The Puppeteer

“When you're born in a burning house, you think the whole world is on fire” -Richard Kadrey

I woke up to a text from my boss this morning.

My jaw immediately clenches like it's wired shut. I have to muster up the courage to read it.

From what I can see through a defensive squint warding off sunlight my eyes weren't ready for, was a blurb my brain wasn't ready for.

Naturally I scan to get the gist.

I immediately make note of the phrases  “concerns,” “expectations,” and “falling short”.

Fuck.

My heart rate just synced up with my alarm clock. Pounding and blaring in tandem. Except my nervous system doesn't have a snooze button. I guess it's time to get up.

I drag myself into the kitchen and grab a banana, but lifting it off the counter felt challenging. Not that it was heavier. But my hand experienced drag reaching for it. Like propelling my body through water. I could feel the extra effort required.

Like it was being held back.

It made my breakfast choice feel suspicious.

I'm not healthy just because I decide to do a couple of healthy things. If I opened the fridge and there was a pastry instead, I'd probably eat it without hesitation. And the multivitamin I take isn't doing anything for my body. But the little tablet felt like lifting a tombstone.

Who do you think you are?

I'm driving to the gym and I have to make the next right turn, but when I go to hit the turn signal my hand feels stuck to the wheel. I had to pry my fingers loose.

I step into the gym and dart past mirrors in the locker room. If I stare for too long I become magnetized to the image of a man looking back at me that isn't fit enough. I don't fill the shirt the way I should. Veins aren't bulging out the way they would if I was really jacked. Like they are on the guy over there doing his set.

I start to tighten. Adjust. Pull myself inward. All to lift less weight than he does.

Why did you even bother coming?

I go to work and clock in. My job is to take care of patients. I do the medications and treatments. I do my documentation. Just enough that my boss’s gaze feels a little less personal. I'm not smiling and I'm not passionate. These patients make my fucking blood boil sometimes, they are so needy and annoying. They all think they're the only responsibility I have. They are all entitled and selfish.

I see my coworkers able to accommodate them not only physically, but emotionally. Their needs are anticipated. They carry this work like it belongs to them. They are clearly meant for this.

Why can't you be more like them?

I wouldn't want me taking care of me either. Maybe that's why I don't.

I know the stimulants aren't good for me but I'm too stupid and lazy to focus without them. And I can't even regulate these feelings I drown in without a couple drinks. So I choose to numb them instead. I take the TV remote off the table, beside it is a book I told myself I'd start 3 weeks ago. It wasn't even a convincing lie. I guess I suck at that too.

When will you get it together?

At this point, I'm laughing at myself holding the banana.

Lifting the weights.

Imagining what I'd say to my boss if I could afford to quit this job.

It's an oxymoron. The joke tells itself.

I feel myself being pulled back into reality. Not metaphorically. Like my posture is being manipulated. But this time I notice the threads attached. Like when a spider web catches light. I can see the interconnectedness between my actions and this force.

The tug here and pull there, they seem to keep me in line. But the motion is not to be mistaken for intention. I feel the movement first, so I assume it must be mine.

But I don't feel full control.

The mechanism is subtle.

They're interwoven into my inner monologue. But the threads can be traced back to something dark. They don't argue. They don't persuade. They apply pressure in familiar places and wait for compliance. They position me toward avoidance, toward numbing, toward the version of myself they recognize. Not the one I try to become through change.

There is nothing unhealthy about choosing the banana. That's common sense. But when I reach for it I still feel a tug. Like it feels unnatural or wrong. Not because I'm being intuitive. Because I'm being aligned.

But what's doing the aligning? Where is the pull coming from?

When I attempt to think about what tugs and pulls at my threads now, maybe.. I must interpret this as correction.

I'm an adult now, but I wasn't always. I couldn't always do what I want.

I think back to my earliest memories of correction. In a blink I find myself in the house I grew up in.

I spoke back before. Not often. Just enough to test the edges.

Sometimes it passed without comment.

Sometimes it earned a look that dissolved as quickly as it appeared.

Most of the time, nothing happened at all. Sometimes my mom was too stoned and couldn't be bothered. But I remember the day she wasn't.

Grabbing onto the frame of the door, begging and pleading. The running water in the bathroom sink I was being pulled into. The botanical bitterness of liquid soap being pumped in my mouth, muffling my now gargled scream. The sound gets trapped in bubbles. Fingers inserted into my mouth manually scrubbing. Erasing words I had said. I spoke back. Sometimes I was met with no discipline at all. Sometimes I was dragged into the bathroom and orally purged.

There was no rule I could carry forward.

When I was a little bit older and more physically formidable, I stood between her and the front door. Her dope dealer was parked in the driveway.

I stood between her and her empty promise. giving her a chance to make good on getting clean.

She unleashed on me physically and emotionally, clawing both into my chest and my conscience. But she didn't just attack my character. The confrontation didn't end in blows.

She said something that still echoes in my mind when I try to stand up for myself.

You're just like your father.

I was a sentry no longer, my resolve shrunk out of the doorway and spilled onto the floor. She stepped over me like a puddle when you have your best shoes on.

As I grew older she didn’t yell. She didn't fight me. She didn’t punish me. She just stopped seeing me.

Questions went unanswered. Meals were eaten in separate rooms. I moved through the house like I’d done something contagious. Nothing was said. And that was the message.

It's impossible to pinpoint where my mother disappeared and where a ghost stepped in her place.

The silence lasted until I apologized. Not for what I did. For disrupting the peace. For what at times felt like just existing.

Keeping her from the life of hedonism she wanted. Maybe the drugs weren't the mistake.

Maybe I was.

Hah. Maybe you were.

The moment I submitted, she returned.

Eye contact. Familiar tone. Normalcy.

I learned exactly what brought her back. All for it to vanish again when what was left of my dignity decided to fight back.

Obedience restored connection. Resistance erased it.

Somewhere deep down I don't just know this. I remember it.

I feel the strings pulling my lips together when I have the urge to speak up.

I feel the strings pull me out of the way when I attempt to intervene.

I feel the strings pulling my limbs to make self deprecating gestures. To keep everyone around me happy.

The strings contort me, to make everyone else content.

I squint even with closed eyes. I feel the pain untangling these threads that lull me to their will. I'm untying stitches without anesthesia that hold my identity together. Thread by thread, I follow them to their origin. But what I find is horrifying. They don't trace to a spool. They bind themselves to a marionette control bar. The dark hand operating it sitting in the nexus of my psyche. Overseeing my life today through the lens of my earliest memories.

It all makes sense now. The puppeteer isn’t cruel.

It’s loyal.

It’s an alarm system built for a house that no longer exists. One where silence meant safety, compliance meant warmth, and resistance meant disappearance.

The danger passed. But the system never learned.

The controlling hand never unclenched.

So it still tugs. Still tightens. Still positions me toward alignment before I even choose.

Casting me in the lead role.

A performance that never ends, rehearsing a childhood that already did.