Wallpaper Psychosis

One more day until the bar exam, so obviously I've entered a psychotic state of delusional despair. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I signed up for this thing. What kind of self-respecting state calls itself a "Commonwealth?" 

Truly, what maladroit collection of legislative incompetents classifies felony murder as second-degree murder and second-degree murder as third-degree? Don't even get me started on writs of praecipe. Look, Pennsylvania, it's called a "complaint" everywhere else in the country. Let's move past this Latin, inter alia, because your laws are making me crazy. Insurance payouts should not be discoverable information for damages awards, ok? If you run from the cops in Pennsylvania and toss your contraband on the ground, it's NOT admissible in court, despite every other 4th Amendment precedent to the contrary. But...the police don't need a search warrant to search a car. Even your cell phone could be seized if the cops have probable cause (this is a supposed to be an objective test, but, if you've watched "The Wire" you know probable cause is satisfied whenever some drunk cop feels like looking through your stuff. Doesn't help if you're black).

Two months of this crap! Yesterday, after once again reading through the steps of filing a shareholder's derivative suit against a corporate board of directors, I disgustedly huffed away from my books into the dining room. In this particular moment of irritated revulsion, I tripped over the giant heave in the floor for the 30th time, my big toe zinging with pain. I blindly staggered into the Great Hall of Wallpaper, cursing and mumbling profanities. The GHW is a frightening space, unlit and narrow, and filled with ungodly pink patterned paper with mismatched horse border casually glued along the bottom. My eyes narrowed in on the one peeling edge and my toe throbbed in rhythm with my pounding, furious heart. Die, die, die.

"Don't take it off yet," Andy's voice whispered in my head. "We could open a serious can of worms with that crumbling plaster."

But it was too late! It didn't matter what was beneath that early 90's pattern smash: mold, dead rat, the cask of Amontillado, the Slender Man. Bring it on, house. I will destroy you.

[Voluntary manslaughter: the mental state required is that "the offender had no prior intent to kill and acted during the 'heat of passion," under circumstances that would cause a reasonable person to become emotionally or mentally disturbed."]

With zero premeditation, I grabbed a peeling edge and gleefully ripped up as hard as I could. 

Of course, something normal and kind of beautiful was under it.

Next up was the slaughter of the true horse room. Specially ordered wallpaper from Ireland? Specially ordered to my BURN PILE.

My god, it was glorious.

I'm sure my mother-in-law will be horrified that I destroyed this kitschy old paper (sorry, Kathy), but its thorough eradication was worth far more to me in that moment than it would be to some damn hipster on Etsy. Scrapbook elsewhere, peeps...Alissa is losing her mind. 

Although I generally despise 19th century literature about women, well, losing their minds, "The Yellow Wallpaper" has become somewhat of an inside joke among my friends.

From Wikipedia:
"The Yellow Wallpaper" is a 6,000-word short story by the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine. It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the 19th century toward women's physical and mental health.

Presented in the first person, the story is a collection of journal entries written by a woman (Jane) whose physician husband (John) has confined her to the upstairs bedroom of a house he has rented for the summer. She is forbidden from working and has to hide her journal from him, so she can recuperate from what he calls a "temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency," a diagnosis common to women in that period. The windows of the room are barred, and there is a gate across the top of the stairs, allowing her husband to control her access to the rest of the house.

The story depicts the effect of confinement on the narrator's mental health and her descent into psychosis. With nothing to stimulate her, she becomes obsessed by the pattern and color of the wallpaper. "It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw – not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things. But there is something else about that paper – the smell! ... The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper! A yellow smell."

In the end, she imagines there are women creeping around behind the patterns of the wallpaper and comes to believe she is one of them. She locks herself in the room, now the only place she feels safe, refusing to leave when the summer rental is up. "For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow. But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way."

I mean, obviously "nervous hysteria" is 19th century code for "I have no idea what an orgasm is." Unfortunately,my hysteria transcends that particular and easily-cured affliction. 21st century empowerment, baby: rip down the wallpaper (metaphorically and otherwise)!