me not as a person, but as the last obstacle between her and the exit door.
For a woman who spent thirteen years giving the orders, being barked at like a stray dog didn’t just annoy me. It triggered the code.
My brain flashed a dozen ways to verbally dismantle her before I even stood up. But I forced the override. Don’t be confrontational. Do not engage.
I walked over to her little glass booth and sat in the flimsy blue plastic chair. Color coded perfectly to the bank’s colors I noticed. She didn’t look me in the eye. She looked me up and down. Her gaze snagged on my ripped shorts, her lips pursing in that specific, tight way that screams, I have a pension plan and you have a problem.
Breathe, I told myself. Inhale. Reboot. Exhale.
I didn’t snap. I didn’t correct her tone. Instead, I plastered on the kind of sweet, vacant smile that lets people think they are superior to you, the best camouflage in the world, and slid the paperwork across the counter.
When I start to feel uncomfortable and my anxiety kicks into overdrive, time doesn’t just pass. It dilates. The world slows down to a crawl, and I begin to pick up on the most minute details in people’s micro expressions. I tremendously dislike that I’m able to do this, as it feeds my paranoia like fertilizer dumped on a choking weed.
She didn’t press a silent alarm. She didn’t pick up a phone. She just twisted her neck and bellowed over her left shoulder for the bank manager to come and assist her.
Do it discreetly, you semi retired cow. Have you no manners at all? Her black and white attire with her blue bank nametag reminded me how much she looked like a Far Side cow:
Sure, I’m sitting here in frayed jean shorts, but you’re sitting there with a polyester blouse buttoned so tight against your throat it’s a miracle you remain conscious. Though, judging by your total lack of etiquette, perhaps the oxygen deprivation is already taking hold.
I looked over her head at the black digital clock. The red numbers flipped to 4:00:00 PM.
The bank was officially closed.
The old man at the stall next to me had finished his business and vanished, leaving me as the sole survivor in this fluorescent purgatory. I was the last customer of the day, and the only one, apparently, who required management intervention.
I began to zero in on the digital clock, trying to calculate the exact millisecond it would flip to 4:01, when both the teller and the bank manager broke the silence in unison.
Ahem.
They cleared their throats at the exact same time. A perfect, synchronized glitch in the audio track.
“Congratulations,” he said.
He was a man made entirely of soft edges and fake deference, wearing a tie that was too wide for this decade. Had I been his Mistress, I would have soldered rhinestones onto its thickness and flogged him with the silk until he learned the cost of being so fashionably unaware.
The teller opened her mouth to speak, glancing ever so briefly at him. A micro signal of coordination. They had a plan. No doubt a script designed to keep me and my finances tied to the bank. After all, it was now officially 4:01 PM on a Monday. Why bother with the pleasantries? Why not just go home?
“No,” I said.
I spoke in English, because he had chosen to say congratulations in English. Fine. Let’s battle on the ground you paved.
You’re about to feed me a compliment sandwich. The bread is the congratulations, but the meat is some bureaucratic verbiage designed to keep me in debt to this institution. So let me stop you right there.
I leaned forward, invading his sterile little workspace.
First, your tie is appalling. If I were your wife, I glanced deliberately at the cheap gold band on his ring finger, I wouldn’t let you leave the house wearing a piece of attire that screams mid level management desperation.
He blinked, stunned. I didn’t give him time to recover. I swiveled to the cow.
And you.
Snap. Snap.
I cracked my fingers in the air, two sharp reports that sounded like a whip in the silent bank.
“Khun mâi mii sà tì.”
I undressed her in our own language. You have no presence. No mindfulness. You are empty.
My focus snapped back to her boss. The adrenaline was peaking now, and when my brain overheats, it pulls from the archives. The Breakfast Club. Bender vs. The Principal.
So here’s the deal, I said, channeling the criminal. How about I turn this up for you.
I raised my hand, slowly rotating upwards the middle digit right into the lens of the security camera, holding it there as the red digits on the clock flipped to 4:02:00 PM.
And you file those papers as paid in full. And I never have the displeasure of setting foot inside this, or any other bank ever again. Hmm?
The silence that followed was heavy, physical, and absolutely delicious.
For three seconds, nobody moved. The Manager stared at my hand. The Teller stared at my face. The security camera stared at all of us, recording the moment in grainy 480p resolution.
He didn’t argue. He didn’t call security. He did exactly what men made of soft edges do when the physics of the room suddenly change. He capitulated.
Without a word, he reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a pen, a cheap, plastic promotional thing, not the Montblanc he probably wishes he owned, and pushed the lien release form toward me. He tapped the X at the bottom of the page. His finger was trembling. Just a little. But I saw it.
I didn’t rotate my hand back down immediately. I let it hover there for a heartbeat longer, just to make sure the lesson had seated itself in his neocortex. Then, slowly, I lowered it, picked up the pen, and signed my name.
Scratch. Scratch. Rip.
I signed it with enough pressure to nearly tear the paper.
Done, I said.
I didn’t say goodbye. I didn’t wait for a receipt. I simply turned on my heel and walked away.
The walk from the counter to the glass exit doors felt like walking underwater. My heart wasn’t beating. It was vibrating. The code I had tried so hard to suppress had not only broken out, it had taken the wheel, driven the car off a cliff, and stuck the landing.
As the automatic doors slid open, the wall of humidity and noise from the mall slammed into me again. The Honda girls. The screaming kids. The air conditioning fighting a losing battle against the crowd.
I spotted Mr. Nice waiting by the entrance, holding a bag of donuts he’d bought while waiting for me. He smiled, completely oblivious to the tactical nuke I had just detonated inside booth P3.
Everything go okay? he asked, offering me the bag.
I looked at him. I looked at the bag. I looked at my shaking hands.
Drive, I said. Just drive.
But remember how I told you to read this as an anime character fighting the monster inside?
Up until the moment the bank manager arrived, that was the battle. But the scene above, the Breakfast Club quote, the finger, the threat?
That was the Mistress winning. That was the simulation my brain ran in 4K resolution while I sat motionless in the blue plastic chair.
That is the curse of the Architect. I see the world through two lenses simultaneously. Wael’s Eye sees the paperwork, the clock, the fear. Mistress Wael’s Eye sees the throat, the weakness, the tie that needs to be a leash. She wants to take over so badly that these alternate versions play out in my mind in real time. It is eerie. It unsettles me.
In the physical world, the one where actions have consequences and I am just a woman in denim shorts trying not to hyperventilate, I didn’t snap my fingers. I didn’t quote Judd Nelson.
I just stared at the clock. 4:02:02.
I gripped the edge of the counter until my knuckles turned white, forcing the containment protocol to hold.
Sign the papers, I said. My voice wasn’t a whip. It was a flat line. File them. I want to be out of here at 4:05 PM.
I paused, swallowing the venom that wanted to spit out a curse, and forced out a single, human word.
Please.
He signed. I left. No tactical nuke. Just the quiet humiliation of being normal.
As the automatic doors slid open, the wall of humidity and noise from the mall slammed into me again. The Honda girls. The screaming kids. The air conditioning fighting a losing battle against the crowd.
I spotted Mr. Nice waiting by the entrance. He was holding a box.
Mr. Donut.
I stared at the logo. Not Krispy Kreme, as I would have preferred, but the cheaper, drier alternative.
Mistress Wael sneered. She would have made him eat the box for such a lack of attention to detail. A taxi driver can make a mistake like that, but a Companion? A Companion must know better.
But Wael? Wael just sighed. I forgave the subtle mistake because I didn’t have the energy to enforce the standard.
Everything go okay? he asked, offering me the box.
I looked at him. I looked at the donuts. I looked at my shaking hands that hadn’t, but almost had, destroyed a man’s ego five minutes ago.
Drive, I said, taking a bite of the dry pastry. Just drive.
Mistress Wael | aka
W.Beneath | beneathhewords.com