Alice grew up, and so did I. Except sometimes, it feels like we didn’t.
Much of the décor in my apartment is pink. I still collect shiny rocks, and I turn into an angsty teenager when I am annoyed. Moreover, I listen to 90s music and eat copious amounts of sugar. When I am too stressed to do anything else, even Netflix, I visit my bookshelf dedicated to favorite YA novels and retreat into a burrow for the evening.
After a childhood spent reading beautiful fiction, from Nancy Drew mysteries to Alice’s "Adventures" and every Austen novel in rural East Texas, reality can be disappointing.
I’m 35, with a graduate degree, gainfully employed, and haven’t had a tantrum in years. I’ve been responsible for keeping myself and two cats alive since 2008. Yet here we are, writing in a glorified diary and looking at life through the looking glass.
Unlike the Dorothy Gale of L. Frank Baum’s novel series, who eventually becomes princess of Oz, the Dorothy of film legend was not okay. She wakes up in Kansas with a bump on her head, surrounded by friends and family who deny her magical experience. In the last scene of "Wizard of Oz" (1939), Dorothy and her family agree to disagree. But by 1985, in the lesser-known "Return to Oz," Aunt Em has Dorothy carted off to an asylum for electroshock therapy. Had Dorothy not escaped to Oz, and had the asylum not been struck by lightning and burned down, she would probably be there still. Modern life leaves no room for fantasy.
I wonder what happened to Alice when she left Wonderland for good. At the end of "Alice Through the Looking-Glass," she concludes, “Life, what is it but a dream?” She can’t go through the mirror at will, rent an apartment in Wonderland, and join the queen’s court. Nor can she seem to live solidly in the “real” world, but slips into another dimension when she takes a nap. Were it not for her practicality, she might take these fantasies for truth, and end up in therapy too. Could Alice ever be happy, marry well, and raise three children, like the real-life Alice Liddell?
Fictional Alice seems unfit to live in any world. “Who in the world am I?” Alice wonders in chapter two of her "Adventures in Wonderland." How will she ever overcome her cognitive dissonance? To live in this constant state of ambiguity, she must learn to embrace her full Alice. In order to navigate a world of reverse mirror images and unpredictable characters, she, and we, must know which way is up.
Disclaimer: I am writing about my Alice, as I know and remember her from childhood. As this series progresses, I will learn more, if I am fortunate, and opinions are subject to change. Another disclaimer: I am not a psychologist, and this is not a self-help blog. These experiences and opinions are my own.
A final disclaimer: If I lapse into the royal “we,” don’t be alarmed. It’s a habit learned at work, for sharing credit with others. “We” also seems less threatening than “you” and less self-absorbed than “I.”
Having disclaimed, here is my premise: by knowing who we are, if only from season to season, we can maintain our balance, build an emotional core, and reorient ourselves when our world becomes wrong-side-up. Join me, and Alice, as we get curiouser and curiouser about what it means to thrive as an adult.
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