What if we all are bluebeard?

To know me is to know that I have a weird obsession with the Bluebeard fairytale.  To be one of the few who really, really know me is to understand why.

At times I have felt that I was the wife of Bluebeard that survived, at times I have felt (rather happily) that I was one of the ones who had died and was released from the pain of the relationship..... but then at times.... I feel like I am Bluebeard himself.

We see him as a villain, we want to make him a complete and total monster....but humans aren't like that.  He gave a key to someone he trusted and said look after this, but don't look into it.  It was a test. A test to see if a boundary that was established would be treated with respect.  In the past I have felt like he set up his wife for failure....knowing full well that he would be disappointed.... and maybe he did.  Maybe I do the same too.

And maybe I am both Bluebeard and the wife..... tempting myself, setting up myself for failure.  I wave a key around and say "see the key but go no further" and then I push myself down those stairs....open that door....and only see carnage and panic.

I know this is vague.  I know that this post makes little sense to anyone but myself. 
I wrote this for me because I'm trying to figure out what I see when I open that door...


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Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950).  Renascence and Other Poems.  1917.

23. Bluebeard

Sonnet VI

THIS door you might not open, and you did;
So enter now, and see for what slight thing
You are betrayed…. Here is no treasure hid,
No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring
The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain	5
For greed like yours, no writhings of distress,
But only what you see…. Look yet again—
An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless.
Yet this alone out of my life I kept
Unto myself, lest any know me quite;	10
And you did so profane me when you crept
Unto the threshold of this room to-night
That I must never more behold your face.
This now is yours. I seek another place.