Ariel’s Broken Jukebox Pt.4 - Gaslighting and the Fingerless Prince

What is it like to lose a voice?

A lot of people wondered when they heard I had been gaslit for three years.

Well, it's both simple and complex, like an equation not everyone can solve. It was like death, yet it felt alive. Gaslit people go to work, have fun, work out, meet family and friends.

But to do so, they must do without a voice box. They might use an AI program to speak for them. Or they could use their abusers, who know how to talk to them well. In that case they speak but not their minds, they laugh but not at the jokes ty find funny, they attend parties and gatherings, they buy clothes, cut their hair, shave their legs, but they are still not them, even eating their favorite ice-cream bowl or lying lazily by the sea.

Sounds complex? Well...let me tell you a story about a prince who was everything everybody wanted him to be, but not himself when he agreed to lose his voice.

Part III

"The prince became a regular at cocktail parties. He spent time hunting with his brothers and father. The prince shone and reveled in his success in the roundtable meetings and in the swordfight lessons that his father required of him. Out in the public eye, and among people, the prince was a success. Everybody saw him as an overpowering, magnanimous figure. He became a person to be feared and respected. He could barely remember his older self when he walked in the middle of crowds, happy and independent, but also fragile and sensitive to the touch. He could also remember how that turned people - even his own family - hostile towards him. He said what was on his mind and expressed his opinions on everything that he liked and disliked. But now, the prince became a pinup image, the poster boy for the kingdom. He never showed weakness or emotions. It wasn't that he faked it, he lost connection with his emotional self. He felt like fragments of his personality were missing. But he didn't care. As long as he could work out this complex game of life, he was fine.

But every night, the prince lay naked and beaten in bed. The cloak was safely hung at the farthest end of his royal bedroom. His long hair clouded his vision as he cried his eyes out. The sorcerer would patiently sit at the foot of the bed, or have his head in his lap. He stroked the prince's hair as he confessed that he hated himself, that he wanted to die. The prince would take all the day's stain and wash it at the sorcerer's feet. He felt that he only allowed the sorcerer to see his weak, authentic side, and that fact both elated him and increased his misery. He was happy that there was a tiny part of his life where he could be himself. But what broke his heart was that his reality was this sad, pathetic loser. Why couldn't he be like his brothers? They were all the same everywhere, or his older sister, who was this sweet and compassionate figure in public while being a sadistic, cruel harasser in the safe confines of the castle? But the sorcerer would patiently listen to his rants, clean his face and nose from mucus.

The sorcerer would poison him with love. He would tell him to keep going. He must forget his past self. That his past self was a disease he had to unlearn. It wasn't the character of survivors, only weak gazelles get eaten. Every time the prince recounted a story from his past, or questioned his otherness, the sorcerer gently reassured him that it was true, his weirdness was an ailment, a mutation, he would have been merely an apostrophe, someone on the margins of society. Dreamers like the old prince never win. And at the end of each sad night, the sorcerer would help the prince to bed. He would cover him with the soft blanket, and gently whisper in his ear that he must forget the night. The morning was something else.

In the morning, the prince would bathe, wash his face, and wear the cloak, even while having breakfast. He only showed his face in public when he ate, but other than that, his armor was present all day long. Slowly, the prince forgot about playing the piano, which remained in the hiding place like a loyal vault of his former self. It was strange - he thought to himself sarcastically only to scold himself afterwards for making light of the matter - how there wasn't a day in the past when he wouldn't play, hum a note, or think of a melody, and try to rush behind everyone's back to compose? Now, music barely crossed his mind. He could barely focus on what lay ahead, let alone write music, or just retrieve concertos or music pieces he heard from memory. Not only that, but the prince feared who he was while playing the piano. It was as if the piano unlocked a more terrifying version of himself, one that he wasn't capable of dealing with right now. It also didn't help that every time he asked the sorcerer for permission to play, he wouldn't do it. The sorcerer was enraged that the prince would even consider going back to play. "What about your fingers?" He would say and the prince would subconsciously look at his gloves, the hanging sleeves from the cloak, and the sewn velvet fingers. As he felt them tighten and pull his flesh together every time he thought about playing, he would dismiss the idea and apologize to the sorcerer.

The thought of taking off his cloak in public terrified him. And the way he held his head high, and saw respect and fear grow in the eyes of the public as well as his family members and other members of the royal family as he entered a place in his cloak, made him unwilling to let go of how he became. Although, there were times when he caught himself thinking like the sorcerer, or forgetting how his own voice sounded like in his head.

The sorcerer, on the other hand, became a royal court favorite. He began letting go of his anonymity as he accompanied the prince to all meetings and gatherings. The whole family loved him, and they were secretly grateful to him for handling the rather difficult prince. It didn't matter that the prince was still miserable, as long as they didn't see it, they were fine with that. And after some time, they forgot that the prince was in pain. To them he walked and talked. He was alright. And sometimes they would even look at him as he made a major decision, or participated in hunting trips with cousins or other members of the royal family and would think he was actually better.

All eyes were on the sorcerer. He was a genius, a miracle healer. How did he turn this wild child into someone socially acceptable, docile, and sane? How did he breathe maturity into this difficult son? And the sorcerer would bask in the glory of praise and admiration from all those around the prince. Even the arrogant kind grabbed his arm one day, grateful for his presence in his son's life. That's when the sorcerer realized a scary truth: the prince was truly loved by his family. They just wanted him to blend in. To be normal. To do what everyone else did. And the sorcerer used this for his gain.