Ding Dong the Witch is Dead

Baroness Adina Scrope is dead. I killed her. Think of the shower scene from Psycho, that's what I did to her.

Not only is Baroness Adina Scrope dead, so is Lady Margaret Howard, 9th Baroness Scrope of Bolton. She's actually been dead and buried since 1592.

These were the realizations I had way back in Edinburgh in 2008 but was too upset to blog about it. At the moment I visualized killing Baroness Adina Scrope I also thought about the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz. I thought that my whole life, trying to become Baroness Adina Scrope had turned me into the Wicked Witch. I had worked so hard to become someone else that I forgot who I was. In that moment of realization, my whole life fell apart.

All the things I had struggled through to create my Period Bed and Breakfast suddenly didn't matter since Baroness Adina Scrope was now dead. What mattered most was finding out who I really am.

Hold on. Let's go back a little further. How did all of this happen? Well, if you've read my previous blog, you may see the line that triggered my emotional break. It was the one where I say that Tom Orde-Powlett would never pay me a cent for anything I ever did on behalf of his family and their fledgling business. I took his statements to me to mean that I was basically a foreigner and a commoner and unworthy of recognition or recompense. At one point prior to all of this, he and I had spoken by phone. It was when I was considering coming back down to Bolton Castle for the Armada Faire. I told him that I would be coming as Lady Margaret Howard, 9th Baroness Scrope of Bolton and felt that I should be given special recognition over the jugglers, and similar reenactors. He mentioned that all of the other performers enjoy coming to the faire and teaching kids and that they never get paid. When he said this I immediately felt that he was comparing me to an SCA performer. These are people who get together on weekends and pretend they are back in time except that they do not behave according to the socio-cultural mores of the day, they make up their own reality. Historical reenactors behave according to what we know historically actually happened. Not only this upset me but, also the fact that these people are all volunteers who like to mentor kids and I am a professional reenactor who is looking to go into business.

Because Tom did not seem to appreciate the differences in mine and the volunteers efforts I gave up my willingness to be used, and I feel, abused. It was during a moment of dwelling on these thoughts and the actual challenges of recreating Bolton Castle in the U.S., that it dawned on me that trying to start this B&B was so enourmous that my health could be affected. I thought about how I had planned to eat separately from the guests since I was now on an Anti-Inflammation diet. It hit me then that I had been in denial about my true self and I turned inward and "killed Baroness Adina Scrope."

Once I accepted that she was gone I had to check in with myself. I began at the beginning asking myself my name, age, my parents', sibling's and cats names. I sighed when I realized how much of my true Self I had forgotten or put aside. Knowing how deep the loss of my dreams and myself was, I stuffed my anger and sadness, telling myself that I would deal with the implications when I got back to the states in about a month. That was how I finished out my work abroad. The next challenge to my sense of Self came when I went traveling with my brother and his friend Richard. For that part of the story, check in for my next blog. Thanks for reading.