No long posts today. Just an acknowledgment. Today would have been Grace's, the baby I miscarried in April, due date. I have been dreading it weepily for weeks now, wondering exactly how one deals with such a day. Better to let it pass without incident? After all she was so new, according to medical text books she barely existed. Just another of the 10-25% of pregnancies that end in the first trimester.
So much seems to have transpired since April. Each new day that comes with my current pregnancy is a wonder. I must admit to sometimes hovering nervously outside myself, watching my belly grow and wondering when it will all be taken away from me. Yet in spite of the time elapsed and the things which have taken place since, the rawness of that loss grates on me some days. Each time someone asks me "is this your first?" and I give them the standard, non-depressing answer of "yes." But it's not. This is not my first baby, not the first little life I longed for and loved. Each answer of "yes" to queries about first child status is like a betrayal to that tiny creature that I had for such a short time.
This day feels like a betrayal as well. Just its existence seems wrong, as though there is no purpose for it now that there will be no baby born on this day. I wait for someone to remember, but I know no one will except me. Silly, stupid me and my refusal to just let go of it, quietly humming that old Skeeter Davis song and feeling guilty if I have a moment of happiness on this day of quiet remembrance.
Fuck it. It's my grief. It would have been our day. I don't care who finds me silly or over-dramatic. I know my loss could have been greater, that I could have grown to know and love that child even more and to have really experienced pain when she was taken from me. I know that other women have suffered immeasurably, that their pain is something I could not (and please, God, will not) understand. But that thought doesn't diminish what I feel right now, which is angry. And sad. And screwed out of a moment that would have been so beautiful. I love this new baby, March 15th is a day I look forward to with great hope and anticipation. I have worked hard not to let my first experience mar this one. But I need to acknowledge this day, the first day I looked forward to with that same hope and anticipation.
So happy birthday, Grace. I loved those brief moments when you were with me. You were my first baby, and while I have said goodbye I will never forget you. I will not forget that you showed me how ready I was to be a mother, how much I wanted to know the joys of having a family. I will not forget that you helped me learn how to heal myself after grief. I hope that there is a time and place somewhere that you still exist, and that someday I will know you there.
Monday 15 December 2008
Monday 1 December 2008
Home is where the [insert answer here, please] is.
I'm back, or somewhat back. I have been reading but not writing, observing but doing very little participating these days. I didn't think I could possibly be any more inside my own head than I was before my pregnancy, but somehow this introversion and introspection continues. The most horrible thing about it is how inarticulate I have become in expressing what happens to me during these times of soul searching. Once I could fill page after page with my musings on life, sadness, happiness or self-doubt. Now I am constantly lost for words, or even lost for the desire to find them.
Not to say that I have been unhappy. I have had more moments of contentment in the past five months than I think I have ever experienced before. Suddenly there is a wave of acceptance that the life I have is the life I want, that I am where I need to be. With one important factor changed - the location. Yes, that tyrant of emotion Homesickness has reared her ugly head again. And lately she possesses a fury and determination that doesn't allow me to write her off as easily as I have in other battles. There are several elements to my homesickness, some stronger than others, some more familiar than others. Some are real, some imagined. All are conspiring to disrupt my little bubble of contentedness - this happy little world where I love my husband more than I thought I ever would, where I rub my bump reassuringly to send my little one off to sleep after hours of kicking and flip-flopping, where I am respected at home and at work, where I have time and space to do the things I find important, where I am a wife and a mother-to-be building the family I have always wanted.
The first factor is the physical environment. I miss the seasons - all four of them. I miss winters full of snow and ice and hot cocoa; crisp, cold and sunny mornings; long underwear and LL Bean Boots. I miss springtime that is not drowned in rain and hampered by regularly cold and dark days - real spring where you can feel the weather changing and see the green starting to find its way back into the Earth. I miss summer. Hot summer days spent at the beach or on a blanket in the park. Days when the heat is so strong you think you can't bear it, but then the thunderstorms come in a torrent. They are over in minutes, but have stayed long enough to break the heat and leave you with a beautiful summer evening to spend alone in a hammock or on the patio of your favourite bar with friends. I miss Fall - not Autumn, Fall - and all of the beauty that the changing of the leaves brings. I miss playing in leave piles, apple picking and hay rides.
I also miss the beauty and convenience of the places I called home before Belfast. In Maine I was minutes from the ocean, from the river, from the little reservoir with an island. In Washington, DC I was surrounded by the beauty and bustle of the nation's capital. Living in Dupont Circle meant that art, food, culture and an exquisite variety of people were just outside my front door. I could spend all day strolling through (free) museums at the National Mall, or read in the unfathomable quiet of the Library of Congress. I felt constantly in the middle of something - of protests and movements, of history as it happened, of a city that was truly alive and bursting with energy and potential.
But these environmental factors are minimal concerns in the grander picture. Belfast may be a bit dreary sometimes, but it has its own beauties and charms. I have grown to love it, to feel pride in its ability to change and grow and regenerate. I will continue to adjust to the rainy summers and the snow-less winters without too much fuss. No, Homesickness' grandest weapon is the power of the relationships she represents.
It might sound contradictory to some of my previous posts, saying I miss the relationships in my life at home. Many of them have been riddled with strife and misunderstanding. But it was my strife and misunderstanding! There is something so extraordinary about being surrounded by people who know you - who have always known you. When someone has seen you at your worst and your best, knows every dirty detail and every little secret, it provides a sense of freedom that doesn't exist in any other relationship. My husband shares this with me, and for that I am truly grateful. But in Belfast he is a solitary member of this exclusive club. I want those people I can call at 1am back, for better or for worse. In times like these, the most unlikely of things starts to happen. The very things I have tried to get away from become the things I long for the most. How strange that I would miss things like people laughing at loud bodily functions, or family members willing to fight and shout at each other in a direct and confrontational way? As a teenager I longed for trips to Europe, cultured holidays. Now I would give anything to spend the weekend at a cheesy campground with all of my family, crude jokes and all, gathered round the campfire til the wee hours of the morning.
I have made difficult decisions in my life, but they are decisions that I think reflect the person I have always felt comfortable being - in spite of this, sometimes I just want the opportunity to slip back into my previous life. Like those jeans with the holes in the knee that you just can't get rid of because they are too comfortable, and because they have lasted with you through so much. I have worked hard to kid myself into thinking that living away from my family isn't a choice, that it is what I need to do to make the best life for me and my husband and our new family. But lately I have been thinking a lot about how deliberate that choice has been and whether or not it was the right one. I hate that my mother and father are watching my bump grow through a series of digital photographs, that my child will be almost 9 months old before she meets my sister and brother - or anyone in my family outside my parents. I worry about sharing holidays, about what will happen if my parents fall ill and can no longer care for themselves, about my children feeling closer to my husbands' friends and family than they will to mine. I feel like I am missing out on so much - my brother growing up, the chance to run to my mother's house when I need someone to look after me for a couple of hours, being able to stop by and see my father unannounced.
How does one ever know if the decisions they make in their lives were for the best? How do you know where you belong? How do I get through feeling like this when the homesickness sets in? How do I figure out once and for all where home is?
Not to say that I have been unhappy. I have had more moments of contentment in the past five months than I think I have ever experienced before. Suddenly there is a wave of acceptance that the life I have is the life I want, that I am where I need to be. With one important factor changed - the location. Yes, that tyrant of emotion Homesickness has reared her ugly head again. And lately she possesses a fury and determination that doesn't allow me to write her off as easily as I have in other battles. There are several elements to my homesickness, some stronger than others, some more familiar than others. Some are real, some imagined. All are conspiring to disrupt my little bubble of contentedness - this happy little world where I love my husband more than I thought I ever would, where I rub my bump reassuringly to send my little one off to sleep after hours of kicking and flip-flopping, where I am respected at home and at work, where I have time and space to do the things I find important, where I am a wife and a mother-to-be building the family I have always wanted.
The first factor is the physical environment. I miss the seasons - all four of them. I miss winters full of snow and ice and hot cocoa; crisp, cold and sunny mornings; long underwear and LL Bean Boots. I miss springtime that is not drowned in rain and hampered by regularly cold and dark days - real spring where you can feel the weather changing and see the green starting to find its way back into the Earth. I miss summer. Hot summer days spent at the beach or on a blanket in the park. Days when the heat is so strong you think you can't bear it, but then the thunderstorms come in a torrent. They are over in minutes, but have stayed long enough to break the heat and leave you with a beautiful summer evening to spend alone in a hammock or on the patio of your favourite bar with friends. I miss Fall - not Autumn, Fall - and all of the beauty that the changing of the leaves brings. I miss playing in leave piles, apple picking and hay rides.
I also miss the beauty and convenience of the places I called home before Belfast. In Maine I was minutes from the ocean, from the river, from the little reservoir with an island. In Washington, DC I was surrounded by the beauty and bustle of the nation's capital. Living in Dupont Circle meant that art, food, culture and an exquisite variety of people were just outside my front door. I could spend all day strolling through (free) museums at the National Mall, or read in the unfathomable quiet of the Library of Congress. I felt constantly in the middle of something - of protests and movements, of history as it happened, of a city that was truly alive and bursting with energy and potential.
But these environmental factors are minimal concerns in the grander picture. Belfast may be a bit dreary sometimes, but it has its own beauties and charms. I have grown to love it, to feel pride in its ability to change and grow and regenerate. I will continue to adjust to the rainy summers and the snow-less winters without too much fuss. No, Homesickness' grandest weapon is the power of the relationships she represents.
It might sound contradictory to some of my previous posts, saying I miss the relationships in my life at home. Many of them have been riddled with strife and misunderstanding. But it was my strife and misunderstanding! There is something so extraordinary about being surrounded by people who know you - who have always known you. When someone has seen you at your worst and your best, knows every dirty detail and every little secret, it provides a sense of freedom that doesn't exist in any other relationship. My husband shares this with me, and for that I am truly grateful. But in Belfast he is a solitary member of this exclusive club. I want those people I can call at 1am back, for better or for worse. In times like these, the most unlikely of things starts to happen. The very things I have tried to get away from become the things I long for the most. How strange that I would miss things like people laughing at loud bodily functions, or family members willing to fight and shout at each other in a direct and confrontational way? As a teenager I longed for trips to Europe, cultured holidays. Now I would give anything to spend the weekend at a cheesy campground with all of my family, crude jokes and all, gathered round the campfire til the wee hours of the morning.
I have made difficult decisions in my life, but they are decisions that I think reflect the person I have always felt comfortable being - in spite of this, sometimes I just want the opportunity to slip back into my previous life. Like those jeans with the holes in the knee that you just can't get rid of because they are too comfortable, and because they have lasted with you through so much. I have worked hard to kid myself into thinking that living away from my family isn't a choice, that it is what I need to do to make the best life for me and my husband and our new family. But lately I have been thinking a lot about how deliberate that choice has been and whether or not it was the right one. I hate that my mother and father are watching my bump grow through a series of digital photographs, that my child will be almost 9 months old before she meets my sister and brother - or anyone in my family outside my parents. I worry about sharing holidays, about what will happen if my parents fall ill and can no longer care for themselves, about my children feeling closer to my husbands' friends and family than they will to mine. I feel like I am missing out on so much - my brother growing up, the chance to run to my mother's house when I need someone to look after me for a couple of hours, being able to stop by and see my father unannounced.
How does one ever know if the decisions they make in their lives were for the best? How do you know where you belong? How do I get through feeling like this when the homesickness sets in? How do I figure out once and for all where home is?
Wednesday 22 October 2008
Under my skin
My posts have been so inconsistent lately. Part of this has been a complete lack of time, deadlines I can barely keep up with and a house move that required most of my attention for a while. But a large part of it has been the shift in focus my life has taken. As though to prepare me for a lifetime of thinking of someone else first, this little person growing inside me has monopolised my thoughts and emotions for the last four months now. I can't write about much else, because in my life currently everything points back to baby. And for some reason, I can't find the words to write about this baby.
Some of the things I have been feeling have been wonderful. That first moment when I saw my little bean in the ultra sound was like nothing I had ever felt before. There he (for the purposes of this blog) was; he had arms and legs and a heartbeat, he was dancing and moving around, he was alive. Just as my miscarriage introduced me to the pain of true and uncontrollable grief, that tiny picture of a twelve-week old embryo gave me my first encounter with true relief and joy. In my attempts to keep myself calm during moments of panic - those times when the cramps I felt didn't feel right, or when I was worried I wasn't sick enough - I talked to my baby. I told him how much I loved him already, how I couldn't wait to meet him. I promised him things I am not even sure I could ever provide, but that I was certain I would try harder than I have ever tried at anything before. I named him, I rubbed my belly to soothe him, I prayed for him and pleaded with him. This made me feel closer to him than I felt to most of the people around me - and yet he seemed so unreal and so far away.
The first time I heard his heartbeat, the first time I felt him moving around inside me, the first time I let it truly sink in that this baby may actually be real - all of these moments have left me moved and overwhelmed, frightened and exhilarated, in ways I have never experienced before and could never really articulate. I have felt grateful every single day since I saw that pink line on a pregnancy test in July. Genuinely, humbly and heartbreakingly grateful. I was almost prepared for the intensity of those emotions, nearly prepared for the joy I would feel given the weight of the grief my previous loss had filled me with. But there were many things for which I was unprepared - many things that no one told me to expect.
The loneliness came first. Ironic, isn't it? For the first time in my life I am technically never alone, and yet I feel so isolated from the people around me. Suddenly it is as though I can't relate to anyone. Friends planning vacations or talking about going out for drinks seem so distant from my new life, my new priorities. I am all at once bored by and jealous of their lives. Small jibes of "you're hardly the first woman to ever be pregnant" or rolled eyes if I have to leave a party early have left me feeling misunderstood and, if I'm honest, a little pissed off. There seems to be a general acceptance that because so many people experience pregnancy, those who are pregnant have no right to visibly feel sick/tired/overwhelmed/incontinent/irritable. Just sit there and look cute, glowing and bumpy. I have never been one who is able to sit quietly and not react, so withdrawal has been my immediate response. Most of the time I would just rather be alone, and yet I yearn for company.
Introspection has taken over these days. My head has filled up with questions - Will I be a good mother? Will I be able to breastfeed? Will my child love me when he becomes a teenager? Will he move far away and leave me here with the life I have set up almost solely for him? The darker questions are harder still. Will I resent my child for the life I am giving up in order to have him? Have I done this too soon? Will I be mean or abusive? Neglectful and inattentive as I focus on the career that has for so long been my baby? Will I be jealous of this child as I fight him for my husband's attention? Will my husband still love me when I no longer fit in to the image of youth and beauty he has attached to me?
In her book about pregnancy, Naomi Wolfe talks about grieving for the woman who inevitably ceases to be when you become a mother. This is not a feeling I anticipated, but I find it haunts me a little more every day. Reality starts to hit hard when you're pregnant. Gone are the days when I could trick myself into thinking that a baby would not interrupt my plans too much, not throw my life into a complete disarray. Already I have been utterly merged with this little being. People no longer ask how I am without prefacing it with a glance or reference to my abdomen. What they mean is how is the baby, the pregnancy. Even the gifts I received for my birthday today have revolved around the baby - maternity clothes, stretch mark cream, essential oils to help with the symptoms of pregnancy (would you give your friend cold medicine for his birthday because you knew he had a cold?). This baby and I are now one in the same. There is no me without him, no him without me. For someone so fiercely independent, attaching another person on to every part of my life and being is frightening and frustrating, alien and profound.
My body and my life are no longer my own. Near-strangers and acquaintances suddenly find it ok to ask me about my breasts, my urinary habits and my moods. They question my dietary choices and chastise me for ordering a coffee (before they realise it's decaf). Suddenly the most intimate decisions I have ever made (Will I breastfeed? Will I find out the sex? Will I stay at home or return to work? Do I want more than one?) are fair game for every Tom Dick and Harry. My belly is the property of everyone, and most people do not hesitate to put their hands on my lower abdomen in such a way that would have caused my husband to punch them four months ago. Now he glows with pride as they man-handle me, beaming the silly grin of a father-to-be.
In a nutshell, I feel as though I have ceased to be myself. And while I know that when this baby is born I will become a new, better, happier version of myself - I can't help but mourn for the person I was before I became some one's mother. This ambivalence is crazy-making. Never at any point to I wish to no longer be pregnant - nor do I cease to be grateful for this miracle that is taking place in and around me. I already love my child more than I love myself, would already die in his place, and I long for his arrival with each breath. Even as I write this I can feel him moving about, reassuring me that all of this uncertainty will wither in the face of his presence - the person I have waited for since before I knew who I was waiting for, the love of my life.
Even still, will you afford me this brief moment of silence to say goodbye to my life before him? To cry for my privacy, my independence, my marriage as I know it, my stomach and breasts? Will you all think me horrible if every day, just for a moment, I remember fondly a time when I was the only person in my own skin?
Some of the things I have been feeling have been wonderful. That first moment when I saw my little bean in the ultra sound was like nothing I had ever felt before. There he (for the purposes of this blog) was; he had arms and legs and a heartbeat, he was dancing and moving around, he was alive. Just as my miscarriage introduced me to the pain of true and uncontrollable grief, that tiny picture of a twelve-week old embryo gave me my first encounter with true relief and joy. In my attempts to keep myself calm during moments of panic - those times when the cramps I felt didn't feel right, or when I was worried I wasn't sick enough - I talked to my baby. I told him how much I loved him already, how I couldn't wait to meet him. I promised him things I am not even sure I could ever provide, but that I was certain I would try harder than I have ever tried at anything before. I named him, I rubbed my belly to soothe him, I prayed for him and pleaded with him. This made me feel closer to him than I felt to most of the people around me - and yet he seemed so unreal and so far away.
The first time I heard his heartbeat, the first time I felt him moving around inside me, the first time I let it truly sink in that this baby may actually be real - all of these moments have left me moved and overwhelmed, frightened and exhilarated, in ways I have never experienced before and could never really articulate. I have felt grateful every single day since I saw that pink line on a pregnancy test in July. Genuinely, humbly and heartbreakingly grateful. I was almost prepared for the intensity of those emotions, nearly prepared for the joy I would feel given the weight of the grief my previous loss had filled me with. But there were many things for which I was unprepared - many things that no one told me to expect.
The loneliness came first. Ironic, isn't it? For the first time in my life I am technically never alone, and yet I feel so isolated from the people around me. Suddenly it is as though I can't relate to anyone. Friends planning vacations or talking about going out for drinks seem so distant from my new life, my new priorities. I am all at once bored by and jealous of their lives. Small jibes of "you're hardly the first woman to ever be pregnant" or rolled eyes if I have to leave a party early have left me feeling misunderstood and, if I'm honest, a little pissed off. There seems to be a general acceptance that because so many people experience pregnancy, those who are pregnant have no right to visibly feel sick/tired/overwhelmed/incontinent/irritable. Just sit there and look cute, glowing and bumpy. I have never been one who is able to sit quietly and not react, so withdrawal has been my immediate response. Most of the time I would just rather be alone, and yet I yearn for company.
Introspection has taken over these days. My head has filled up with questions - Will I be a good mother? Will I be able to breastfeed? Will my child love me when he becomes a teenager? Will he move far away and leave me here with the life I have set up almost solely for him? The darker questions are harder still. Will I resent my child for the life I am giving up in order to have him? Have I done this too soon? Will I be mean or abusive? Neglectful and inattentive as I focus on the career that has for so long been my baby? Will I be jealous of this child as I fight him for my husband's attention? Will my husband still love me when I no longer fit in to the image of youth and beauty he has attached to me?
In her book about pregnancy, Naomi Wolfe talks about grieving for the woman who inevitably ceases to be when you become a mother. This is not a feeling I anticipated, but I find it haunts me a little more every day. Reality starts to hit hard when you're pregnant. Gone are the days when I could trick myself into thinking that a baby would not interrupt my plans too much, not throw my life into a complete disarray. Already I have been utterly merged with this little being. People no longer ask how I am without prefacing it with a glance or reference to my abdomen. What they mean is how is the baby, the pregnancy. Even the gifts I received for my birthday today have revolved around the baby - maternity clothes, stretch mark cream, essential oils to help with the symptoms of pregnancy (would you give your friend cold medicine for his birthday because you knew he had a cold?). This baby and I are now one in the same. There is no me without him, no him without me. For someone so fiercely independent, attaching another person on to every part of my life and being is frightening and frustrating, alien and profound.
My body and my life are no longer my own. Near-strangers and acquaintances suddenly find it ok to ask me about my breasts, my urinary habits and my moods. They question my dietary choices and chastise me for ordering a coffee (before they realise it's decaf). Suddenly the most intimate decisions I have ever made (Will I breastfeed? Will I find out the sex? Will I stay at home or return to work? Do I want more than one?) are fair game for every Tom Dick and Harry. My belly is the property of everyone, and most people do not hesitate to put their hands on my lower abdomen in such a way that would have caused my husband to punch them four months ago. Now he glows with pride as they man-handle me, beaming the silly grin of a father-to-be.
In a nutshell, I feel as though I have ceased to be myself. And while I know that when this baby is born I will become a new, better, happier version of myself - I can't help but mourn for the person I was before I became some one's mother. This ambivalence is crazy-making. Never at any point to I wish to no longer be pregnant - nor do I cease to be grateful for this miracle that is taking place in and around me. I already love my child more than I love myself, would already die in his place, and I long for his arrival with each breath. Even as I write this I can feel him moving about, reassuring me that all of this uncertainty will wither in the face of his presence - the person I have waited for since before I knew who I was waiting for, the love of my life.
Even still, will you afford me this brief moment of silence to say goodbye to my life before him? To cry for my privacy, my independence, my marriage as I know it, my stomach and breasts? Will you all think me horrible if every day, just for a moment, I remember fondly a time when I was the only person in my own skin?
Tuesday 7 October 2008
Love Song for my Sister
My sister is a marvel. Sometimes a charmer in every sense of the word, sometimes a torture hard to bear for more than ten minutes. She is all at once wildly funny and frightfully infuriating - stubborn as an ox but as overly sensitive as a small child. There are times when you would think she is the most street wise person you have ever met, and others when her naivety would shock and bewilder you. She is beautiful in the best way that a woman can be beautiful - in that quiet and unassuming way, as though she would never truly believe you thought her anything other than plain. In her twenty-six years on this planet, I have loved her and hated her more than any other person in my life. Lately her life is changing - or rather she has started to notice her life in a completely different way. It is weird and wonderful, and heartbreaking to watch her go through it. My mother said she is in a cocoon...I guess I can allow for my mother to be right on occasion.
AJ was the most beautiful baby I have ever seen, perfectly formed and immediately adorable - not like her wrinkled and alien-looking peers. My mother loves to tell me of how I used to carry her around and tell everyone she was "my baby," and barely a photo exists of the two of us in those first three years where I am not kissing or hugging her (although she is often seen resisting). If you asked me to tell the story of our lives from my perspective, I would use those photos as a visual depiction of our relationship throughout childhood and adolescence. A big sister who was desperate to love and cuddle and mother (but only in the way she wanted) - a little sister scrambling (fighting, kicking) to stand by herself.
I have written before about the problems I had with my sister. We were such polar opposites, so adamant that we would not be alike. While I donned a tutu and danced ballet recitals in the hallway with my hair trailing elegantly down my back, AJ chopped her hair off and donned a baseball cap - introducing herself to people as my brother. When I made my first communion I reveled in the white dress and gloves - AJ wore a suit and tie. My parents, in either an amazing act of insight or as a demonstration of their lack of knowing what else to do, chose to ignore her push towards all things masculine. They never passed comment on it or indicated that it was in any way different from the norm. For years I was convinced my sister had been going through some gender identity crisis - I realise now it was probably just an attempt to be the person in our family who was not me...and to do that as loudly as possible. Eventually AJ stopped playing with matchbox cars and GI Joes. She grew her hair out and stopped telling people that when she grew up she wanted to be a boy, but she did not cease to take every action possible to be the person in our family who was not me. While I people pleased, brought home impeccable report cards and danced in ballet recitals, AJ feigned apathy to her teachers and became a sporting legend. I gleaned attention by listing accomplishments and oozing politeness, AJ made everyone laugh and held an audience in the palm of her hand while telling stories. I followed every rule to the point of the ridiculous, AJ broke them whatever chance she got. Whether we knew it or not, we were determined to be different, and with that difference came a rocky and fragile relationship that would haunt us for years to come.
What AJ perhaps didn't realise during all of this was how much I wanted her to like me. How desperate I had been for her approval. While I grinned with pride at being called brainy, pretty or polite by others, from my sister I saw it as a barrier to our relationship. I wanted to braid her hair and tell her about boys, to sit up at night talking after our parents shut the lights out. I wanted to tell her deep dark secrets that I would normally only write in my diary, and to defend her honour to anyone who dared try to do her harm. I wanted to be a big sister, in that ridiculous and romantic "ya ya sisterhood" bullshit way that people have sisters. I remember when I was about 13 I watched the movie Beaches. It was glorious, the way these two women loved each other. I cried the whole way through, reassured that even if parents split up and lovers leave and people get divorced, there would always be that one woman who would love you forever and never leave you. I decided (perhaps before then) that AJ was the only woman fit for that job. Surely your own flesh and blood would be the only person capable for such a task. After all, who better to understand me than the girl who shared every part of my girlhood? Who had the same embarrassing parent stories, who knew what it was like to live in my skin? Yes, AJ was my forever friend. The wind beneath my naive, romantic, controlling, perfectionist little wings.
And therein lies perhaps the biggest problem with our relationship. I wanted my sister to fit into my idea of sisterhood. Braid hair, don't shoot hoops. Watch girlie movies, not slasher flicks. Hug and kiss to show affection, don't hi-five or punch arms. The more she didn't fit into my little "sister" box, the more resentful I grew of our fragmented relationship. I held AJ to the same ridiculous standards to which I held myself. And she just didn't live up to them.
Problem number two, and perhaps what AJ would see as our biggest problem, is that I just couldn't stop mothering her. I was so sure something horrible was awaiting us both out there, and I no longer trusted that my parents would keep it from us. I dubbed myself my sister's protector. Just as I would work hard to ensure I raised myself out of the life I hated, I would make damn sure she came with me. On my terms. Whether she liked it or not. Cue several years of a child, less than two years older than the younger child, telling said younger child what to do/not do/say/not say/etc ad infinitum. Who wouldn't understand her rebellion against me? After all I held her to standards far stricter and higher than my parents ever held her to. Instead I watched her drift further away from me. And to make matters worse, almost as if to prove she was capable of it with anyone but me, I watched her be that heroic friend I was waiting for to almost everyone she met. The low point for me was when she, at the age of 18, told me we should just make an agreement to not ask one another to be each other's maids of honour when we got married - because she already had someone else in mind for the job.
After I left home, distance provided a bit of relief from our fighting. Eventually we even started sending each other cards and notes, but I managed to blow that too. AJ would send me some beautifully written card about how much she loved me and how she always looked up to me, and in my overzealous excitement I would call her and insist we talk about our feelings. Once again I could not let her love me in the way she was able - I needed Barbara Hershey or nothing at all! My vision clouded by a romantic notion of what I expected her to be, I couldn't see the relationship that was growing right in front of me.
Two years ago I asked AJ to be my maid of honour in spite of our previous vow. She accepted, and I repaid her by making her feel bad about not doing enough for the wedding and answering "yes" when she asked if I would've chosen my friend Colleen if she had not been my sister. In reality, I could not have picked someone better for the moments leading up to my long walk down the aisle. In the months before the wedding, AJ slaved over a scrapbook full of pictures of childhood scenes and our family. When I was waiting for the limousine to take me to the church, AJ broke my nervous silence with ridiculous jokes and held my dress while I went to the bathroom. In the car, when my feet hurt, she and my father rubbed them and tried to stretch out my shoes. She did everything she should have done and more - and I ignored it because it wasn't the way I had pictured it in my head.
I don't know what has changed, but lately AJ and I have been becoming closer. The more I analyse it, the more I think it is because she is becoming more emotional and open. A bit more like me. I am both elated and guilt ridden by our new found friendship - and worried that it could end or change at any moment. Living without it before was difficult, living without it now that I realise how wonderful it is would be unbearable. I get giddy waiting for our Tuesday night phone calls, but try hard to rein myself in so she can't see my excitement. There are times when I feel exploitative, as though I am taking advantage of her vulnerability right now and using it to fulfill this happy little sister dream I always had. But then other times, when I can hear how genuine she sounds when she tells me how she hates to miss my calls or when she sends me notes to say she loves me for no reason, I think I can relax into this new found relationship for good.
AJ hates it when I address her directly in this blog, in fact she hates it when I write about her at all. I just needed someone to know that while I never got my Beaches moment, never got to give her a facial or gossip with her about her first kiss, I really think what we have ended up with is so much better. We have both grown into ourselves on our own, and yet we still feel pulled to each other. I have always loved my sister because she was my sister, but I can't tell you how much better it is to be able to love her as a woman and a friend.
So with that said, and knowing that she will likely punish me for it later, I dedicate this song to my beautiful, strong, hilarious, intelligent, compassionate and loyal sister AJ. It's not Wind Beneath my Wings - that would be far too predictable and not at all you. I have already told you you're my hero - but there's a few things I have left out along the way. I promise to keep trying to fill in the gaps the best I can.
AJ was the most beautiful baby I have ever seen, perfectly formed and immediately adorable - not like her wrinkled and alien-looking peers. My mother loves to tell me of how I used to carry her around and tell everyone she was "my baby," and barely a photo exists of the two of us in those first three years where I am not kissing or hugging her (although she is often seen resisting). If you asked me to tell the story of our lives from my perspective, I would use those photos as a visual depiction of our relationship throughout childhood and adolescence. A big sister who was desperate to love and cuddle and mother (but only in the way she wanted) - a little sister scrambling (fighting, kicking) to stand by herself.
I have written before about the problems I had with my sister. We were such polar opposites, so adamant that we would not be alike. While I donned a tutu and danced ballet recitals in the hallway with my hair trailing elegantly down my back, AJ chopped her hair off and donned a baseball cap - introducing herself to people as my brother. When I made my first communion I reveled in the white dress and gloves - AJ wore a suit and tie. My parents, in either an amazing act of insight or as a demonstration of their lack of knowing what else to do, chose to ignore her push towards all things masculine. They never passed comment on it or indicated that it was in any way different from the norm. For years I was convinced my sister had been going through some gender identity crisis - I realise now it was probably just an attempt to be the person in our family who was not me...and to do that as loudly as possible. Eventually AJ stopped playing with matchbox cars and GI Joes. She grew her hair out and stopped telling people that when she grew up she wanted to be a boy, but she did not cease to take every action possible to be the person in our family who was not me. While I people pleased, brought home impeccable report cards and danced in ballet recitals, AJ feigned apathy to her teachers and became a sporting legend. I gleaned attention by listing accomplishments and oozing politeness, AJ made everyone laugh and held an audience in the palm of her hand while telling stories. I followed every rule to the point of the ridiculous, AJ broke them whatever chance she got. Whether we knew it or not, we were determined to be different, and with that difference came a rocky and fragile relationship that would haunt us for years to come.
What AJ perhaps didn't realise during all of this was how much I wanted her to like me. How desperate I had been for her approval. While I grinned with pride at being called brainy, pretty or polite by others, from my sister I saw it as a barrier to our relationship. I wanted to braid her hair and tell her about boys, to sit up at night talking after our parents shut the lights out. I wanted to tell her deep dark secrets that I would normally only write in my diary, and to defend her honour to anyone who dared try to do her harm. I wanted to be a big sister, in that ridiculous and romantic "ya ya sisterhood" bullshit way that people have sisters. I remember when I was about 13 I watched the movie Beaches. It was glorious, the way these two women loved each other. I cried the whole way through, reassured that even if parents split up and lovers leave and people get divorced, there would always be that one woman who would love you forever and never leave you. I decided (perhaps before then) that AJ was the only woman fit for that job. Surely your own flesh and blood would be the only person capable for such a task. After all, who better to understand me than the girl who shared every part of my girlhood? Who had the same embarrassing parent stories, who knew what it was like to live in my skin? Yes, AJ was my forever friend. The wind beneath my naive, romantic, controlling, perfectionist little wings.
And therein lies perhaps the biggest problem with our relationship. I wanted my sister to fit into my idea of sisterhood. Braid hair, don't shoot hoops. Watch girlie movies, not slasher flicks. Hug and kiss to show affection, don't hi-five or punch arms. The more she didn't fit into my little "sister" box, the more resentful I grew of our fragmented relationship. I held AJ to the same ridiculous standards to which I held myself. And she just didn't live up to them.
Problem number two, and perhaps what AJ would see as our biggest problem, is that I just couldn't stop mothering her. I was so sure something horrible was awaiting us both out there, and I no longer trusted that my parents would keep it from us. I dubbed myself my sister's protector. Just as I would work hard to ensure I raised myself out of the life I hated, I would make damn sure she came with me. On my terms. Whether she liked it or not. Cue several years of a child, less than two years older than the younger child, telling said younger child what to do/not do/say/not say/etc ad infinitum. Who wouldn't understand her rebellion against me? After all I held her to standards far stricter and higher than my parents ever held her to. Instead I watched her drift further away from me. And to make matters worse, almost as if to prove she was capable of it with anyone but me, I watched her be that heroic friend I was waiting for to almost everyone she met. The low point for me was when she, at the age of 18, told me we should just make an agreement to not ask one another to be each other's maids of honour when we got married - because she already had someone else in mind for the job.
After I left home, distance provided a bit of relief from our fighting. Eventually we even started sending each other cards and notes, but I managed to blow that too. AJ would send me some beautifully written card about how much she loved me and how she always looked up to me, and in my overzealous excitement I would call her and insist we talk about our feelings. Once again I could not let her love me in the way she was able - I needed Barbara Hershey or nothing at all! My vision clouded by a romantic notion of what I expected her to be, I couldn't see the relationship that was growing right in front of me.
Two years ago I asked AJ to be my maid of honour in spite of our previous vow. She accepted, and I repaid her by making her feel bad about not doing enough for the wedding and answering "yes" when she asked if I would've chosen my friend Colleen if she had not been my sister. In reality, I could not have picked someone better for the moments leading up to my long walk down the aisle. In the months before the wedding, AJ slaved over a scrapbook full of pictures of childhood scenes and our family. When I was waiting for the limousine to take me to the church, AJ broke my nervous silence with ridiculous jokes and held my dress while I went to the bathroom. In the car, when my feet hurt, she and my father rubbed them and tried to stretch out my shoes. She did everything she should have done and more - and I ignored it because it wasn't the way I had pictured it in my head.
I don't know what has changed, but lately AJ and I have been becoming closer. The more I analyse it, the more I think it is because she is becoming more emotional and open. A bit more like me. I am both elated and guilt ridden by our new found friendship - and worried that it could end or change at any moment. Living without it before was difficult, living without it now that I realise how wonderful it is would be unbearable. I get giddy waiting for our Tuesday night phone calls, but try hard to rein myself in so she can't see my excitement. There are times when I feel exploitative, as though I am taking advantage of her vulnerability right now and using it to fulfill this happy little sister dream I always had. But then other times, when I can hear how genuine she sounds when she tells me how she hates to miss my calls or when she sends me notes to say she loves me for no reason, I think I can relax into this new found relationship for good.
AJ hates it when I address her directly in this blog, in fact she hates it when I write about her at all. I just needed someone to know that while I never got my Beaches moment, never got to give her a facial or gossip with her about her first kiss, I really think what we have ended up with is so much better. We have both grown into ourselves on our own, and yet we still feel pulled to each other. I have always loved my sister because she was my sister, but I can't tell you how much better it is to be able to love her as a woman and a friend.
So with that said, and knowing that she will likely punish me for it later, I dedicate this song to my beautiful, strong, hilarious, intelligent, compassionate and loyal sister AJ. It's not Wind Beneath my Wings - that would be far too predictable and not at all you. I have already told you you're my hero - but there's a few things I have left out along the way. I promise to keep trying to fill in the gaps the best I can.
Tuesday 16 September 2008
From this Blog to God's Ears?
Disclaimer: This blog is about religion. Maybe not religion, perhaps more about faith and power and families and all of the baggage that comes along with religion. I just think all things God need a warning these days. The fact that I believe the previous statement probably says more about how I feel about religion than this blog ever could...
I was baptised and raised Roman Catholic. The degree to which this was a factor in my life varied based on my mother's constantly changing attitude towards her faith. But regardless of whether my mother always adhered to the Catholic teachings, the power of the church was ever-present in our lives. My mother considered the family priest, Father Joe, one of her closest friends and confidants. When Father Joe told my mom to do something - she did it. When my mother and father(then 17 and 19, respectively) attended pre-marriage meetings with Father Joe he explained the evils of sex before marriage - my father was promptly cut off. When mom and dad could not decide on a name for me, Father Joe was enlisted and helped my mother choose a name. Father Joe baptised all three of my mother's children and both my sister and I made our first communions and reconciliations under his guidance. We were sent to Catholic school in spite of my parents having no realistic way of paying for it. My mother saw the church as her support, her beacon of hope. When she was feeling lost and vulnerable, we would visit Father Joe - sometimes staying for days at a time with him in the rectory. When my mother needed money, Father Joe sent her some. When my mother locked herself in the bathroom and took an overdose of prescription pain pills, she called Father Joe for her last rites.
Fortunately Father Joe called the ambulance instead.
Given my background, it was no real surprise to me that telling my mother we were not planning on Christening our unborn baby in the Catholic church would lead to a certain level of disappointment. It was the defensive, enraged and irrational reaction that I was more shocked by. My mother used all manner of emotional devices to convince me I was making a terrible mistake - including the implication that my faithless child might grow up to be a sociopath with no concept of right and wrong. She pleaded with me to recognise the good of the church in spite of its flaws, to remember that Catholicism had to be a good thing, because Father Joe had been sucha good man. She even insisted that she would have the baby christened in spite of me, that it was too important to leave to one of my whims. She suggested politely that I find some other way to be "defiant" against cultural norms, one with less significant repercussions for my family.
Being raised in the church myself, I know the power that the institution has over its followers. My mother has been told of purgatory - of the need to erase original sin that follows each of us into this world. I would be lying if I said the same nagging fear hadn't crept into my own mind at one moment or another. But instead of being led by that fear, I have been angered by it. Frustrated in a church that would imply that my child's soul could suffer at my failure to adhere to their rituals, furious at the emotional blackmail that seems to be behind the act - an attempt to ensure future generations of followers and patrons. In fact, there are a lot of things about the Catholic church I get angry about if I think about them too much.
I'll take this opportunity to say that this will NOT be a church bashing session. Catholicism has given me many great things in my life. There is no doubt that my strong sense of right and wrong was a product of my mother's religious belief. Father Joe, the man I describe above, instilled in me a great sense of hope and and love - and let's not forget that he saved my mother's life. Another priest, the University Chaplain and the man who married my husband and I - Father Rob - helped me regain a sense of self-worth when I was 20 years old that I otherwise may have taken years to find. He also gave me the words that acted as my greatest comfort during the miscarriage that nearly ate me alive 6 months ago. No, I would never claim that no good can come from Catholicism or from any organised faith.
But I can recognise the bad as well. I can tally up the things I think and feel - and know - and I can weigh them against what the church tries to enforce. And the majority of the time, I just can't balance them. I can't get past the church as a power structure, one that has grave potential to inhibit and exploit. The same girl that felt loved and cared for by a priest was also petrified of hell and the devil, afraid to even think "bad" thoughts in case divine retribution were to follow. Although Father Rob helped that young woman regain some sense of self-worth, much of that self-worth would not have been lost if it were not for the guilt she had amassed over not being perfect in they eyes of her family, and especially of God. I have listened to sermons and homilies which condemned the lifestyles of people I loved. I listened to my Grandmother (the most faithful person I have ever known) tell of her excommunication from the church after divorcing the man who abandoned her and their three children. I have watched my mother put money she could not afford to sacrifice into the collection basket, only to look around at the grandeur of the church and the size of the rectory. I have sat in silence while an institution I supported openly and unapolegetically discriminated against my gender, where abusers of children were covered for and excused.
Finally, after years of turning a blind (faithful) eye to these offences, I began to ask the questions which led me to my decision. Would I tolerate these abuses from anyone else? If I had a friend who was openly homophobic, who was bigoted against other faiths and harshly judgemental of those who did not adhere to the same moral codes as them - how long would I put up with such a friend? If a school hired teachers who went on to abuse children in their care, and then covered for and refused to fire those teachers - would I continue to send my children to that school? Would I not be demanding the punishment of all involved in that cover up? If a charity asked me for donations to help sustain itself, and then used my money to buy over-the-top, fancy new offices while calling for its patrons to live humble and simple lives - would I still give them money? If a company used scare tactics and manipulation of truth to convince me and my loved ones to buy their products, would I not boycott their goods and try to find another provider?
Basically, if the Catholic church had been anything other than the Catholic church, I would have held it to account. I don't support people, politicians, businesses or organisations whose practices are at odds with my morals and beliefs - why do I continue to be a member of a church whose practices are at odds with my morals and beliefs? When my children are born, I like to think I will go out of my way to keep those kind of negative influences out of their lives. Why then should one of my first acts as a parent be to commit them to a life of serving a church which may well be that same kind of influence? It no longer makes sense to me, and I can no longer justify it as a rational act.
I am not saying that I don't want to teach my children to have faith in something greater than themselves and other human beings. I remember very well that believing in God and Heaven was a great comfort to me as a child. My mother once told me that God has a plan for everyone. I loved believing this, feeling like I had some great purpose to fulfill. I felt safer with the idea that God was looking out for me and my family, reassured that those who I loved were not lost forever when they left this Earth. Praying gave me a sense of control over things against which I felt powerless, and faith gave me strength and confidence at so many times in my life. I have not ever been ready or willing to let go of those things, nor have I ever felt I had evidence against the existence of God - whatever form he/she/it might take. I want my children to know those comforts, I want them to have faith and hope.
I just can't allow them to be made to feel like that faith and hope is dependent on their conformity to a rigid set of man-made rules and regulations.
So you see my dilemma. A modern dilemma, I suppose, and one which I assume is not new or surprising to any of you. How do you raise hopeful and faithful children outside the confines of a church community? How do you find a faith community that works for you and your family? Or is this all the same as telling my children there is an Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy or Santa Clause? Should I let them learn the realities of life without the safety net of God and Heaven and all things hopeful?
When it was just me, I was happy to take a lifetime to answer this question. Now I feel like I need a five month crash course.
Monday 8 September 2008
They F***k You Up... But By God You Help Them Sometimes
Please pardon the absence. Life lately has been a mess of family visits, catching up at work, and trying to get through the day without at least one nap. And frankly, after my last post (you remember, my declaration of hope for family relations?), I was embarrassed to have to chronicle the reality of my mother's trip to Ireland. It was a visit that raised within me questions I had asked before so many times, but been afraid to answer for fear of knowing the truth.
Do people have the capacity for real change? And if they do, can the people they are closest to ever recognise and accept that change?
I often pride myself on the changes I have made over the years. Once obsessed with traditional success at any cost, I have begun to recognise the value of non-material things in life and to seek those successes instead. Once the owner of a short fuse that could be ignited with little more than an awkward glance - I now work hard to maintain a cool and calm demeanor when dealing with difficult situations. There are many more, just as there were once so many things I hated about myself. Slowly, and deliberately (and frankly, not without help from some unlikely sources) I have begun to weed out those parts of me of which I had been ashamed - the ultimate goal of "better person-hood" looming there in front of me, my carrot on a stick.
Max, my husband, once made the argument that perhaps I had not changed anything other than the way I looked at myself - that maybe I wasn't so bad to begin with. I love him for the suggestion that I might have been less flawed than I had thought, but at the same time resented his failure to acknowledge my hard work. But with my family, it is a different story. I regularly accuse them (both verbally and otherwise) of not seeing me as I am now, of refusing to look past that emotionally unstable 16 year-old who hated herself and most others around her. They regularly accuse me of being ashamed of them and of where I came from. Is this the penalty for self-improvement? Am I actually ashamed of the people who produced the person I have tried to hard to change?
It is a mess of unanswerable questions, and sometimes I think I should get some real problems so I would have less time to think about such tosh. I mean, the fact that a leading psychologist wrote a book about parents entitled They Fuck You Up, inspired by a Larkin poem of the same subject is an indicator that I am not alone in my boo-hooing about the life I was given and the people who gave it to me. But here is where I implore you, just as I spent a week imploring my mother, to understand that is NOT what I am concerned with.
My life was my life, it has made me who I am. I am not a boring person, I am not a cruel person, I am not a stupid person, I am not a lonely or socially incapable person. I have a roof over my head, a life-partner I love, and a family on the way. What I need now is to somehow make this horrible cycle of fighting and resentment stop once and for all, to make my family see that I don't hate them and make my mother see that I don't carry around a big ball of angry because she screwed up occasionally when I was younger.
What I DO need her to acknowledge is that sometimes she screws up NOW. When I see her, I need her to see past all of the traits she hates about herself that she inadvertently handed on to me - and to instead see the things she managed to spare me in spite of suffering them herself for so many years. I need her to stop expecting me to hate her, to blame her and to fight against her regardless of what my actual responses might be. Why do we need to stay trapped in this cycle of who did what to who, or who hates who more? Why can't the decisions I have made be about me, and not be some rebellion against her?
When I saw my mother in the airport on that first day, the first thing I thought to myself was that she was more beautiful than I had remembered. I was watching her sitting there talking to my brother, oblivious to the approaching audience, and I thought "I can't believe I had forgotten how pretty she is." When I hugged her I smelled that familiar smell of cigarettes and original flavour chewing gum, and marveled for the millionth time at the softness of her hair and face in spite of years of dying her locks and refusing to invest in proper face cream. I reveled in her laugh, the way I often do, surprised that even now I could be startled by the loudness of her cackle juxtaposed with the tiny-ness of her voice. Standing in front her, nearly 28 years old and soon to be a mother myself, I was amazed by my own mother's youth - by her green corduroys and trendy brown Keds. It was so easy to forget in that moment that this 5'4" woman, with wrists and hands as small as a child's, had been through so much. Even harder to remember how much she had frightened me, and how large and overpowering she had seemed for so many years. But most of all I was surprised that after years of noticing only how many wrinkles she had gained, or her neglectful lack of make-up, or the fillings in her teeth, I could finally see how beautiful she was - and had always been.
This paragraph may seem oddly placed, but my perceptions of beauty have always been a tell-tale sign of my emotions. I have never been able to look at someone whose behaviour upset me and see them as beautiful. Likewise, many people in my life have grown more and more beautiful to me as we have grown closer. When I first met Max, I shrugged off his advances at first because I simply did not find him attractive. I find that almost impossible to believe now, nearly seven years later, as when I look at him I can't believe my luck that someone so handsome and kind wasn't snapped up before I came around. When I was a child I thought my mother was the most beautiful woman alive. My beliefs were not based on maternal adoration alone - no, my mother was a stunningly beautiful woman. My father, who can barely stand to be in the same room as my mother, would still say that my mother's beauty was unrivaled when they met. During the worst of my mother's temper, I would never have seen the tiny bird-like frame she actually possessed. She seemed larger than life, her teeth a bit sharper and her eyes a bit wilder. But after my mother left, I began to notice my mother's diminutive stature more and more. I did not as cute, as many of her male suitors did, but as meek and frail. While others insisted she had the face of a teenager, I thought she had too many wrinkles for her age. I thought her lips were too thin and that she looked almost pitiable when she walked into a room. I dreaded being told I looked like her, for I was far more proud of my tall frame and strong jawline which I had inherited from my father. I couldn't see her as beautiful, delicate or enviable, because I couldn't afford to see her that way. I needed her to be weak, or cruel, or pitiful, or unkind, or crazy - because then it would be OK for me to resent her the way I did.
So when I saw her in the airport and thought she was beautiful, I knew I had forgiven her. I knew I was ready to see her as a person, better still as a person who I would want to be around. I thought that maybe, just maybe, all those years of going to her and wishing that she would be the mother I needed and getting rebuffed were over. Now we could understand each other, respect each other, like each other.
But life is life, and not a feelgood summer flick.
We danced around each other for a while, me restraining my "tone" as much as possible, attempting to bite my tongue when she said something critical or interrupted what I was saying to point out the nearest floral display. If she were writing this I am sure she could tell you of many things she bit her tongue about, or many annoying habits which I possess that she had to ignore politely. But it wasn't long before the facade was broken, and frustrations became outbursts. I became convinced that she was trying to turn my brother against me, she became convinced that my husband hated her because I told him to. There were tears, mostly mine (as my mother rarely cries publicly), there was pleading for her to see my point of view. There were harsh words and condemnations of personality traits - blame allocated to each other for our failure to get along. There was even an implication or two that I would undoubtedly not be the best mother I could if I didn't change certain things about myself. We smoothed things over enough to get through the trip, but in spite of my several attempts at long and honest heart-to-hearts, no resolution was reached.
So at the end of her visit I was left feeling the way I often feel after seeing my mother. Drained. Sad. Relieved that she's gone. Guilty. Ungrateful. Emotionally unstable. Etc. It's not entirely her fault. It's not entirely my fault. It's not her mother's fault or her father's fault, or my father's fault or my father's mother's fault. We're just human, and I just don't know if either of us is ever going to be willing to change enough to be the person the other one needs us to be - or to accept each other for who we are.
Any pointers, sane people?
Do people have the capacity for real change? And if they do, can the people they are closest to ever recognise and accept that change?
I often pride myself on the changes I have made over the years. Once obsessed with traditional success at any cost, I have begun to recognise the value of non-material things in life and to seek those successes instead. Once the owner of a short fuse that could be ignited with little more than an awkward glance - I now work hard to maintain a cool and calm demeanor when dealing with difficult situations. There are many more, just as there were once so many things I hated about myself. Slowly, and deliberately (and frankly, not without help from some unlikely sources) I have begun to weed out those parts of me of which I had been ashamed - the ultimate goal of "better person-hood" looming there in front of me, my carrot on a stick.
Max, my husband, once made the argument that perhaps I had not changed anything other than the way I looked at myself - that maybe I wasn't so bad to begin with. I love him for the suggestion that I might have been less flawed than I had thought, but at the same time resented his failure to acknowledge my hard work. But with my family, it is a different story. I regularly accuse them (both verbally and otherwise) of not seeing me as I am now, of refusing to look past that emotionally unstable 16 year-old who hated herself and most others around her. They regularly accuse me of being ashamed of them and of where I came from. Is this the penalty for self-improvement? Am I actually ashamed of the people who produced the person I have tried to hard to change?
It is a mess of unanswerable questions, and sometimes I think I should get some real problems so I would have less time to think about such tosh. I mean, the fact that a leading psychologist wrote a book about parents entitled They Fuck You Up, inspired by a Larkin poem of the same subject is an indicator that I am not alone in my boo-hooing about the life I was given and the people who gave it to me. But here is where I implore you, just as I spent a week imploring my mother, to understand that is NOT what I am concerned with.
My life was my life, it has made me who I am. I am not a boring person, I am not a cruel person, I am not a stupid person, I am not a lonely or socially incapable person. I have a roof over my head, a life-partner I love, and a family on the way. What I need now is to somehow make this horrible cycle of fighting and resentment stop once and for all, to make my family see that I don't hate them and make my mother see that I don't carry around a big ball of angry because she screwed up occasionally when I was younger.
What I DO need her to acknowledge is that sometimes she screws up NOW. When I see her, I need her to see past all of the traits she hates about herself that she inadvertently handed on to me - and to instead see the things she managed to spare me in spite of suffering them herself for so many years. I need her to stop expecting me to hate her, to blame her and to fight against her regardless of what my actual responses might be. Why do we need to stay trapped in this cycle of who did what to who, or who hates who more? Why can't the decisions I have made be about me, and not be some rebellion against her?
When I saw my mother in the airport on that first day, the first thing I thought to myself was that she was more beautiful than I had remembered. I was watching her sitting there talking to my brother, oblivious to the approaching audience, and I thought "I can't believe I had forgotten how pretty she is." When I hugged her I smelled that familiar smell of cigarettes and original flavour chewing gum, and marveled for the millionth time at the softness of her hair and face in spite of years of dying her locks and refusing to invest in proper face cream. I reveled in her laugh, the way I often do, surprised that even now I could be startled by the loudness of her cackle juxtaposed with the tiny-ness of her voice. Standing in front her, nearly 28 years old and soon to be a mother myself, I was amazed by my own mother's youth - by her green corduroys and trendy brown Keds. It was so easy to forget in that moment that this 5'4" woman, with wrists and hands as small as a child's, had been through so much. Even harder to remember how much she had frightened me, and how large and overpowering she had seemed for so many years. But most of all I was surprised that after years of noticing only how many wrinkles she had gained, or her neglectful lack of make-up, or the fillings in her teeth, I could finally see how beautiful she was - and had always been.
This paragraph may seem oddly placed, but my perceptions of beauty have always been a tell-tale sign of my emotions. I have never been able to look at someone whose behaviour upset me and see them as beautiful. Likewise, many people in my life have grown more and more beautiful to me as we have grown closer. When I first met Max, I shrugged off his advances at first because I simply did not find him attractive. I find that almost impossible to believe now, nearly seven years later, as when I look at him I can't believe my luck that someone so handsome and kind wasn't snapped up before I came around. When I was a child I thought my mother was the most beautiful woman alive. My beliefs were not based on maternal adoration alone - no, my mother was a stunningly beautiful woman. My father, who can barely stand to be in the same room as my mother, would still say that my mother's beauty was unrivaled when they met. During the worst of my mother's temper, I would never have seen the tiny bird-like frame she actually possessed. She seemed larger than life, her teeth a bit sharper and her eyes a bit wilder. But after my mother left, I began to notice my mother's diminutive stature more and more. I did not as cute, as many of her male suitors did, but as meek and frail. While others insisted she had the face of a teenager, I thought she had too many wrinkles for her age. I thought her lips were too thin and that she looked almost pitiable when she walked into a room. I dreaded being told I looked like her, for I was far more proud of my tall frame and strong jawline which I had inherited from my father. I couldn't see her as beautiful, delicate or enviable, because I couldn't afford to see her that way. I needed her to be weak, or cruel, or pitiful, or unkind, or crazy - because then it would be OK for me to resent her the way I did.
So when I saw her in the airport and thought she was beautiful, I knew I had forgiven her. I knew I was ready to see her as a person, better still as a person who I would want to be around. I thought that maybe, just maybe, all those years of going to her and wishing that she would be the mother I needed and getting rebuffed were over. Now we could understand each other, respect each other, like each other.
But life is life, and not a feelgood summer flick.
We danced around each other for a while, me restraining my "tone" as much as possible, attempting to bite my tongue when she said something critical or interrupted what I was saying to point out the nearest floral display. If she were writing this I am sure she could tell you of many things she bit her tongue about, or many annoying habits which I possess that she had to ignore politely. But it wasn't long before the facade was broken, and frustrations became outbursts. I became convinced that she was trying to turn my brother against me, she became convinced that my husband hated her because I told him to. There were tears, mostly mine (as my mother rarely cries publicly), there was pleading for her to see my point of view. There were harsh words and condemnations of personality traits - blame allocated to each other for our failure to get along. There was even an implication or two that I would undoubtedly not be the best mother I could if I didn't change certain things about myself. We smoothed things over enough to get through the trip, but in spite of my several attempts at long and honest heart-to-hearts, no resolution was reached.
So at the end of her visit I was left feeling the way I often feel after seeing my mother. Drained. Sad. Relieved that she's gone. Guilty. Ungrateful. Emotionally unstable. Etc. It's not entirely her fault. It's not entirely my fault. It's not her mother's fault or her father's fault, or my father's fault or my father's mother's fault. We're just human, and I just don't know if either of us is ever going to be willing to change enough to be the person the other one needs us to be - or to accept each other for who we are.
Any pointers, sane people?
Wednesday 6 August 2008
Repressed Memories
Do you trust your memory? I don't mean trust your memory in the sense of trusting that you'll not forget to pick up milk on the way home - I mean trust that the things you remember are true? That they actually happened the way you see them replayed in your mind? I have often wondered if I am a revisionist, if I simply remember things the way I want or need to remember them in order to justify this behaviour or that fear in my life. So many of the major events in my life are surrounded by contradictory viewpoints - my mother remembers it one way, my sister another way, both of them the opposite of what I remember. Historically I have been quick to doubt myself (although quietly, and without showing them I have any skepticism about my version of events), but now I wonder if it is simply something we all do. Are none of us completely right? Is the truth somewhere in between our individual versions? Do we simply shut out the things we cannot face?
My memory is long and detailed, full of sensory images that queue the vision each time I encounter that smell/sight/sound again. The first memory I have is from when I was two years old. I was sitting in a tiny bedroom on my Aunt's knee. I had a fever, I was eating a bag of potato chips. Mum and Dad were fighting - just out of sight but within earshot. Mom is angry because I was sick and Dad wants to take me to his mother's house to fix it. My mother wants to know why Dad doesn't trust her judgement, Dad thinks she is silly and just wants a second opinion. Eventually an ultimatum of some kind is handed out, and Dad leaves. It occurs to me that Dad is gone forever, and that this fight is all my fault. My mother comes in and shouts at my Aunt for giving me chips.
I have always remembered this day. Years later, when I was thirteen, I would ask my Aunt about that night. I told her the story and she was shocked at how much I knew. It turns out this was the fight that eventually ended my parents marriage, they were divorced within a year. There were things I left out - my sister was there too, only six months old and laying in a bassinet nearby. There were things I added in - I always remembered it taking place in a house we didn't live in until several years later. I am fairly certain the emotions I "experienced" in the memory were ones I inserted later in life, once I had a greater understanding of what that moment in time had meant. None the less it taught me to trust my memory, to count it as one of my strengths.
I leaned on that confidence in years to come, when the many battles between my mother and I raged on into a full blown war. She countered every memory I threw at her, challenging my interpretation of every argument and event down to what I had for breakfast that morning. I remained steadfast in my self-belief. I would threaten her with tape-recorders, convinced that if I taped these conversations and played them back to her I would be vindicated and she would be shamed into confession. "I don't remember that" became my mother's defense, the weapon of choice in her arsenal. Because if she couldn't remember it, it never happened. Eventually she started to break me.
After all, I lied all the time.
My days at school were filled with elaborate stories, little exaggerations to cover the absence of normality occurring within my home life. Why don't I have to pay for school lunches? [Because my family was poor and we got free lunches] Because I am so silly with money that my mother comes in every week and pre-pays my lunches, of course! What does my mom do for a living? [Cleans houses and waits tables] She runs her own business, but I don't really understand what she does. What's that? My mother cleans your parents' house? [Of course she does, this is a small fucking town and all of you rich kids have parents who hire housekeepers] Oh she was helping out a friend who was sick for a while, she is really nice like that.
As I got older, and the problems at home became more serious (and more embarrassing for a teenager), the lies became more elaborate. After all, I was now covering for a suicidal mother, daily panic attacks and a burgeoning eating disorder. I could barely keep up with the fibs myself anymore. How could I trust my memory now?
My sister has always used her memory differently - by ignoring it, pretending it doesn't exist. For years she managed to shut out an entire portion of her youth and teenage life. The times I looked to her for back up were riddled with her parroting my mother's "I don't remembers" as though they were in on this great scheme together. It maddened me, pushed a distance between us that I couldn't (wouldn't) explain for many years. Soon my "memory" became a liability, the thing the family could cling to in order to prove I was negative, that I thought I was better than them. My falsification of childhood events were simply the result of some emotional defect, an odd need to justify the cold space between me and my loved-ones.
That's how I saw it, anyway.
But recently, the tides have been turning. My most recent confrontation with my mother resulted in an apology - her first apology (as far as I can remember). For the first time she acknowledged the wrongs, admitted to them, and admitted the effect they must have had on me. It was liberating, frightening, confusing. Next, AJ began to accept my versions of events. Once again I was left standing, mouth agape, wondering whether I had won or lost - or why and when I started fighting in the first place.
This validation is a double edged sword - I feel relieved that I can trust myself again, hopeful for the future of these relationships in my life. Yet at the same time there is this guilt. Why couldn't I have just let it go? My new and infantile experience with motherhood has opened my eyes to the panic and scope for disaster that being a parent brings. My poor mother - just a child when I was born, sick for most of her adult life, abandoned by everyone she loved - why couldn't I have just forgiven her without making her admit to all those mistakes? And AJ - why did I need her to re-live all that pain with me? Why could I not just be happy that she couldn't remember the things I had tried my whole life to forget?
I never anticipated the day when my family would see me as right, as having figured it out before them. I had grown accustomed to my role as the drama-queen, the black sheep. But now that time is here, where do we go with it? How do we start to climb over that vast chasm I have worked so hard to widen over the years?
I don't know, really. What I do know is that standing here, looking out to them from this precipice, I am petrified. But I am also excited, eager, and ready to embrace the family that I have always loved so much but have been too afraid to let love me.
My memory is long and detailed, full of sensory images that queue the vision each time I encounter that smell/sight/sound again. The first memory I have is from when I was two years old. I was sitting in a tiny bedroom on my Aunt's knee. I had a fever, I was eating a bag of potato chips. Mum and Dad were fighting - just out of sight but within earshot. Mom is angry because I was sick and Dad wants to take me to his mother's house to fix it. My mother wants to know why Dad doesn't trust her judgement, Dad thinks she is silly and just wants a second opinion. Eventually an ultimatum of some kind is handed out, and Dad leaves. It occurs to me that Dad is gone forever, and that this fight is all my fault. My mother comes in and shouts at my Aunt for giving me chips.
I have always remembered this day. Years later, when I was thirteen, I would ask my Aunt about that night. I told her the story and she was shocked at how much I knew. It turns out this was the fight that eventually ended my parents marriage, they were divorced within a year. There were things I left out - my sister was there too, only six months old and laying in a bassinet nearby. There were things I added in - I always remembered it taking place in a house we didn't live in until several years later. I am fairly certain the emotions I "experienced" in the memory were ones I inserted later in life, once I had a greater understanding of what that moment in time had meant. None the less it taught me to trust my memory, to count it as one of my strengths.
I leaned on that confidence in years to come, when the many battles between my mother and I raged on into a full blown war. She countered every memory I threw at her, challenging my interpretation of every argument and event down to what I had for breakfast that morning. I remained steadfast in my self-belief. I would threaten her with tape-recorders, convinced that if I taped these conversations and played them back to her I would be vindicated and she would be shamed into confession. "I don't remember that" became my mother's defense, the weapon of choice in her arsenal. Because if she couldn't remember it, it never happened. Eventually she started to break me.
After all, I lied all the time.
My days at school were filled with elaborate stories, little exaggerations to cover the absence of normality occurring within my home life. Why don't I have to pay for school lunches? [Because my family was poor and we got free lunches] Because I am so silly with money that my mother comes in every week and pre-pays my lunches, of course! What does my mom do for a living? [Cleans houses and waits tables] She runs her own business, but I don't really understand what she does. What's that? My mother cleans your parents' house? [Of course she does, this is a small fucking town and all of you rich kids have parents who hire housekeepers] Oh she was helping out a friend who was sick for a while, she is really nice like that.
As I got older, and the problems at home became more serious (and more embarrassing for a teenager), the lies became more elaborate. After all, I was now covering for a suicidal mother, daily panic attacks and a burgeoning eating disorder. I could barely keep up with the fibs myself anymore. How could I trust my memory now?
My sister has always used her memory differently - by ignoring it, pretending it doesn't exist. For years she managed to shut out an entire portion of her youth and teenage life. The times I looked to her for back up were riddled with her parroting my mother's "I don't remembers" as though they were in on this great scheme together. It maddened me, pushed a distance between us that I couldn't (wouldn't) explain for many years. Soon my "memory" became a liability, the thing the family could cling to in order to prove I was negative, that I thought I was better than them. My falsification of childhood events were simply the result of some emotional defect, an odd need to justify the cold space between me and my loved-ones.
That's how I saw it, anyway.
But recently, the tides have been turning. My most recent confrontation with my mother resulted in an apology - her first apology (as far as I can remember). For the first time she acknowledged the wrongs, admitted to them, and admitted the effect they must have had on me. It was liberating, frightening, confusing. Next, AJ began to accept my versions of events. Once again I was left standing, mouth agape, wondering whether I had won or lost - or why and when I started fighting in the first place.
This validation is a double edged sword - I feel relieved that I can trust myself again, hopeful for the future of these relationships in my life. Yet at the same time there is this guilt. Why couldn't I have just let it go? My new and infantile experience with motherhood has opened my eyes to the panic and scope for disaster that being a parent brings. My poor mother - just a child when I was born, sick for most of her adult life, abandoned by everyone she loved - why couldn't I have just forgiven her without making her admit to all those mistakes? And AJ - why did I need her to re-live all that pain with me? Why could I not just be happy that she couldn't remember the things I had tried my whole life to forget?
I never anticipated the day when my family would see me as right, as having figured it out before them. I had grown accustomed to my role as the drama-queen, the black sheep. But now that time is here, where do we go with it? How do we start to climb over that vast chasm I have worked so hard to widen over the years?
I don't know, really. What I do know is that standing here, looking out to them from this precipice, I am petrified. But I am also excited, eager, and ready to embrace the family that I have always loved so much but have been too afraid to let love me.
Wednesday 30 July 2008
Baby Blues?
I guess I will just write about how I have been feeling lately. In a word - obsessed. I am obsessed with this pregnancy. Every time I feel a pain or movement or wave of nausea, I analyse it. I am doing my damnedest to stay positive here, I swear I am. But I just can't relax. Monday I went for an early scan (ultrasound). They call it a "reassurance scan" to appease women who have miscarried before - let them see the heartbeat, know that everything is fine and they don't have some horrible toothed creature where there womb should be that just devours little babies up and leaves you void of the chance of carrying to term forever. Because that is what it feels like when you lose a baby - like you are some freak that can't do the one thing that every other woman on the planet can do. Like your body is betraying you, fighting against you at every turn.
Anyway, we saw the baby (I am calling it the baby, not the embryo or fetus. This is part of my positivity - get over it). It was tiny. 4.6mm long, barely any shape at all that we could see, just a little round blob next to another round blob. The silence in the room petrified me, I held my breath as I waited for someone to tell me there was no heartbeat, that the pregnancy was not viable, that my baby was lost again. But then the midwife pointed to the first little blob, the little 4.6mm long dot. It was flashing, expanding and contracting. It's heart was beating. I wept. I couldn't stop weeping so they kept having to wait until I could see again to show me the screen properly. For the first time in two weeks - no, if I am honest, it was the first time in four months - I could breathe. Baby was ok. I was ok. Everything was going to be ok.
I walked around on a high, untouchable. There was nothing anyone could do or say that could possibly take away the joy that Max and I felt on Monday afternoon. We stared at our little scan picture for hours, refusing to put it down for more than five minutes in case it suddenly ceased to exist. We were going to be parents, really. Nothing was going to take that away from us this time. Monday and Tuesday nights were free from nightmares and panic attacks (the first of their kind in more than two weeks). I smiled to myself as I sat on the bathroom floor feeling like I was going to puke, because I knew that it would all be worth it now that I had a healthy baby with a healthy heartbeat.
Then this morning, as I went on to one of those silly little baby websites for expecting mums, I read a story of a woman who had a scan at 6 weeks - healthy, scan at 8 weeks - no heartbeat. I told myself it was one woman, and that one woman was not me. I listed all of the statistics back to myself - the vast majority of women who miscarry once have healthy second pregnancies, if you hear a heartbeat at 6 weeks you are 85% sure to carry the pregnancy to term. But then the other information sunk in. The family history - my Gram's string of miscarriages. My constant problems with my reproductive system since the age of 11. Some weird notion that I am just not meant to be happy or have the things in my life that I want - so why should this be any different?
What the hell is wrong with me? Can't I just be happy and relax? If I am going to carry this baby to term, I will do it regardless of statistics or family history or my bizarre obsession with failure. I will have this baby in spite of my tendency towards stress and panic, in spite of my absent-minded consumption of cream cheese three days ago or the fact that I got my hair coloured before I knew I was pregnant. And I will do it without having to worry every moment of every day about something going terribly wrong.
I'm just not sure how, yet.
Anyway, we saw the baby (I am calling it the baby, not the embryo or fetus. This is part of my positivity - get over it). It was tiny. 4.6mm long, barely any shape at all that we could see, just a little round blob next to another round blob. The silence in the room petrified me, I held my breath as I waited for someone to tell me there was no heartbeat, that the pregnancy was not viable, that my baby was lost again. But then the midwife pointed to the first little blob, the little 4.6mm long dot. It was flashing, expanding and contracting. It's heart was beating. I wept. I couldn't stop weeping so they kept having to wait until I could see again to show me the screen properly. For the first time in two weeks - no, if I am honest, it was the first time in four months - I could breathe. Baby was ok. I was ok. Everything was going to be ok.
I walked around on a high, untouchable. There was nothing anyone could do or say that could possibly take away the joy that Max and I felt on Monday afternoon. We stared at our little scan picture for hours, refusing to put it down for more than five minutes in case it suddenly ceased to exist. We were going to be parents, really. Nothing was going to take that away from us this time. Monday and Tuesday nights were free from nightmares and panic attacks (the first of their kind in more than two weeks). I smiled to myself as I sat on the bathroom floor feeling like I was going to puke, because I knew that it would all be worth it now that I had a healthy baby with a healthy heartbeat.
Then this morning, as I went on to one of those silly little baby websites for expecting mums, I read a story of a woman who had a scan at 6 weeks - healthy, scan at 8 weeks - no heartbeat. I told myself it was one woman, and that one woman was not me. I listed all of the statistics back to myself - the vast majority of women who miscarry once have healthy second pregnancies, if you hear a heartbeat at 6 weeks you are 85% sure to carry the pregnancy to term. But then the other information sunk in. The family history - my Gram's string of miscarriages. My constant problems with my reproductive system since the age of 11. Some weird notion that I am just not meant to be happy or have the things in my life that I want - so why should this be any different?
What the hell is wrong with me? Can't I just be happy and relax? If I am going to carry this baby to term, I will do it regardless of statistics or family history or my bizarre obsession with failure. I will have this baby in spite of my tendency towards stress and panic, in spite of my absent-minded consumption of cream cheese three days ago or the fact that I got my hair coloured before I knew I was pregnant. And I will do it without having to worry every moment of every day about something going terribly wrong.
I'm just not sure how, yet.
Wednesday 16 July 2008
New beginnings
I have had a little trouble with blogging lately. Not sure if it is to do with my new found love of crochet, patchwork and jewellery making (my god, I am turning into a middle-aged housewife) or the mood swings that have been smacking me (and poor Max) over the head for the last two weeks. Maybe it was just because I didn't have anything very interesting to report. Unlike many of you, I am no good at making the ordinary interesting. My crazy life is the key to any writing of mine that can be deemed entertaining in any form, and frankly my life has ceased to be terribly crazy lately.
For which I am very grateful, believe me.
I've been getting along with my family, with my in-laws, and with Max. My recent workplace successes mean I can relax for a while and focus on the good times ahead in PhD land. I've been offered the opportunity to go on a funded research trip to Italy in October, so that takes care of my holiday for the year. The house is nearly finished and soon I'll be sleeping in my own bed again. Life is good. And when life is good, I am dull. It is perhaps all this positivity in my life that has led to what I will tell you next.
I'm pregnant again.
Am I shitting myself? Yes. Does my pulse quicken every time I feel the slightest twinge below the belly button? Yup. Do I relentlessly check the toilet roll for any visible trace of anything that may possibly look like blood every time I use the bathroom ? You betcha!
Am I possibly one of the happiest, most relieved, and most grateful women on the planet right now? Absolutely.
I can't write anymore today, I am full of baby mush and it is pretty much all I can think about. I'll save my baby-bore status for at least a few more weeks. So wish me luck, although that positive part of me says I am not going to need it. This peanut is a sticker, and I plan to see it through to the other side.
I do, however, want to take this opportunity to send all of my positive baby energy out to Xbox and MaybeBaby. Each time I open your blog I do it with bated breath and a sincere hope I'll be reading wonderful news. All the baby-making luck in the world to you. And positive energy in general to Maria, who I just know is going to come out the other side, whatever the problem.
For which I am very grateful, believe me.
I've been getting along with my family, with my in-laws, and with Max. My recent workplace successes mean I can relax for a while and focus on the good times ahead in PhD land. I've been offered the opportunity to go on a funded research trip to Italy in October, so that takes care of my holiday for the year. The house is nearly finished and soon I'll be sleeping in my own bed again. Life is good. And when life is good, I am dull. It is perhaps all this positivity in my life that has led to what I will tell you next.
I'm pregnant again.
Am I shitting myself? Yes. Does my pulse quicken every time I feel the slightest twinge below the belly button? Yup. Do I relentlessly check the toilet roll for any visible trace of anything that may possibly look like blood every time I use the bathroom ? You betcha!
Am I possibly one of the happiest, most relieved, and most grateful women on the planet right now? Absolutely.
I can't write anymore today, I am full of baby mush and it is pretty much all I can think about. I'll save my baby-bore status for at least a few more weeks. So wish me luck, although that positive part of me says I am not going to need it. This peanut is a sticker, and I plan to see it through to the other side.
I do, however, want to take this opportunity to send all of my positive baby energy out to Xbox and MaybeBaby. Each time I open your blog I do it with bated breath and a sincere hope I'll be reading wonderful news. All the baby-making luck in the world to you. And positive energy in general to Maria, who I just know is going to come out the other side, whatever the problem.
Tuesday 1 July 2008
In Good Company
I have been busy, so please excuse the long absence. The past few weeks have been wrought with stress and panic as I prepared for a seminar I knew I would pass, but could not bring myself to relax about. On the Monday morning I made it through my confirmation with flying colours, which set me up for my trip to the Netherlands with high spirits (and a bit more of that elusive confidence). I boarded the plane and arrived in a foreign country full to the brim with fear and anxiety, unsure of what to expect from a congress of seasoned academics and a city I had never even heard of.
What a fool I was.
The conference was a wonder - like summer camp for grown-ups. Imagine traveling to a foreign country and spending a week listening to people from all over the world talk about the subject you find most interesting. What a joy! And in between the sessions there were espressos at quaint canal-side cafes and three course meals on boats. I loved every moment of it.
I fell equally in love with the wondrous city of Leiden.
Full of cyclists, canals, trees, museums, windmills, fantastic architecture, and best of all - the friendliest townfolk I ever did meet. I have never been one to enjoy my own company, but in Leiden I was happy to saunter around by myself and take in the picturesque setting.
It's not Paris or Rome. There are no grand buildings or wonders of the world. But there is just something about it that feels like - for lack of a better word - home. It's beautiful and inviting, simple and elegant. It's odd, I can't even describe now what I loved about it. Perhaps those of you who have been there before can help me find the words. Those of you who have not - go. Go now! Flights into Schipol Airport are not too expensive, and it only takes 5 Euros and twenty minutes on a [very clean and efficient] train to get there.
Perhaps one of the things that made this trip so special was not the setting, or the conference, but the fact that for the very first time in my 27 years, I was alone with myself and I enjoyed it. I spent five days in mainly my own company. Sure I had the other conference delegates, and I really enjoyed my time with some of them, but I spent an awful lot more time with me. I read books, wrote an outline for a short story (which I haven't done in years), listened to music, went on a boat ride, made pitiful attempts at speaking Dutch. It was liberating.
If only it hadn't taken me 27 years to figure out that I can do things by myself.
What a fool I was.
The conference was a wonder - like summer camp for grown-ups. Imagine traveling to a foreign country and spending a week listening to people from all over the world talk about the subject you find most interesting. What a joy! And in between the sessions there were espressos at quaint canal-side cafes and three course meals on boats. I loved every moment of it.
I fell equally in love with the wondrous city of Leiden.
Full of cyclists, canals, trees, museums, windmills, fantastic architecture, and best of all - the friendliest townfolk I ever did meet. I have never been one to enjoy my own company, but in Leiden I was happy to saunter around by myself and take in the picturesque setting.
It's not Paris or Rome. There are no grand buildings or wonders of the world. But there is just something about it that feels like - for lack of a better word - home. It's beautiful and inviting, simple and elegant. It's odd, I can't even describe now what I loved about it. Perhaps those of you who have been there before can help me find the words. Those of you who have not - go. Go now! Flights into Schipol Airport are not too expensive, and it only takes 5 Euros and twenty minutes on a [very clean and efficient] train to get there.
Perhaps one of the things that made this trip so special was not the setting, or the conference, but the fact that for the very first time in my 27 years, I was alone with myself and I enjoyed it. I spent five days in mainly my own company. Sure I had the other conference delegates, and I really enjoyed my time with some of them, but I spent an awful lot more time with me. I read books, wrote an outline for a short story (which I haven't done in years), listened to music, went on a boat ride, made pitiful attempts at speaking Dutch. It was liberating.
If only it hadn't taken me 27 years to figure out that I can do things by myself.
Sunday 22 June 2008
Medical Evidence of my Taxes in Action?
Tuesday 17 June 2008
The Consequences of Language - My triumphant return to the soapbox
In my high school year book, there was a section entitled "Can you imagine...?" In it, the staff of the yearbook committee got together and came up with a way to finish that sentence for each of the graduating seniors. For example: Can you imagine...Cindy Cheerleader having a bad hair day? Or: Can you imagine...Jason Jock not playing three sports? In reality, they were often much more cruel than that. I remember one girl who had a baby junior year was immortalised with ...as a nun? at the end of her sentence. Anyway, my senior yearbook read Can you imagine [Fate's Granddaughter]...without an opinion? I was quite proud of it at first. I hadn't realised it was meant as a dig. An insult referring to the "self-righteous know-it-all" status I had unknowingly acquired in my four years at a small town (sometimes small minded) high school. You see, back then I thought people appreciated the sharing of ideas and information, though I could make a difference somehow (I used to trumpet this as my theme song) - thought people would be grateful for stimulating debate and challenges. Silly, silly child.
It's nearly ten years later and I am still full of opinions, but go around spouting them less. I now hold stronger and deeper convictions, yet I have tried to step off my soapbox when talking about them. I am more cautious in my doling out of ideas, have learned how to soften the blow and coat the pill a bit. I'm not sure if this is a better or worse way to be. Occasionally, though, I feel unable to control myself. I still have my triggers - those things that unleash the Evangelist in me and send me on a mission to recruit non-members to my way of thinking once and for all. One of those triggers is the refusal to accept the danger of derogatory/degrading language.
I am not talking about political correctness. Not asking anyone to change women to womyn. I am just asking people to be aware of their daily discourse, and the potential it has to perpetuate ideas and stereotypes. It can be such simple things, things said in passing or in casual conversation - the things people barely even notice as controversial. Those are the most dangerous ones, because they seep into our consciousness and become part of the conversational landscape; then part of our thoughts, perceptions and finally, our actions. It's the passing racist joke that no one questions because there are "no black people in the room, so who are we offending?" It's "phwoar-ing" at a woman and looking her up and down, and expecting her to take it as a compliment. It's telling stories about a Polish family getting a house in a desirable area when a local person couldn't, with a general acceptance that local people are more entitled to that space...
I'll give you a recent example.
My friend, Catrina, went on a training course last week where the male trainer repeatedly commented on the weight and attractiveness of the females in the class. I was horrified by the stories she relayed, and even more horrified when she said no one was going to complain. I pleaded with her to say something, pointed out that he would likely continue to make other women feel uncomfortable and unwilling to attend a second day of training (and then receive a paycheck for his efforts!). But she didn't want to cause any trouble or seen to be making a fuss over nothing. "He was all talk," she added, "harmless enough really."
That night, when I had dinner with Trina and her family, the conversation led to a discussion of The Apprentice. I couldn't help but talk about how sexist Alan Sugar is and how disgusting it is that his sexism is paraded around on TV without reprisal while we all hail him as a business and reality TV hero (I have been reeling since last series and last week just put me over the edge). While everyone agreed that the female candidate was clearly stronger, they could not see the sexism in the decision. I pointed out Sugar's comment that Claire was clearly an incredibly savvy business woman, but he didn't think he could work with her because of her personality - she talked too much, always had an opinion, was generally mouthy (I am paraphrasing here). Yet weeks before he repeatedly failed to fire Michael, a man who was clearly not very clever and who was perhaps the most annoying man I had ever seen. Instead he had a funny fondness for him - saw a bit of gusto in his ability to argue. Trina's father was quick to interject.
"Here we go," he groaned. "Now we're not allowed to say that women are annoying to work with even when they are annoying to work with!" He put his fork down for emphasis. "The fact is, women are just harder to get along with in the workplace. They nag and complain, and then they want to be treated as equal. And we can't even say anything about it - because they're women!" He then went on to tell the story of his annoying female boss, and how impossible she is, and how they all think she is an overbearing, nit-picking moron.
This was all said with intermittent chuckles and a bit of light-heartedness. As if it was meant to be a bit of fun and in good humour. Everyone else at the table kind of laughed to themselves. "Ha ha. Listen to the funny sexist. Isn't sexism hilarious?" I imagined them all thinking. I tried to make a point by asking "How would you like it if I said that I don't like working with men because they never take on board any ideas except their own and they're arrogant and self-serving?" (this is, in fact, how I feel about one male colleague - not all men.) The point was missed - one of the brothers answered me with "I wouldn't care because I would know you are full of shit. That's just not true." More laughter. This family was truly hilarious.
You may think I've digressed, but in fact I am just about to reach my point.
Is it too much to think that conversations like this are exactly what have convinced Trina that it is not ok for her to complain about being sexually harassed at work? Everyone thinks it is all light and fun to make sexist/racist/ageist jokes as long as everyone knows we're joking - but we are ignoring the potential these "silly discussions" have to make these "isms" part of our psyches in such a way that they become tolerable through exposure. If your family makes jokes at the dinner table about how annoying it is when women complain in the workplace, the odds are the women at that table aren't going to feel very comfortable complaining in the workplace. If your friends all sit around and make racist jokes after a few drinks, what's to say that after a few more drinks, those jokes could be directed at a minority? If the newspapers keep telling you that black people are responsible for crime in society, aren't you more likely to be more afraid of a black person than you are a white person?
Maybe I am not making any sense. Maybe I am over-reacting. I just wish I could convince people that they need to be aware of what they say and how they say it. I don't want to live in a world where people don't feel they can say how they feel or go around panicking constantly that they've said the wrong thing - this sort of extreme reaction to the argument is often used as a rebuke when I point out the potential impact of poorly chosen discourse. It is not one way or the other - not as simple as either accept people making offensive or damaging comments under the guise of humour/news reporting/etc., or live in a oppressive regime of over-the-top political correctness. I don't expect people to be perfect (I once referred to "the natives" of Fiji in front of an African woman - she laughed for ages before telling me I should probably call them Fijians), but I do expect people to take responsibility for the stuff that comes out of their mouths, and start accepting that there is not often a lot of distance between what we say, and what we think/do.
It's nearly ten years later and I am still full of opinions, but go around spouting them less. I now hold stronger and deeper convictions, yet I have tried to step off my soapbox when talking about them. I am more cautious in my doling out of ideas, have learned how to soften the blow and coat the pill a bit. I'm not sure if this is a better or worse way to be. Occasionally, though, I feel unable to control myself. I still have my triggers - those things that unleash the Evangelist in me and send me on a mission to recruit non-members to my way of thinking once and for all. One of those triggers is the refusal to accept the danger of derogatory/degrading language.
I am not talking about political correctness. Not asking anyone to change women to womyn. I am just asking people to be aware of their daily discourse, and the potential it has to perpetuate ideas and stereotypes. It can be such simple things, things said in passing or in casual conversation - the things people barely even notice as controversial. Those are the most dangerous ones, because they seep into our consciousness and become part of the conversational landscape; then part of our thoughts, perceptions and finally, our actions. It's the passing racist joke that no one questions because there are "no black people in the room, so who are we offending?" It's "phwoar-ing" at a woman and looking her up and down, and expecting her to take it as a compliment. It's telling stories about a Polish family getting a house in a desirable area when a local person couldn't, with a general acceptance that local people are more entitled to that space...
I'll give you a recent example.
My friend, Catrina, went on a training course last week where the male trainer repeatedly commented on the weight and attractiveness of the females in the class. I was horrified by the stories she relayed, and even more horrified when she said no one was going to complain. I pleaded with her to say something, pointed out that he would likely continue to make other women feel uncomfortable and unwilling to attend a second day of training (and then receive a paycheck for his efforts!). But she didn't want to cause any trouble or seen to be making a fuss over nothing. "He was all talk," she added, "harmless enough really."
That night, when I had dinner with Trina and her family, the conversation led to a discussion of The Apprentice. I couldn't help but talk about how sexist Alan Sugar is and how disgusting it is that his sexism is paraded around on TV without reprisal while we all hail him as a business and reality TV hero (I have been reeling since last series and last week just put me over the edge). While everyone agreed that the female candidate was clearly stronger, they could not see the sexism in the decision. I pointed out Sugar's comment that Claire was clearly an incredibly savvy business woman, but he didn't think he could work with her because of her personality - she talked too much, always had an opinion, was generally mouthy (I am paraphrasing here). Yet weeks before he repeatedly failed to fire Michael, a man who was clearly not very clever and who was perhaps the most annoying man I had ever seen. Instead he had a funny fondness for him - saw a bit of gusto in his ability to argue. Trina's father was quick to interject.
"Here we go," he groaned. "Now we're not allowed to say that women are annoying to work with even when they are annoying to work with!" He put his fork down for emphasis. "The fact is, women are just harder to get along with in the workplace. They nag and complain, and then they want to be treated as equal. And we can't even say anything about it - because they're women!" He then went on to tell the story of his annoying female boss, and how impossible she is, and how they all think she is an overbearing, nit-picking moron.
This was all said with intermittent chuckles and a bit of light-heartedness. As if it was meant to be a bit of fun and in good humour. Everyone else at the table kind of laughed to themselves. "Ha ha. Listen to the funny sexist. Isn't sexism hilarious?" I imagined them all thinking. I tried to make a point by asking "How would you like it if I said that I don't like working with men because they never take on board any ideas except their own and they're arrogant and self-serving?" (this is, in fact, how I feel about one male colleague - not all men.) The point was missed - one of the brothers answered me with "I wouldn't care because I would know you are full of shit. That's just not true." More laughter. This family was truly hilarious.
You may think I've digressed, but in fact I am just about to reach my point.
Is it too much to think that conversations like this are exactly what have convinced Trina that it is not ok for her to complain about being sexually harassed at work? Everyone thinks it is all light and fun to make sexist/racist/ageist jokes as long as everyone knows we're joking - but we are ignoring the potential these "silly discussions" have to make these "isms" part of our psyches in such a way that they become tolerable through exposure. If your family makes jokes at the dinner table about how annoying it is when women complain in the workplace, the odds are the women at that table aren't going to feel very comfortable complaining in the workplace. If your friends all sit around and make racist jokes after a few drinks, what's to say that after a few more drinks, those jokes could be directed at a minority? If the newspapers keep telling you that black people are responsible for crime in society, aren't you more likely to be more afraid of a black person than you are a white person?
Maybe I am not making any sense. Maybe I am over-reacting. I just wish I could convince people that they need to be aware of what they say and how they say it. I don't want to live in a world where people don't feel they can say how they feel or go around panicking constantly that they've said the wrong thing - this sort of extreme reaction to the argument is often used as a rebuke when I point out the potential impact of poorly chosen discourse. It is not one way or the other - not as simple as either accept people making offensive or damaging comments under the guise of humour/news reporting/etc., or live in a oppressive regime of over-the-top political correctness. I don't expect people to be perfect (I once referred to "the natives" of Fiji in front of an African woman - she laughed for ages before telling me I should probably call them Fijians), but I do expect people to take responsibility for the stuff that comes out of their mouths, and start accepting that there is not often a lot of distance between what we say, and what we think/do.
Note:
I have added this link to show how complicit the media often are in this. Pay attention to how they take the a woman who is being discriminated against and validate the discrimination by attacking her character. I could have linked thousands more; including this more subtle one in today's Guardian about how nurses, a profession dominated by females, are to be judged partly on how much they smile on the job.
Monday 16 June 2008
I Have Confidence! (no,seriously)
I have been a ghost of a woman these past few days. I have started to count the number of people who see me and looked surprised or ask me if I am sick - it totals 10 in the last 24 hours. I am normally a terribly vain person, the kind of woman who washes and styles her hair before going to the hair salon or puts make up on to go to the local shop. But these days I barely have the energy to wash my hair and match my socks. Instead of mascara and eyeliner, my eyes are adorned with dark circles. I have an outbreak of pimples on my chin that rivals one of an oily teenager and my make-up is standing unused on my dresser - crying out "wear me!" each time I glance in the mirror to tie my unbrushed hair back. I've had heartburn for seven days straight that will not be subdued by any amount of antacid, and I have been awake into the wee hours of the morning trying to avoid shutting off the TV and facing my own thoughts. Ladies and gentlemen - the life of a procrastinating PhD student in the weeks leading up to Confirmation.
I have always been a procrastinator. Pressure of a looming deadline has always been the thing that drives me to my best work. All-nighters and panic driven research sessions have been part of my life since I was in high school, and while it has always had a horrible effect on my poor body (not to mention the unfortunate people who have to live with me) it has never failed to produce the best work. When I work on things in drips and drabs, there always feels like something is missing. I need to give birth to something - to slave over it for hours uninterrupted and feel the immense relief when it is finished. When I pour over work for hours and days at a time, there is more fluidity to the language. The ideas seem to fit together like pieces of a puzzle instead of having the appearance of a list. It just works better.
While this may have been an acceptable strategy for smaller pieces of work, with a PhD you just can't leave things to the last minute. Writing and ideas must be shaped and reshaped - sometimes smooshed into a big ball of clay and started all over again. This has been a terrible culture shock for me, the queen of procrastination. I find myself now looking at piles of notes and "think pieces" that I have done along the way to keep myself from leaving it all to the last minute, and all I want to do is chuck it all in the bin and start over again. It's not flowing, not making sense in the way I want it to make sense. I know this material so intimately, and yet the writing on the pages seems so detached and impersonal. How can I convey 9 months of my life and passion into a six page report? That, I suppose, is part of the exercise. The most important part of research is the sharing of the results, and it deserves nine months of consistent writing and re-writing, not a few hours and a few sleepless nights at the last minute.
I will admit that part of my procrastination has been fear. What will I say? How will I say it? How do I prove my research is worthy of a PhD? How can I convince a room full of experienced academics at an international conference that what I have to say is worthy of their time and consideration? I have been paralysed with feelings of inadequacy - images of an audience of disgruntled know-it-alls asking impossible questions and shooting holes in my theory, a panel of examiners shaking their heads in disbelief that I have managed to only get so far in such a length of time. I have had moments where I have literally shut off my computer screen in a panic, afraid to look at what I have written because it feels so pitiful in the face of what is required.
But alas, just when I needed a good slap in the face and glass of cold water thrown over my head to stop me shriveling into a mess of sweat tears and panic, my lead supervisor has dragged me out of my panic and back into the world of the sane and composed.
He said my paper is the strongest he has seen in a lot of years.
Shrieks of joy and delight abound! Birds are singing in the trees again and I can see the sunshine beaming through my office window. I want to do cartwheels down the hall way and shout across the car park "I AM NOT A MORON! I AM ACTUALLY QUITE CLEVER! EVEN MY SUPERVISOR THINKS SO!" And all of this at an impromptu meeting in a coffee shop. My supervisor does not hand out compliments willy-nilly, friends. I am, in fact, referring to the same man who handed me back the draft of my last paper looking like someone had bled all over it. I honestly welled up with tears when he said it. I felt like pinching myself, and I involuntarily asked "what?" just to ensure I had not heard him wrong. And I hadn't, he said it again! And then went on to say that he is not at all concerned about my confirmation, that he believes I will pass through without incident.
Armed with this new information I feel invincible. I am finally ready to write the paper I had been afraid I was incapable of producing. Oh, what a sad little girl am I to require such validation in order to move forward. I'll not dwell on that now, though. I will simply bask in the glow of my supervisor's faith in me, and my newfound faith in myself. I, my friends, am the creator of quite a fine research project (in progress). Hurrah for me!
I have always been a procrastinator. Pressure of a looming deadline has always been the thing that drives me to my best work. All-nighters and panic driven research sessions have been part of my life since I was in high school, and while it has always had a horrible effect on my poor body (not to mention the unfortunate people who have to live with me) it has never failed to produce the best work. When I work on things in drips and drabs, there always feels like something is missing. I need to give birth to something - to slave over it for hours uninterrupted and feel the immense relief when it is finished. When I pour over work for hours and days at a time, there is more fluidity to the language. The ideas seem to fit together like pieces of a puzzle instead of having the appearance of a list. It just works better.
While this may have been an acceptable strategy for smaller pieces of work, with a PhD you just can't leave things to the last minute. Writing and ideas must be shaped and reshaped - sometimes smooshed into a big ball of clay and started all over again. This has been a terrible culture shock for me, the queen of procrastination. I find myself now looking at piles of notes and "think pieces" that I have done along the way to keep myself from leaving it all to the last minute, and all I want to do is chuck it all in the bin and start over again. It's not flowing, not making sense in the way I want it to make sense. I know this material so intimately, and yet the writing on the pages seems so detached and impersonal. How can I convey 9 months of my life and passion into a six page report? That, I suppose, is part of the exercise. The most important part of research is the sharing of the results, and it deserves nine months of consistent writing and re-writing, not a few hours and a few sleepless nights at the last minute.
I will admit that part of my procrastination has been fear. What will I say? How will I say it? How do I prove my research is worthy of a PhD? How can I convince a room full of experienced academics at an international conference that what I have to say is worthy of their time and consideration? I have been paralysed with feelings of inadequacy - images of an audience of disgruntled know-it-alls asking impossible questions and shooting holes in my theory, a panel of examiners shaking their heads in disbelief that I have managed to only get so far in such a length of time. I have had moments where I have literally shut off my computer screen in a panic, afraid to look at what I have written because it feels so pitiful in the face of what is required.
But alas, just when I needed a good slap in the face and glass of cold water thrown over my head to stop me shriveling into a mess of sweat tears and panic, my lead supervisor has dragged me out of my panic and back into the world of the sane and composed.
He said my paper is the strongest he has seen in a lot of years.
Shrieks of joy and delight abound! Birds are singing in the trees again and I can see the sunshine beaming through my office window. I want to do cartwheels down the hall way and shout across the car park "I AM NOT A MORON! I AM ACTUALLY QUITE CLEVER! EVEN MY SUPERVISOR THINKS SO!" And all of this at an impromptu meeting in a coffee shop. My supervisor does not hand out compliments willy-nilly, friends. I am, in fact, referring to the same man who handed me back the draft of my last paper looking like someone had bled all over it. I honestly welled up with tears when he said it. I felt like pinching myself, and I involuntarily asked "what?" just to ensure I had not heard him wrong. And I hadn't, he said it again! And then went on to say that he is not at all concerned about my confirmation, that he believes I will pass through without incident.
Armed with this new information I feel invincible. I am finally ready to write the paper I had been afraid I was incapable of producing. Oh, what a sad little girl am I to require such validation in order to move forward. I'll not dwell on that now, though. I will simply bask in the glow of my supervisor's faith in me, and my newfound faith in myself. I, my friends, am the creator of quite a fine research project (in progress). Hurrah for me!
Thursday 12 June 2008
The Need for a Proper Goodbye
I was at a funeral yesterday - not of anyone with whom I was close, or who I even knew very well. But she was someone very close to someone close to me, so I was there to show my support. It was terribly sad - funerals always are, I suppose. I always struggle the most with the moment when family members first lift the coffin. There is something about them bearing the physical weight of their lost loved-one in this moment of grief. As if suddenly there was a physical manifestation of the heaviness of losing someone you hold so dear.
On our way to the cemetery, Max and I talked about what we would want done with our remains after our passing. We both agreed that the thought of being put in the ground and taking up valuable countryside was unpleasant, but that it was nice for friends and family to have a place to go if they wanted to feel the presence of a lost loved-one. Really, when you think about it, the things we do to honour our deceased aren't much about them at all. It's for us - for the living. Thinking yesterday about our recent loss, I began to feel a sick sort of jealousy for the bereaved in the church. There they were, able to listen to a priest say kind words, able to weep quietly in public and receive warm embraces and words of consolation. They threw flowers and other symbols of love into a waiting grave, they were allowed to bear the physical weight of their grief for all the world to see.
After the dark day, I cried quietly in the bathroom, careful not to upset anyone. I questioned the legitimacy of my grief given the tiny lifespan of an unnamed person whom I had never met. Oh, how there is part of me that wishes I could have donned a black dress and cried over a coffin that day, surrounded by friends and family all offering warm hugs and kind whispers.
My mother told me early on that I should do something to bring closure to my loss. That I should give my unborn child a name and say goodbye. For many reasons I have avoided doing that - fear of feeling silly or being over dramatic, fear of making it too real. Yet now, two months later, I still feel unable to let go. Still crave the comfort of my grief and wish for some sort of outlet. Max and I went shopping this morning for friends who have just had a baby. Standing there amid pink ruffles and booties I thought I would be sick. Max noticed my shaking hands when I picked up a little red dress and began walking toward the counter. He put his arm around my waist to steady me and squeezed a little while I paid for the outfit and "congratulations" card. I dropped him off at work and cried for baby in the car, the first time in several weeks. Over a dress.
Two days before we were married, Max and I met the priest to go over the ceremony. Father Rob talked about having children. He said that a family is a gift, a beautiful symbol of god's grace. I am no longer a religious woman, nor can I remember exactly what Father Rob said that day, but I do remember the feeling I had in that moment. I was so moved by what he said, and so excited to begin my life. The word "grace" stayed with me. I thought it was a beautiful way to describe a child. So, yet again taking advice from my mother at which I had previously scoffed, I am naming baby. I am not going to make a memorial or weep in a church, but I will post this poem. Just remember that I am not a poet or a writer.
On our way to the cemetery, Max and I talked about what we would want done with our remains after our passing. We both agreed that the thought of being put in the ground and taking up valuable countryside was unpleasant, but that it was nice for friends and family to have a place to go if they wanted to feel the presence of a lost loved-one. Really, when you think about it, the things we do to honour our deceased aren't much about them at all. It's for us - for the living. Thinking yesterday about our recent loss, I began to feel a sick sort of jealousy for the bereaved in the church. There they were, able to listen to a priest say kind words, able to weep quietly in public and receive warm embraces and words of consolation. They threw flowers and other symbols of love into a waiting grave, they were allowed to bear the physical weight of their grief for all the world to see.
After the dark day, I cried quietly in the bathroom, careful not to upset anyone. I questioned the legitimacy of my grief given the tiny lifespan of an unnamed person whom I had never met. Oh, how there is part of me that wishes I could have donned a black dress and cried over a coffin that day, surrounded by friends and family all offering warm hugs and kind whispers.
My mother told me early on that I should do something to bring closure to my loss. That I should give my unborn child a name and say goodbye. For many reasons I have avoided doing that - fear of feeling silly or being over dramatic, fear of making it too real. Yet now, two months later, I still feel unable to let go. Still crave the comfort of my grief and wish for some sort of outlet. Max and I went shopping this morning for friends who have just had a baby. Standing there amid pink ruffles and booties I thought I would be sick. Max noticed my shaking hands when I picked up a little red dress and began walking toward the counter. He put his arm around my waist to steady me and squeezed a little while I paid for the outfit and "congratulations" card. I dropped him off at work and cried for baby in the car, the first time in several weeks. Over a dress.
Two days before we were married, Max and I met the priest to go over the ceremony. Father Rob talked about having children. He said that a family is a gift, a beautiful symbol of god's grace. I am no longer a religious woman, nor can I remember exactly what Father Rob said that day, but I do remember the feeling I had in that moment. I was so moved by what he said, and so excited to begin my life. The word "grace" stayed with me. I thought it was a beautiful way to describe a child. So, yet again taking advice from my mother at which I had previously scoffed, I am naming baby. I am not going to make a memorial or weep in a church, but I will post this poem. Just remember that I am not a poet or a writer.
Full of Grace
Faceless and formless,
the most beautiful nothing that never was.
How unimaginable that a blue line could be come a bright soul, could become three days of red
And then nothing.
If only emptiness bore visible scars,
like stretch marks.
I would wear them as badges of honour-
A memorial to a brief moment of Grace.
Where are your mourners, Grace?
Where are your flowers and wreaths?
What becomes of the mother of a blue line that became a bright soul, that became three days of red,
And then nothing?
A childless mother with no grave to weep over,
no face and name to miss.
I will remember you, though.
My moment of clarity, my glimpse of something miraculous,
My Grace.
This is my goodbye,
My love song to you.
Full of all the words I can't find,
and all the words that don't exist,
and all the sentiments that fail
to describe the love of a mother for her child.
Wednesday 4 June 2008
Even if he's not the president, he can still be my boyfriend
I was a little weepy this morning. No, I haven't dipped back in to the land of the miserable...these were tears of excitement, happiness and relief. I was weepy because I was watching Barack Obama's speech after surpassing the number of pledged delegates needed to clinch the nomination.
I started out supporting Ralph Nader, convinced that none of the mainstream parties would represent my views in politics. How could they? I'm so left I'm almost off the political map (my anarchist friends are convinced I am an anarchist in denial). At first I was taken with the idea of a woman as president, but realised quickly that I was unwilling to elect a woman at any cost - Hillary just didn't convince me that she wouldn't continue to make such disastrous decisions as suppressing trade union activity for Wal-Mart employees or getting into bed with corporations. Obama was appealing, but I was skeptical. I was wary of letting my emotions get the better of me and voting for a man I frankly was developing a bit of a crush on, instead of making my decision based on the facts. Yes, Nader was for me. Good old liberal, anti-capitalist Nader.
The the Race Speech happened.
I was blown away by Obama's frankness, his willingness to talk about things that politicians tend to dance around at all costs. Never had I seen a politician stand up and say what I was thinking without wondering if they were just feeding me a bunch of lines. He took my breath away. I resisted for a bit longer, but it was futile. Like so many others I let myself get carried away with the emotion of having someone use words like "hope" so willingly and unashamedly. I watched him during the debates, watched him speak with passion and humility. It's true, he doesn't always give direct solutions - that scared me at first. But by God, he is asking the questions! He is saying what needs to change, and it is all the same things that have left me ashamed and afraid for my country over the last several years. When he told the Tennessee GOP "lay my wife" I wanted to kiss him.
I know there is every chance that Obama's speeches are simply laced with rhetoric, that it is all a persona or that he is just a charismatic speaker with empty answers to the world's problems. But I believe him. I really believe him. Maybe it is just because I want to, because I need to feel proud of where I come from (or at least not have to defend myself to everyone who wants to pick a fight with me over American foreign policy). Whatever the case, I was giddy all day at the thought of hearing speeches like this for the next four (eight?) years.
I started out supporting Ralph Nader, convinced that none of the mainstream parties would represent my views in politics. How could they? I'm so left I'm almost off the political map (my anarchist friends are convinced I am an anarchist in denial). At first I was taken with the idea of a woman as president, but realised quickly that I was unwilling to elect a woman at any cost - Hillary just didn't convince me that she wouldn't continue to make such disastrous decisions as suppressing trade union activity for Wal-Mart employees or getting into bed with corporations. Obama was appealing, but I was skeptical. I was wary of letting my emotions get the better of me and voting for a man I frankly was developing a bit of a crush on, instead of making my decision based on the facts. Yes, Nader was for me. Good old liberal, anti-capitalist Nader.
The the Race Speech happened.
I was blown away by Obama's frankness, his willingness to talk about things that politicians tend to dance around at all costs. Never had I seen a politician stand up and say what I was thinking without wondering if they were just feeding me a bunch of lines. He took my breath away. I resisted for a bit longer, but it was futile. Like so many others I let myself get carried away with the emotion of having someone use words like "hope" so willingly and unashamedly. I watched him during the debates, watched him speak with passion and humility. It's true, he doesn't always give direct solutions - that scared me at first. But by God, he is asking the questions! He is saying what needs to change, and it is all the same things that have left me ashamed and afraid for my country over the last several years. When he told the Tennessee GOP "lay my wife" I wanted to kiss him.
I know there is every chance that Obama's speeches are simply laced with rhetoric, that it is all a persona or that he is just a charismatic speaker with empty answers to the world's problems. But I believe him. I really believe him. Maybe it is just because I want to, because I need to feel proud of where I come from (or at least not have to defend myself to everyone who wants to pick a fight with me over American foreign policy). Whatever the case, I was giddy all day at the thought of hearing speeches like this for the next four (eight?) years.
Monday 2 June 2008
On Not Getting Lost
I should undoubtedly avoid all things blog at present given my impending deadlines, but it is nice to get away from work and clear the cobwebs that sometimes interfere with reading and writing. The sun is beaming through my office window and distracting me terribly. I feel like a child stuck in school on the last days before summer vacation, staring at the clock and counting the minutes until I can go home and run through the sprinklers. At the moment, going home means eating dinner and then heading straight back to work so it holds less appeal than it used to.
I have subjected myself to a ridiculous amount of self-analysis lately and that can only lead to trouble. Emotional outbursts and misinterpretation of things people say to me abound...I have become so familiar with this cycle that I knew what was coming next before it actually happened. There is always some attempt at reinvention at this point - a frustration with what I feel I must reject and yet seem unable to control. Naturally I decided to dye my hair instead, going from a natural blonde with a bit of peroxide help to a dark red-head. Voila - new me.
How odd it is that changing something about your physical appearance can make you feel better. It is a control issue, I suppose, a way of taking charge of change in a place where you can see fast and immediate results. But it always works, if only temporarily. It is another facet of my extreme personality, my tendancy to demand radical and instant change in response to feeling discontent. In a prior life I changed location (ah how my wanderlust longs for the same reaction now), but my job and relationship have me rooted firmly in Belfast. At one time I would have changed social circles as well, leaving behind the people who know the persona I am trying to shed in an attempt to create new circles which will accommodate the new me. But alas, I am an adult now and fully aware that while we must never stop striving for self-improvement, we must also accept who we are and grow to love ourselves for it. Besides, I quite like my people and would miss them far too much if I were to set bridges alight as I have in previous years.
Really I just need to get out of my own head and back into reality. I miss the lightness of contentment - these periods of frustration and self-pity are shrinking in duration, and each time I start to crave the land of the living more quickly than the time previous. I will take this as a positive step, proof that in spite of the old cliche about the leopard changing its spots I can still progress towards better reactions and coping skills. And if change takes too long, I can always just dye those pesky spots the right colour in the meantime.
I have subjected myself to a ridiculous amount of self-analysis lately and that can only lead to trouble. Emotional outbursts and misinterpretation of things people say to me abound...I have become so familiar with this cycle that I knew what was coming next before it actually happened. There is always some attempt at reinvention at this point - a frustration with what I feel I must reject and yet seem unable to control. Naturally I decided to dye my hair instead, going from a natural blonde with a bit of peroxide help to a dark red-head. Voila - new me.
How odd it is that changing something about your physical appearance can make you feel better. It is a control issue, I suppose, a way of taking charge of change in a place where you can see fast and immediate results. But it always works, if only temporarily. It is another facet of my extreme personality, my tendancy to demand radical and instant change in response to feeling discontent. In a prior life I changed location (ah how my wanderlust longs for the same reaction now), but my job and relationship have me rooted firmly in Belfast. At one time I would have changed social circles as well, leaving behind the people who know the persona I am trying to shed in an attempt to create new circles which will accommodate the new me. But alas, I am an adult now and fully aware that while we must never stop striving for self-improvement, we must also accept who we are and grow to love ourselves for it. Besides, I quite like my people and would miss them far too much if I were to set bridges alight as I have in previous years.
Really I just need to get out of my own head and back into reality. I miss the lightness of contentment - these periods of frustration and self-pity are shrinking in duration, and each time I start to crave the land of the living more quickly than the time previous. I will take this as a positive step, proof that in spite of the old cliche about the leopard changing its spots I can still progress towards better reactions and coping skills. And if change takes too long, I can always just dye those pesky spots the right colour in the meantime.
Friday 30 May 2008
Post-Rant Remorse
Yesterday's post was more grim than I had meant it to be. It has left me feeling guilty and a little bit nauseous, but then again that could be the beer working its way out of my system after last night's gig. I had never meant to exorcise any long-laying demons, or to make my mother and father sound like demons themselves. It was just out of me before I realised what I was saying. I've thought about deleting it, but that would be contradictory to my attempt at real honesty. I am bracing myself for the fallout of AJ reading it.
Feeling much brighter today. As if he could sense I was at my wit's end, dad called me yesterday evening. He told me AJ has been calling him daily and checking in and he is working hard to assure her all is well. It was one of the nicest, longest conversations I have had with him in a long time. It gave me room to stop worrying for a while, to think about something else.
I am refocused on all things PhD as I prepare for my confirmation seminar and conference coming up next month and begin to actually face the workload I have accumulated while I worried about my in-laws, my uterus and my parents. I'm beside myself with stress, but it is a nice kind of stress because I am in control of the stressor - an uncommon and delightful feeling these days. I think I am actually starting to find my feet in this whole process, realising that I actually do have the right to be here - that it was my hard work and intellect that landed me the gig and not just some fluke twist of fate. I have started to read drafts and feel proud of what lies on the pages. Mustn't get too comfortable, though. This is no time for resting on laurels given that the upcoming seminar determines whether or not I am permitted to continue with my research.
I am growing to love academia even more than I thought I would. Hard work and incessant criticism aside, my days are also filled with long coffee breaks and meandering conversations about topics I wouldn't dare broach with most people. I am surrounded by people from a plethora of countries and backgrounds. Afternoons are packed with reading - an activity I have always regarded as my absolute favourite thing to do. It is a gift, really, loving what you do. Such a rare thing. All you have to do is push past the stress of the deadlines and the red marks and the sleepless nights spent getting in and out of bed to write down random ideas popping into your half-sleeping mind. This academic love-fest may seem out of place, but shifting my gaze on such things has just helped me put all of the other business in perspective. Permitted some distance so I could make a less emotional, irrational assessment of what lies ahead and what came before.
All of the other stuff will work itself out, it will come in time. I finished a book on Wednesday night - Douglas Coupland's Girlfriend in a Coma. There is a part of the novel that talks about how people in the world have forgotten that they are part of something, about the lack of connection. I don't feel that in my life. I feel a part of everything - maybe too much sometimes. Maybe crawling inside myself to avoid thinking about the things that hurt is a mistake, will only make things worse in the end. Being too involved is what has made me who I am, being a small part of something bigger has helped to direct and inspire me. Cutting away from the first relationships that taught me how to be a part of something will only deteriorate my ability to be a part of anything else. If that makes any sense at all. It makes sense to me, anyway. Maybe Mr. Coupland can say it better...
Feeling much brighter today. As if he could sense I was at my wit's end, dad called me yesterday evening. He told me AJ has been calling him daily and checking in and he is working hard to assure her all is well. It was one of the nicest, longest conversations I have had with him in a long time. It gave me room to stop worrying for a while, to think about something else.
I am refocused on all things PhD as I prepare for my confirmation seminar and conference coming up next month and begin to actually face the workload I have accumulated while I worried about my in-laws, my uterus and my parents. I'm beside myself with stress, but it is a nice kind of stress because I am in control of the stressor - an uncommon and delightful feeling these days. I think I am actually starting to find my feet in this whole process, realising that I actually do have the right to be here - that it was my hard work and intellect that landed me the gig and not just some fluke twist of fate. I have started to read drafts and feel proud of what lies on the pages. Mustn't get too comfortable, though. This is no time for resting on laurels given that the upcoming seminar determines whether or not I am permitted to continue with my research.
I am growing to love academia even more than I thought I would. Hard work and incessant criticism aside, my days are also filled with long coffee breaks and meandering conversations about topics I wouldn't dare broach with most people. I am surrounded by people from a plethora of countries and backgrounds. Afternoons are packed with reading - an activity I have always regarded as my absolute favourite thing to do. It is a gift, really, loving what you do. Such a rare thing. All you have to do is push past the stress of the deadlines and the red marks and the sleepless nights spent getting in and out of bed to write down random ideas popping into your half-sleeping mind. This academic love-fest may seem out of place, but shifting my gaze on such things has just helped me put all of the other business in perspective. Permitted some distance so I could make a less emotional, irrational assessment of what lies ahead and what came before.
All of the other stuff will work itself out, it will come in time. I finished a book on Wednesday night - Douglas Coupland's Girlfriend in a Coma. There is a part of the novel that talks about how people in the world have forgotten that they are part of something, about the lack of connection. I don't feel that in my life. I feel a part of everything - maybe too much sometimes. Maybe crawling inside myself to avoid thinking about the things that hurt is a mistake, will only make things worse in the end. Being too involved is what has made me who I am, being a small part of something bigger has helped to direct and inspire me. Cutting away from the first relationships that taught me how to be a part of something will only deteriorate my ability to be a part of anything else. If that makes any sense at all. It makes sense to me, anyway. Maybe Mr. Coupland can say it better...
"Sometimes I think the people to feel saddest for are people who once knew what profoundness was, but who lost or became numb to the sensation of wonder—people who closed the doors that lead us into the secret world—or who had the doors closed for them by time and neglect and decisions made in times of weakness." - Douglas Coupland
Wednesday 28 May 2008
The Needy Needing the Needy: Why I am a cold hearted bitch
I spoke to Bill today. Bill is what I call my dad when he is not acting very dad-like, when I have to play some other role in his life besides daughter. It was the first time I had spoken to him since the confrontation - which, by the way, went something like this (note - AJ had spoken to him first and done all the hard work):
Bill: Don't even start with me, I already got a lecture from your sister.
Me: I'm not lecturing you, I'm worried about you.
Bill: Blah blah blah, justifications for drug use and drinking...AJ is overreacting and always worries too much anyway...I was only 19 when you were born and I have the right to do things now I would have done when I was in my 20's if I hadn't been a father...I get up and go to work every day...My family has nothing better to do than gossip about me.
Me: Please don't patronise me by pretending I don't know my own father and changes in his behaviour...I'm worried about you...I want you to be around and sober when I have a family...I will support you through whatever you need to do but you have to own up to this...
Bill: I have already started to cut myself off from those loser friends...I'll change, everything will be fine...I don't need AA or any other support...Tell your sister to stop overreacting...I have to go now.
Me: I love you, that's why this is so important. I love you too much to just shut up and watch things get worse.
Bill: I have to go (voice breaking).
The whole conversation lasted about 20 minutes. He had become quite adept at excusing/justifying his behaviour, which scared me more than anything. Most of it was what I expected, I suppose. AJ was delighted - perhaps everything was fine? We agreed that we would just need to trust him for now.
So with that in mind I phoned him. He answered the phone, sounding groggy, and immediately explained why he sounded groggy. We exchanged pleasantries, he told me about the marching band he is a member of and how well they are doing and chatted about my house. We never mentioned the previous conversation or anything discussed therein. I was relieved it didn't come up.
I am starting to doubt myself a little, thinking about all of the things that seemed like such clear indications of his addiction now and trying to explain them in other ways. This would be easier than facing what I believe to be the truth. We all do that, really, find ways to avoid facing the truth. It will slap us all in the face eventually. It always does. You can't hide from what is real forever. Or can you?
Sometimes I look at my father's life and wonder if there is any point in doing the right thing, looking after yourself or minding your money. Bill doesn't do any of those things, yet he seems to be able to lie to himself enough to sustain some semblance of a life. Maybe I should let him live the way he wants to live. I mean, in reality, he could either hit bottom and start finally recognising the problems. Or maybe the problems are all from the point of view I have developed as a result of my new found 'middle-class' status? No. That's bullshit. He is screwing things up. Fact is, he doesn't care because he doesn't have anything to lose anymore.
He told me once that the only thing I could ever do to disappoint him was not come home. My parents love to do this to me. Place all their stock in me doing exactly what they need me to do. When he thought it was temporary, Bill could not have been more supportive of my move to Ireland - "go and experience things for yourself" he said. What he meant was "go and get it out of your system then come back here and provide me with some more purpose and direction for my life." I have always felt the consequences of "leaving" my parents. When I was twelve I "left" my mother by choosing to live with my dad. Two weeks she later climbed into a bathtub with a bottle full of pain pills and made her first attempt at suicide. It was my fault, she would later tell me. Without us, her life had no purpose. I had abandoned her, and so she tried to abandon me. Bill is the same, even though he would never admit it. I've lost count of the amount of times he says he has "nothing to go back to" or that he has no real family outside of my sister and I. For as long as I can remember, my mother has told me that having me saved her life - that if I had never been born she would have killed herself years ago, either intentionally or through drink and drugs. I remember her saying this to me when I was very young, and continuing to say it throughout my adult life. Dad is forever saying that he doesn't care about anything or anyone except AJ and I, that we are the only things that matter in the world. They think what they are doing is letting me know how important I am to them. What I think they are actually doing is making me responsible (in my own mind) for their well being.
Call me one of those people who blames their miserable existence on their parents, but I think I have been fair to them in previous writing so I am just going to say it now. Weren't they supposed to be responsible for my well-being? The adult in me recognises the pain my parents experienced throughout their lives, especially their childhoods. The social worker in me sees that they were both abandoned by their fathers, hit when they did things wrong (and sometimes when they didn't), were surrounded by alcoholism, poverty and despair. I know that they are doing the best they can. But the daughter in me is just fed up with it all. Just as I must now cope with the consequences of my upbringing, surely they must cope with their own? I recognise and accept that eventually the tables turn and children look after their parents, but I was hoping for a bit longer in the role of dependent child. I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't feel like I needed to be there for them, look after them. Or if I wasn't looking after them, I was feeling guilty and horrible about it. I know that all parents need their children, I just think that they should be careful to hide that need - to not make it so burdensome. I want to love them, honour them, respect them. I want to still need them.
After my grandmother died, my mother completely lost it. The day before the funeral she locked me in the car with her, sitting in the parking lot of Barnes and Noble for almost two hours. She told me that she regretted not saying so many things to her mother, so she was going to say them to me. Her way of ensuring there would be no secrets between us. She mechanically described her suicide attempts in great detail, the thoughts going through her mind at the time, how she felt about me when she was at her worst. I felt like my skin was crawling, like I was going to be sick. I had imagined those moments so many times before, and now she was giving me the details to imagine them in high definition. I lit a cigarette to distract her attention - force her to start chastising me for smoking instead of continuing, but she ignored it. She told me I had to know, even though it was hard. It was the same justification she gave when I was thirteen and she came into the dressing room an hour before my school play and told me about the abortion she had the year before, and how she believed breast cancer was her punishment. Sitting there in a smoke-filled Honda Civic my mother did what she had always done - she got the things she needed to say off her chest regardless of the consequences for the recipient of those weights. When I resisted, told her I couldn't listen anymore, she told me I hated her. She told me that she always knew I would never be the kind of daughter she deserved - that her only hope now was having grandchildren who would love her... but I was depriving her of that too, probably intentionally knowing me. It hurt less than you might think, because I stopped needing my mother a long time ago.
Since I was a teenager I have been bracing myself for my mother's death, anticipating it with every phone call or bad mood. I made myself ready to accept a motherless existence from a young age. Every extra bit of time I have with her is just a bonus. At the moment she is doing extremely well. Great job, happy, together. But I have seen that before in her and I no longer trust it, no completely. Now I feel like I am doing the same all over again. Except now I have to ready myself for losing Bill; Dad. Figuratively and literally. I already lost what we used to have. I already know he'll not forgive me for leaving and not coming back. Perhaps if all of this had happened before my mother's nightmare years I would be more sad, more empathic. Instead I just feel like skipping all of the pain, sadness, worry and drama and going straight to brace-mode. Cold, emotionless, willing to just ignore the truth so I can avoid the pain that goes along with it. I don't want to do it, but I can feel myself being pulled in that direction.
Reading this back to myself now I feel like such a hard bitch. I am ashamed of myself for feeling this way. But at the same time I can't worry and fret and feel guilty anymore. I don't have it in me - she has drained me of all of that. I have nothing left to offer Dad except the truth; that if he doesn't sort things out, I might just have to get used to life without him.
Bill: Don't even start with me, I already got a lecture from your sister.
Me: I'm not lecturing you, I'm worried about you.
Bill: Blah blah blah, justifications for drug use and drinking...AJ is overreacting and always worries too much anyway...I was only 19 when you were born and I have the right to do things now I would have done when I was in my 20's if I hadn't been a father...I get up and go to work every day...My family has nothing better to do than gossip about me.
Me: Please don't patronise me by pretending I don't know my own father and changes in his behaviour...I'm worried about you...I want you to be around and sober when I have a family...I will support you through whatever you need to do but you have to own up to this...
Bill: I have already started to cut myself off from those loser friends...I'll change, everything will be fine...I don't need AA or any other support...Tell your sister to stop overreacting...I have to go now.
Me: I love you, that's why this is so important. I love you too much to just shut up and watch things get worse.
Bill: I have to go (voice breaking).
The whole conversation lasted about 20 minutes. He had become quite adept at excusing/justifying his behaviour, which scared me more than anything. Most of it was what I expected, I suppose. AJ was delighted - perhaps everything was fine? We agreed that we would just need to trust him for now.
So with that in mind I phoned him. He answered the phone, sounding groggy, and immediately explained why he sounded groggy. We exchanged pleasantries, he told me about the marching band he is a member of and how well they are doing and chatted about my house. We never mentioned the previous conversation or anything discussed therein. I was relieved it didn't come up.
I am starting to doubt myself a little, thinking about all of the things that seemed like such clear indications of his addiction now and trying to explain them in other ways. This would be easier than facing what I believe to be the truth. We all do that, really, find ways to avoid facing the truth. It will slap us all in the face eventually. It always does. You can't hide from what is real forever. Or can you?
Sometimes I look at my father's life and wonder if there is any point in doing the right thing, looking after yourself or minding your money. Bill doesn't do any of those things, yet he seems to be able to lie to himself enough to sustain some semblance of a life. Maybe I should let him live the way he wants to live. I mean, in reality, he could either hit bottom and start finally recognising the problems. Or maybe the problems are all from the point of view I have developed as a result of my new found 'middle-class' status? No. That's bullshit. He is screwing things up. Fact is, he doesn't care because he doesn't have anything to lose anymore.
He told me once that the only thing I could ever do to disappoint him was not come home. My parents love to do this to me. Place all their stock in me doing exactly what they need me to do. When he thought it was temporary, Bill could not have been more supportive of my move to Ireland - "go and experience things for yourself" he said. What he meant was "go and get it out of your system then come back here and provide me with some more purpose and direction for my life." I have always felt the consequences of "leaving" my parents. When I was twelve I "left" my mother by choosing to live with my dad. Two weeks she later climbed into a bathtub with a bottle full of pain pills and made her first attempt at suicide. It was my fault, she would later tell me. Without us, her life had no purpose. I had abandoned her, and so she tried to abandon me. Bill is the same, even though he would never admit it. I've lost count of the amount of times he says he has "nothing to go back to" or that he has no real family outside of my sister and I. For as long as I can remember, my mother has told me that having me saved her life - that if I had never been born she would have killed herself years ago, either intentionally or through drink and drugs. I remember her saying this to me when I was very young, and continuing to say it throughout my adult life. Dad is forever saying that he doesn't care about anything or anyone except AJ and I, that we are the only things that matter in the world. They think what they are doing is letting me know how important I am to them. What I think they are actually doing is making me responsible (in my own mind) for their well being.
Call me one of those people who blames their miserable existence on their parents, but I think I have been fair to them in previous writing so I am just going to say it now. Weren't they supposed to be responsible for my well-being? The adult in me recognises the pain my parents experienced throughout their lives, especially their childhoods. The social worker in me sees that they were both abandoned by their fathers, hit when they did things wrong (and sometimes when they didn't), were surrounded by alcoholism, poverty and despair. I know that they are doing the best they can. But the daughter in me is just fed up with it all. Just as I must now cope with the consequences of my upbringing, surely they must cope with their own? I recognise and accept that eventually the tables turn and children look after their parents, but I was hoping for a bit longer in the role of dependent child. I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't feel like I needed to be there for them, look after them. Or if I wasn't looking after them, I was feeling guilty and horrible about it. I know that all parents need their children, I just think that they should be careful to hide that need - to not make it so burdensome. I want to love them, honour them, respect them. I want to still need them.
After my grandmother died, my mother completely lost it. The day before the funeral she locked me in the car with her, sitting in the parking lot of Barnes and Noble for almost two hours. She told me that she regretted not saying so many things to her mother, so she was going to say them to me. Her way of ensuring there would be no secrets between us. She mechanically described her suicide attempts in great detail, the thoughts going through her mind at the time, how she felt about me when she was at her worst. I felt like my skin was crawling, like I was going to be sick. I had imagined those moments so many times before, and now she was giving me the details to imagine them in high definition. I lit a cigarette to distract her attention - force her to start chastising me for smoking instead of continuing, but she ignored it. She told me I had to know, even though it was hard. It was the same justification she gave when I was thirteen and she came into the dressing room an hour before my school play and told me about the abortion she had the year before, and how she believed breast cancer was her punishment. Sitting there in a smoke-filled Honda Civic my mother did what she had always done - she got the things she needed to say off her chest regardless of the consequences for the recipient of those weights. When I resisted, told her I couldn't listen anymore, she told me I hated her. She told me that she always knew I would never be the kind of daughter she deserved - that her only hope now was having grandchildren who would love her... but I was depriving her of that too, probably intentionally knowing me. It hurt less than you might think, because I stopped needing my mother a long time ago.
Since I was a teenager I have been bracing myself for my mother's death, anticipating it with every phone call or bad mood. I made myself ready to accept a motherless existence from a young age. Every extra bit of time I have with her is just a bonus. At the moment she is doing extremely well. Great job, happy, together. But I have seen that before in her and I no longer trust it, no completely. Now I feel like I am doing the same all over again. Except now I have to ready myself for losing Bill; Dad. Figuratively and literally. I already lost what we used to have. I already know he'll not forgive me for leaving and not coming back. Perhaps if all of this had happened before my mother's nightmare years I would be more sad, more empathic. Instead I just feel like skipping all of the pain, sadness, worry and drama and going straight to brace-mode. Cold, emotionless, willing to just ignore the truth so I can avoid the pain that goes along with it. I don't want to do it, but I can feel myself being pulled in that direction.
Reading this back to myself now I feel like such a hard bitch. I am ashamed of myself for feeling this way. But at the same time I can't worry and fret and feel guilty anymore. I don't have it in me - she has drained me of all of that. I have nothing left to offer Dad except the truth; that if he doesn't sort things out, I might just have to get used to life without him.
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