to get a job when I didn't need the money was STUPID.
My dad always seem to think it was necessary to take some kind of fucking 'preventative' measures, rather than recognizing that I was
a) Really fucking smart
b) Self-motivated
c) Really good at doing the right thing when the right time and circumstances presented themselves.
In other words, when I needed the money, namely to pay my tuition costs, then I fricking went right out and got a fucking job. Two of them, in fact. Which my asshole father failed completely to notice or comment on or offer ANY praise whatsoever for. Not only was I working full-time during the day at a job relevant to my field (and yes, mom, if you ever read it, you do get some credit for helping me get that job through your connections - but I wish you would also recognize that I wouldn't have gotten the job if I wasn't qualified for it. Which I was, in spades. It was exactly all the stuff I was studying about in school, and fit perfectly with my learning curve. Anyway.)
Monday, November 9, 2009
The crack in the sidewalk
through which I can grow
seems to be getting smaller by the minute.
The life force within me is still quite strong, but it's getting turned inward on itself by all the outward pressures to - be something other than what I am.
I can't do it. I can't be something else. I am ME. That's IT, period. Not open to discussion or negotiation.
seems to be getting smaller by the minute.
The life force within me is still quite strong, but it's getting turned inward on itself by all the outward pressures to - be something other than what I am.
I can't do it. I can't be something else. I am ME. That's IT, period. Not open to discussion or negotiation.
I am ill
because of a complete and utter absence of caring and concern from the people around me. I apparently do not know how to elicit caring and concern of the sort that I need.
People give what's easiest for them to give, what's convenient, what makes them feel good. That's the 'golden rule'.
I heard about something called 'the platinum rule' recently, which basically says something like, "Give unto others what they really need, rather than what's convenient for you."
To me, love is giving a person what they need, as defined by them, not by you. But most people seem to have been raised by the adage, "You'll take what you get and like it." Shiver. Cruel brutality disguised as kindness. The most poisonous pill of all.
What I NEED is a massive dose of Vitamin L, as defined above, in my terms, on my time, to suit my needs. I'm still making up for those long-ago unmet needs from childhood, and you know what? I won't be done til I'm DONE. Period. No ifs, ands or buts. It's like an engine that won't run until it's got the right kind of fuel. Not the engine's fault that it can't run on whatever old crap you happen to have lying around - that's not the way it was made. It was made to run on love, and nothing else. That's human nature.
I thought of an analogy, earlier, for what I'm trying to do right now: It's as if I were a car that had to hunt for it's own gasoline, without speaking a word of english, going from place to place hoping, desperately, that just by chance someone would know exactly what it needs and give it exactly that thing.
Now, according to some folks who write and think about this stuff, we tend to 'call in' what we need by our behavior. But there's also the fact that our upbringing 'teaches' us certain ways to behave - that is, our mental wiring gets kind of 'set' by the patterns we experience in childhood.
So, it's just simply taking time (and lots of practice!) to learn how to undo these patterns.
****
I'm finding myself saying 'no' a lot, shutting out those intrusive, unwanted thoughts. I'm getting pretty good at it, like slamming down some kind of protective shield, like one of those 'screens' I used to read about in sci-fi books that talked about telepathic powers and how to protect oneself from invasive attacks by other people.
People give what's easiest for them to give, what's convenient, what makes them feel good. That's the 'golden rule'.
I heard about something called 'the platinum rule' recently, which basically says something like, "Give unto others what they really need, rather than what's convenient for you."
To me, love is giving a person what they need, as defined by them, not by you. But most people seem to have been raised by the adage, "You'll take what you get and like it." Shiver. Cruel brutality disguised as kindness. The most poisonous pill of all.
What I NEED is a massive dose of Vitamin L, as defined above, in my terms, on my time, to suit my needs. I'm still making up for those long-ago unmet needs from childhood, and you know what? I won't be done til I'm DONE. Period. No ifs, ands or buts. It's like an engine that won't run until it's got the right kind of fuel. Not the engine's fault that it can't run on whatever old crap you happen to have lying around - that's not the way it was made. It was made to run on love, and nothing else. That's human nature.
I thought of an analogy, earlier, for what I'm trying to do right now: It's as if I were a car that had to hunt for it's own gasoline, without speaking a word of english, going from place to place hoping, desperately, that just by chance someone would know exactly what it needs and give it exactly that thing.
Now, according to some folks who write and think about this stuff, we tend to 'call in' what we need by our behavior. But there's also the fact that our upbringing 'teaches' us certain ways to behave - that is, our mental wiring gets kind of 'set' by the patterns we experience in childhood.
So, it's just simply taking time (and lots of practice!) to learn how to undo these patterns.
****
I'm finding myself saying 'no' a lot, shutting out those intrusive, unwanted thoughts. I'm getting pretty good at it, like slamming down some kind of protective shield, like one of those 'screens' I used to read about in sci-fi books that talked about telepathic powers and how to protect oneself from invasive attacks by other people.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
my biggest fear
is that no one will ever care.
No one will ever see
or hear
my fears
my tears
my pain
my terror
at being so alone
for so long.
With nobody to EVER catch me when I fall,
to help me put things back together again,
to even fucking NOTICE when I'm hurting
or ashamed
or frightened
They turn away from me
constantly
shun me
as if I am something too horrific to be borne.
A monster,
a freak,
something that belongs in a circus
because of my unwillingness to
(cut and pasted the rest from a Word doc - had to bail from Blogger 'cause it kept locking up on me)
because I am unwilling to conform, to submit,
to their culture of silence.
So they shun me, they shut me out, even though I’m sitting right there with them, in the same room, at the same table, maybe even engaged in a conversation.
They shut me out because – why? I do not know.
Is it too hard?
Too frightening?
What are they scared of?
Are they simply greedy, lazy, selfish, stupid? All of the above?
I just don’t get it. I assume that if I were actually bleeding to death, they might stop to help me. I would hope. But I’m not so sure.
My uncle is dying, and I don’t care.
I feel nothing.
It is as if all those years of feeling too much were a kind of emotional ‘cry wolf,’ and now the machine is broken, it doesn’t work any more, there’s no more sympathy, or empathy, or compassion left for anybody but ME. If they won’t give me any, then I’ll have to fucking do it myself.
And right now? At this moment? It’s taking every fucking ounce of strength I’ve got just to get through each day, one day at a time. I have to carefully construct every hour, every event has to be carefully strategized so that I don’t somehow use up my tiny scraps of energy before the main event. Some days I have to choose between eating and taking a shower, because it’s too much trouble to cook, even to wash a can so that I can have a can of soup. Even washing the spoon is too much trouble – I’ll boil a kettle of water, then pour it over the dishes, and wipe them with some paper towels, and hope for the best.
I have dropped to many of the stones of my life’s meaning into that bottomless well of silence, hearing no echo, no sound in return to show that I was fucking HEARD, at any point whatsoever. They think that silence is a fucking VIRTUE.
Well, FUCK them. They can all go to hell.
****
My only option these days is to shut them all out, cut them off. Just as they have done with me my whole life.
How can you live with people who can’t SEE or HEAR you, who act as if you’re COMPLETELY FUCKING INVISIBLE?
And how the fucking HELL are you supposed to survive two parents who are so utterly, totally, COMPLETELY fucking CLUELESS? I mean, why didn’t they just fucking let me play on the FREEWAY while they were at it? If they hated me that bad, if I was that much of a fucking NUISANCE to them, then why the HELL did they keep me around?
****
Right now I am terrified of getting some kind of cancer – of my reproductive organs. I’m having all these weird sensations in my bladder area, and my periods have started again, but have gotten heavier. And now I’m having spotty bleeding in between, which I haven’t had since I was on the pill 20 years ago.
I’m afraid to talk to a doctor about it (I don’t have health insurance) – it seems like they’ll tell you anything to get you to go away and leave them alone. They don’t want to have to address your fears and concerns as if they’re real and valid, any more than your family did.
****
I want to move on.
I want to find people, NOW, who know how to fucking CARE about each other.
Not in this touchy-feely, woo-woo bullshit way, but in real, solid, tangible ways. Like an actual hug now and then, for fuck’s sake. That isn’t about fucking SEX. Like, concern. Caring, you know? Is that really such an impossibly difficult concept???
****
A culture that pays attention to all the wrong things, and doesn’t give a shit about any of the things that actually matter.
****
I feel as if my father has poisoned me – as if he passed on his cancer to me. As if I took it on – all the pain for the entire family, like this kind of – shunt, or conduit, or some kind of device that is meant to handle the overflow when there’s just too much.
But I can’t do it any more. My system is worn out. No one human is ever meant to process, single-handedly, the kind of pain a family can dish out and accumulate.
They want me to heal them, to take care of them, to make it better, like I always did.
Well, I won’t. They’re on their own now. I am no longer a dumping ground for their
****
No one will ever see
or hear
my fears
my tears
my pain
my terror
at being so alone
for so long.
With nobody to EVER catch me when I fall,
to help me put things back together again,
to even fucking NOTICE when I'm hurting
or ashamed
or frightened
They turn away from me
constantly
shun me
as if I am something too horrific to be borne.
A monster,
a freak,
something that belongs in a circus
because of my unwillingness to
(cut and pasted the rest from a Word doc - had to bail from Blogger 'cause it kept locking up on me)
because I am unwilling to conform, to submit,
to their culture of silence.
So they shun me, they shut me out, even though I’m sitting right there with them, in the same room, at the same table, maybe even engaged in a conversation.
They shut me out because – why? I do not know.
Is it too hard?
Too frightening?
What are they scared of?
Are they simply greedy, lazy, selfish, stupid? All of the above?
I just don’t get it. I assume that if I were actually bleeding to death, they might stop to help me. I would hope. But I’m not so sure.
My uncle is dying, and I don’t care.
I feel nothing.
It is as if all those years of feeling too much were a kind of emotional ‘cry wolf,’ and now the machine is broken, it doesn’t work any more, there’s no more sympathy, or empathy, or compassion left for anybody but ME. If they won’t give me any, then I’ll have to fucking do it myself.
And right now? At this moment? It’s taking every fucking ounce of strength I’ve got just to get through each day, one day at a time. I have to carefully construct every hour, every event has to be carefully strategized so that I don’t somehow use up my tiny scraps of energy before the main event. Some days I have to choose between eating and taking a shower, because it’s too much trouble to cook, even to wash a can so that I can have a can of soup. Even washing the spoon is too much trouble – I’ll boil a kettle of water, then pour it over the dishes, and wipe them with some paper towels, and hope for the best.
I have dropped to many of the stones of my life’s meaning into that bottomless well of silence, hearing no echo, no sound in return to show that I was fucking HEARD, at any point whatsoever. They think that silence is a fucking VIRTUE.
Well, FUCK them. They can all go to hell.
****
My only option these days is to shut them all out, cut them off. Just as they have done with me my whole life.
How can you live with people who can’t SEE or HEAR you, who act as if you’re COMPLETELY FUCKING INVISIBLE?
And how the fucking HELL are you supposed to survive two parents who are so utterly, totally, COMPLETELY fucking CLUELESS? I mean, why didn’t they just fucking let me play on the FREEWAY while they were at it? If they hated me that bad, if I was that much of a fucking NUISANCE to them, then why the HELL did they keep me around?
****
Right now I am terrified of getting some kind of cancer – of my reproductive organs. I’m having all these weird sensations in my bladder area, and my periods have started again, but have gotten heavier. And now I’m having spotty bleeding in between, which I haven’t had since I was on the pill 20 years ago.
I’m afraid to talk to a doctor about it (I don’t have health insurance) – it seems like they’ll tell you anything to get you to go away and leave them alone. They don’t want to have to address your fears and concerns as if they’re real and valid, any more than your family did.
****
I want to move on.
I want to find people, NOW, who know how to fucking CARE about each other.
Not in this touchy-feely, woo-woo bullshit way, but in real, solid, tangible ways. Like an actual hug now and then, for fuck’s sake. That isn’t about fucking SEX. Like, concern. Caring, you know? Is that really such an impossibly difficult concept???
****
A culture that pays attention to all the wrong things, and doesn’t give a shit about any of the things that actually matter.
****
I feel as if my father has poisoned me – as if he passed on his cancer to me. As if I took it on – all the pain for the entire family, like this kind of – shunt, or conduit, or some kind of device that is meant to handle the overflow when there’s just too much.
But I can’t do it any more. My system is worn out. No one human is ever meant to process, single-handedly, the kind of pain a family can dish out and accumulate.
They want me to heal them, to take care of them, to make it better, like I always did.
Well, I won’t. They’re on their own now. I am no longer a dumping ground for their
****
Thursday, October 8, 2009
random
I've been watching too many movies lately - it fills the empty hours, helps block out the things I still can't deal with.
I've stopped my friend Jack, been two or three months now, wasn't even an effort, really - he just sort of stopped working, stopped doing the job I was paying him to do. So I let him go.
And my friend CoCola, well, it's been a few weeks now, that one's been a little tougher, been jonesin' fer summa that caffeine in a serious way. But have found a few substitutes that nearly fill the gap - the sugar cravings haven't given up at all. My theory? I eat so much sugar to counteract the bitterness, to bury it under a pile of sweetness so relentless that the anger doesn't stand a chance.
Most of the time it works. Until I look in the mirror and see how fat I'm getting, and think, ok, this sugar thing is seriously messing you up. So then I look for yet another alternative, and find myself trekking down the path of these weird-ass diet sweeteners that I basically consider to be just another form of poison. Lesser of the weevils, once again...
So, as always, I'm doing the best I can.
My aunt and uncle wrote me a letter a few weeks back, after getting a weird phone message from me when they were in town and wanted to get together. I decided my moratorium on family interaction has to be across the board - no exceptions. They're all the same kind of apples, after all, though how I got to be the one variant out of that huge box-full never ceases to mystify me. Maybe there really was a little moment with the postman, after all.
Anyway.
Just watched a movie that made my world feel temporarily surreal. I was feeling good after being out and about and being flirty and friendly with lots of folks (out running various errands). It doesn't escape me that people are generally friendly when you're giving them money...but this included a few other random folks as well. Maybe it was partly the weather? It was perfect today - clear blue sky, warm but not hot, one of these precious early fall days where everything is calm and serene, you could almost believe there might be a god somewhere out there.
Whatever it was, I was in a good mood.
Came home, went for a walk, still floating pretty good.
But then I'm back inside the house again, confronted with an impossible pile of bills, soot on the carpet, ceilings, blinds, everything slightly dingy and gray from that grease fire (just on the stove, but in that few minutes managed to gunk up everything pretty good).
And the ongoing saga with the fucking washing machine - I've tried everything I can to get that piece of crap to clean my clothes without destroying them - fading the shit out of them, stretching them out of shape, shredding them, wearing them out. It's just not happening - they're not only shredded and faded, but they're still not fucking clean. And in addition to that old mister smoker yay-hoo downstairs must've washed something greasy in his last load, because now all my whites, which I ran through 6 rinses, and hauled god knows how many buckets of hot water by hand down those stairs because the washer has no hot water hookup.... which I wouldn't mind if it actually worked. All I ask for is clean clothes that aren't destroyed in the process.
But no, all my whites are now a slightly grimy gray, slightly crispy (with grease?), the cotton knits are all stretched out and stiff instead of soft like I'm used to. I'm actually afraid to use that damn washing machine. The landlady said I can go ahead and return it to the place and hunt for another one on Craigslist, but for god's sake! What a fucking crapshoot! Which I, yet again, have to do single-handedly, with no help from anyone. I may be able to get some friends to help haul the thing, but there's no one but me to care whether I actually succeed in getting something decent or not. Mr. Pig downstairs crams everything he owns into one single gigantic load, dumps some kind of cheap-ass, perfume-y detergent that has the softener mixed in, whites mixed with every color in the rainbow, plus grease and whatnot. Between the crappy washer, the cold-only, hard water, and the buildup from his crap laundry soap, it's like dunking clean dishes into a pan of dirty, greasy water to get them clean. Yuck.
But at least I've had a few good hair days - it's astonishing how much difference it makes, both in how I feel about myself and how much attention I get from guys. I've had old, young, black, white, every kind of guy you can imagine flirting with me. Very good for my ego :-)
And the women have been friendly too, and helpful. Maybe it's partly because I'm friendlier when I feel more attractive and confident? Seems likely.
Having a period today for the first time in months, a real one, where I actually have to use tampons and everything! In fact, it's been so heavy that I've even had cramps. Never thought I'd be happy to see them back again, eh? Must be doing something right.
*****
I seem to have banished fear from my mind - the panic button had been pushed so many times that not only did the button itself stop working, but the wiring shorted out and fried the entire neural network connected with it. I don't know if this means I've totally fried my adrenal system, or if some kind of protective numbness has kicked in to keep me from doing any more damage to my system. It's like some kind of cosmic override - all of a sudden I was off the Jack Daniels, without any premeditation or particular effort on my part, and the Coke too, and most of the sugar. My body demanded organic, healthy food, none of this greasy fried crap (though I've still had pizza and fish'n'chips). It's still doing the balanced, gradual thing, but I've started making herbal teas like mad, making every shower a decadent spa experience where I try out new soothing herbs. My skin and hair have put a near-total moratorium on all chemicals, being dry to the point of pain. But as I've gradually shifted my diet out of the red zone (toxicity-wise), my overall toxicity level seems to be dropping enough so that I don't have to be quite so hard-core. But man, for a little while there I was afraid that I'd end up in one of those glass bubbles, the isolation chambers.
I guess that's what kicked in the survival commando team - knowing for a fact that there's nobody out there to help me with any of this, that I have to do it all myself. It's like all this data I've collected over all these years, all the experimenting, all the trial and error, has finally added up and paid off and I'm just marching along as if it hasn't been like being pulled through the eye of a needle backward (or something) to get to this point.
I feel kind of - disconnected, like I've shoved all the bad, difficult stuff far enough away from me so that I can just simply survive, just simply stay alive at all. It's as if I'm becoming this stripped-down, highly efficient machine that has no time or energy for anything whatsoever except taking care of myself. I have no energy to waste on anyone else, unless there's something in it for me.
It's like I don't even get angry any more (or not much), and when I do, it's a very tight, focused, efficient kind of anger, that expends exactly as much energy as necessary to do job in front of me and not a speck more. If I get tired, I stop and sleep, or eat, or take a break in front of the tube with a movie. If I need company, I turn on a video. I just do what I need to do, one foot in front of the other. Where it leads? I have no idea. Again, like grandfather said, I'm just trying to get through it.
***
Maybe I'm in some kind of emotional free fall? You know, where you've jumped out of the plane, and you've pulled the rip cord, and the only thing left is either you live or you get smashed to bits on a bunch of rocks? I mean, what choices are there at this point? You just fall, and hope to hell it's a good ride, and try to keep your wits about you and your eyes wide open on the way down. Because, if you live? It's going to be a great story. And if you don't? No worries. It'll be over. No more stress.
I guess that's what it feels like - I've got one more shot, and then I'm done. I've got just enough juice left in this baby to make one more try at 'success', whatever the hell that means. I mean, creating something 'sustainable', as they say. It feels like a slalom ride where I can't see further than the very next obstacle, there's so much spray and flurry from the current event that I have no energy for anything else except surviving what's directly in front of me. Only this, and nothing more. Quoth the maven.
Well. I seem to be devolving into silliness. I truly hope somebody, somewhere, someday reads this shit and thinks, what a cool person. I'm sorry she had to struggle so hard. I wish more people would have helped her when she needed it. Something like that. My ghost will thank you for it, and not even haunt you very much.
****
You know, just for the record? It's not that I think my problems are extra special and unique or anything. It's more just my consistent inability to get any kind of useful support or understanding to help me cope with any of it. I mean, obviously I'm perfectly capable of solving any and all of the problems that come my way. The point is, what's the point? I mean, why bother when there's nobody to care about any of it but me?
It's like with Piggy downstairs - I carefully rinse out all my recyclables, only put 'clean' stuff in the bin, bag up everything in paper bags so that we don't end up with trash scattered hither and yon on collection day.
I go out there, all proud of how tidy and responsible I'm being, how organized and capable and whatnot, and lift the lid to the recycling bin to - jesus fucking christ what is that smell???!!??? I mean, the asshole dumps half-full beer cans in there, slopping sticky, funky beer all over the place, half the time he forgets which bin is which and throws his disgusting, horrible butts in the recycling bin, for fuck's sake. Jesus, that thing reeks. I tried rinsing it out one day, I just couldn't even stand to touch the thing, but next morning it was yet again full of crap. Forget it. Why try? Why bother? Why make the effort? It truly is like living with a pig. Cigarette butts everywhere, can't be bothered to pick up his own trash - what, are we living in a trailer park here? When he first moved in I tried to inspire him a bit by planting a few flowers outside his window, but he's like a blight, like PigPen from the Charlie Brown comics. His massive indifference, his total 'fuck you' attitude to any kind of responsibility whatsoever is like this miasma, this psychic ectoplasm that just fucking slimes you any time you try actually fucking care about something anywhere near him. He has like this massive negativity field that cancels out any good intentions, any desire to make an effort to improve something. He's like anti-matter. (Good god, I think I'm channeling a Valley Girl.) I even found fucking cigarette butts in the fucking yard waste bin, in the middle of droughty summer when he could have had a lovely little bin-fire. Nice. I mean, is he just stupid? Or careless? Or too drunk/tired/whatever to notice? I don't get it. Even on my worst days I still pay attention. I fucking care. Why do I care so much? Why does he care so little? How the fucking hell did I end up sharing a duplex with this fucking asshole? Jesus. I hope he fucking chokes on one of those fucking cancer sticks. Hell, I may choke him myself.
And the dog shit! For fuck's sake, he absolutely refuses to even touch the stuff. I mean there's some right outside his fucking window, for fuck's sake, and rather than fucking pick it up and put it in the trash, he leaves it lying there, and pours, I swear to god, aftershave on it to kill the smell.
There is no god. No way, no how. Or if there is? He's a fucking psycho, with the weirdest-ass, most twisted fucking sense of humor you've ever seen in your life. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. And I'm not even fucking Catholic.
***
Surviving life as an ultra-sensitive person seems to add a whole other course of hurdles (?) to the Sisyphean climb, as if there's a whole ladder you have to climb each day to deal with the sensitivity before you even get to the 'normal' ladder that everyone else seems to be climbing. It's like a handicap, where even the simplest tasks become unbearably complicated.
And it's not about perfectionism. I've tried letting absolutely everything else go to hell so that I have any energy left at all for something besides the basics. But the sink is full of dirty dishes that have been sitting there for months; the dust is a 1/4 inch thick on the carpet; I haven't worked in the garden since spring (since Piggy moved in, basically). It's amazing what an enthusiasm-killer he is. Wish I were oblivious.
I've stopped my friend Jack, been two or three months now, wasn't even an effort, really - he just sort of stopped working, stopped doing the job I was paying him to do. So I let him go.
And my friend CoCola, well, it's been a few weeks now, that one's been a little tougher, been jonesin' fer summa that caffeine in a serious way. But have found a few substitutes that nearly fill the gap - the sugar cravings haven't given up at all. My theory? I eat so much sugar to counteract the bitterness, to bury it under a pile of sweetness so relentless that the anger doesn't stand a chance.
Most of the time it works. Until I look in the mirror and see how fat I'm getting, and think, ok, this sugar thing is seriously messing you up. So then I look for yet another alternative, and find myself trekking down the path of these weird-ass diet sweeteners that I basically consider to be just another form of poison. Lesser of the weevils, once again...
So, as always, I'm doing the best I can.
My aunt and uncle wrote me a letter a few weeks back, after getting a weird phone message from me when they were in town and wanted to get together. I decided my moratorium on family interaction has to be across the board - no exceptions. They're all the same kind of apples, after all, though how I got to be the one variant out of that huge box-full never ceases to mystify me. Maybe there really was a little moment with the postman, after all.
Anyway.
Just watched a movie that made my world feel temporarily surreal. I was feeling good after being out and about and being flirty and friendly with lots of folks (out running various errands). It doesn't escape me that people are generally friendly when you're giving them money...but this included a few other random folks as well. Maybe it was partly the weather? It was perfect today - clear blue sky, warm but not hot, one of these precious early fall days where everything is calm and serene, you could almost believe there might be a god somewhere out there.
Whatever it was, I was in a good mood.
Came home, went for a walk, still floating pretty good.
But then I'm back inside the house again, confronted with an impossible pile of bills, soot on the carpet, ceilings, blinds, everything slightly dingy and gray from that grease fire (just on the stove, but in that few minutes managed to gunk up everything pretty good).
And the ongoing saga with the fucking washing machine - I've tried everything I can to get that piece of crap to clean my clothes without destroying them - fading the shit out of them, stretching them out of shape, shredding them, wearing them out. It's just not happening - they're not only shredded and faded, but they're still not fucking clean. And in addition to that old mister smoker yay-hoo downstairs must've washed something greasy in his last load, because now all my whites, which I ran through 6 rinses, and hauled god knows how many buckets of hot water by hand down those stairs because the washer has no hot water hookup.... which I wouldn't mind if it actually worked. All I ask for is clean clothes that aren't destroyed in the process.
But no, all my whites are now a slightly grimy gray, slightly crispy (with grease?), the cotton knits are all stretched out and stiff instead of soft like I'm used to. I'm actually afraid to use that damn washing machine. The landlady said I can go ahead and return it to the place and hunt for another one on Craigslist, but for god's sake! What a fucking crapshoot! Which I, yet again, have to do single-handedly, with no help from anyone. I may be able to get some friends to help haul the thing, but there's no one but me to care whether I actually succeed in getting something decent or not. Mr. Pig downstairs crams everything he owns into one single gigantic load, dumps some kind of cheap-ass, perfume-y detergent that has the softener mixed in, whites mixed with every color in the rainbow, plus grease and whatnot. Between the crappy washer, the cold-only, hard water, and the buildup from his crap laundry soap, it's like dunking clean dishes into a pan of dirty, greasy water to get them clean. Yuck.
But at least I've had a few good hair days - it's astonishing how much difference it makes, both in how I feel about myself and how much attention I get from guys. I've had old, young, black, white, every kind of guy you can imagine flirting with me. Very good for my ego :-)
And the women have been friendly too, and helpful. Maybe it's partly because I'm friendlier when I feel more attractive and confident? Seems likely.
Having a period today for the first time in months, a real one, where I actually have to use tampons and everything! In fact, it's been so heavy that I've even had cramps. Never thought I'd be happy to see them back again, eh? Must be doing something right.
*****
I seem to have banished fear from my mind - the panic button had been pushed so many times that not only did the button itself stop working, but the wiring shorted out and fried the entire neural network connected with it. I don't know if this means I've totally fried my adrenal system, or if some kind of protective numbness has kicked in to keep me from doing any more damage to my system. It's like some kind of cosmic override - all of a sudden I was off the Jack Daniels, without any premeditation or particular effort on my part, and the Coke too, and most of the sugar. My body demanded organic, healthy food, none of this greasy fried crap (though I've still had pizza and fish'n'chips). It's still doing the balanced, gradual thing, but I've started making herbal teas like mad, making every shower a decadent spa experience where I try out new soothing herbs. My skin and hair have put a near-total moratorium on all chemicals, being dry to the point of pain. But as I've gradually shifted my diet out of the red zone (toxicity-wise), my overall toxicity level seems to be dropping enough so that I don't have to be quite so hard-core. But man, for a little while there I was afraid that I'd end up in one of those glass bubbles, the isolation chambers.
I guess that's what kicked in the survival commando team - knowing for a fact that there's nobody out there to help me with any of this, that I have to do it all myself. It's like all this data I've collected over all these years, all the experimenting, all the trial and error, has finally added up and paid off and I'm just marching along as if it hasn't been like being pulled through the eye of a needle backward (or something) to get to this point.
I feel kind of - disconnected, like I've shoved all the bad, difficult stuff far enough away from me so that I can just simply survive, just simply stay alive at all. It's as if I'm becoming this stripped-down, highly efficient machine that has no time or energy for anything whatsoever except taking care of myself. I have no energy to waste on anyone else, unless there's something in it for me.
It's like I don't even get angry any more (or not much), and when I do, it's a very tight, focused, efficient kind of anger, that expends exactly as much energy as necessary to do job in front of me and not a speck more. If I get tired, I stop and sleep, or eat, or take a break in front of the tube with a movie. If I need company, I turn on a video. I just do what I need to do, one foot in front of the other. Where it leads? I have no idea. Again, like grandfather said, I'm just trying to get through it.
***
Maybe I'm in some kind of emotional free fall? You know, where you've jumped out of the plane, and you've pulled the rip cord, and the only thing left is either you live or you get smashed to bits on a bunch of rocks? I mean, what choices are there at this point? You just fall, and hope to hell it's a good ride, and try to keep your wits about you and your eyes wide open on the way down. Because, if you live? It's going to be a great story. And if you don't? No worries. It'll be over. No more stress.
I guess that's what it feels like - I've got one more shot, and then I'm done. I've got just enough juice left in this baby to make one more try at 'success', whatever the hell that means. I mean, creating something 'sustainable', as they say. It feels like a slalom ride where I can't see further than the very next obstacle, there's so much spray and flurry from the current event that I have no energy for anything else except surviving what's directly in front of me. Only this, and nothing more. Quoth the maven.
Well. I seem to be devolving into silliness. I truly hope somebody, somewhere, someday reads this shit and thinks, what a cool person. I'm sorry she had to struggle so hard. I wish more people would have helped her when she needed it. Something like that. My ghost will thank you for it, and not even haunt you very much.
****
You know, just for the record? It's not that I think my problems are extra special and unique or anything. It's more just my consistent inability to get any kind of useful support or understanding to help me cope with any of it. I mean, obviously I'm perfectly capable of solving any and all of the problems that come my way. The point is, what's the point? I mean, why bother when there's nobody to care about any of it but me?
It's like with Piggy downstairs - I carefully rinse out all my recyclables, only put 'clean' stuff in the bin, bag up everything in paper bags so that we don't end up with trash scattered hither and yon on collection day.
I go out there, all proud of how tidy and responsible I'm being, how organized and capable and whatnot, and lift the lid to the recycling bin to - jesus fucking christ what is that smell???!!??? I mean, the asshole dumps half-full beer cans in there, slopping sticky, funky beer all over the place, half the time he forgets which bin is which and throws his disgusting, horrible butts in the recycling bin, for fuck's sake. Jesus, that thing reeks. I tried rinsing it out one day, I just couldn't even stand to touch the thing, but next morning it was yet again full of crap. Forget it. Why try? Why bother? Why make the effort? It truly is like living with a pig. Cigarette butts everywhere, can't be bothered to pick up his own trash - what, are we living in a trailer park here? When he first moved in I tried to inspire him a bit by planting a few flowers outside his window, but he's like a blight, like PigPen from the Charlie Brown comics. His massive indifference, his total 'fuck you' attitude to any kind of responsibility whatsoever is like this miasma, this psychic ectoplasm that just fucking slimes you any time you try actually fucking care about something anywhere near him. He has like this massive negativity field that cancels out any good intentions, any desire to make an effort to improve something. He's like anti-matter. (Good god, I think I'm channeling a Valley Girl.) I even found fucking cigarette butts in the fucking yard waste bin, in the middle of droughty summer when he could have had a lovely little bin-fire. Nice. I mean, is he just stupid? Or careless? Or too drunk/tired/whatever to notice? I don't get it. Even on my worst days I still pay attention. I fucking care. Why do I care so much? Why does he care so little? How the fucking hell did I end up sharing a duplex with this fucking asshole? Jesus. I hope he fucking chokes on one of those fucking cancer sticks. Hell, I may choke him myself.
And the dog shit! For fuck's sake, he absolutely refuses to even touch the stuff. I mean there's some right outside his fucking window, for fuck's sake, and rather than fucking pick it up and put it in the trash, he leaves it lying there, and pours, I swear to god, aftershave on it to kill the smell.
There is no god. No way, no how. Or if there is? He's a fucking psycho, with the weirdest-ass, most twisted fucking sense of humor you've ever seen in your life. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. And I'm not even fucking Catholic.
***
Surviving life as an ultra-sensitive person seems to add a whole other course of hurdles (?) to the Sisyphean climb, as if there's a whole ladder you have to climb each day to deal with the sensitivity before you even get to the 'normal' ladder that everyone else seems to be climbing. It's like a handicap, where even the simplest tasks become unbearably complicated.
And it's not about perfectionism. I've tried letting absolutely everything else go to hell so that I have any energy left at all for something besides the basics. But the sink is full of dirty dishes that have been sitting there for months; the dust is a 1/4 inch thick on the carpet; I haven't worked in the garden since spring (since Piggy moved in, basically). It's amazing what an enthusiasm-killer he is. Wish I were oblivious.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
what is it like
to have a family that is never there to catch you when you fall?
You can give them warning, and they'll come and watch,
sightsee,
as if you were some roadside spectacle
nothing to do with them
at all.
You smash to bits on the pavement,
shatter to smithereens.
They remain motionless, unmoved
by your pain,
your suffering,
your tears;
your terror,
your anguish,
your shame.
You are that moth beating itself senselessly to death against the shuttered flame of the lamp.
They make no move to stop your self-immolation.
How can they say "I love you," and yet watch you be destroyed? How can they stand there and do nothing? Are they stupid? Afraid? Both? What is the matter with them? Why do they just stand there and watch?
I do not understand.
You are a shattered being
who has fallen so many times
there's nothing left to put together. Not enough solid bits to hold the glue...
They don't understand caring.
They only understand a distant sort of vague sentimentality - their definition of 'love' is - what? I don't know. I've never understood it. I only know it has nothing to do with any of the things that love is to me.
They are the ones who, seeing the beetle stuck on his back for the thousandth time, crush it, instead of gently turning it over onto its feet again, helping it along its way, helping it to find a safe place.
They don't understand. They aren't even as good as the Pinball Wizard, who, though he was a deaf, dumb and blind kid, could at least play a mean pinball... They're just deaf, dumb and blind. See nothing, hear nothing, speak nothing, understand nothing. They might as well all be deaf mutes for all the fellow feeling they show.
***
It is empty, and alone, and frightening.
Terrifying in its vastness, that essential abandonment of a small child's spirit.
There is no mending it, ever, except by the hand and heart of another lost soul who seeks the same repair and understands what is needed. Who can be both giver and receiver.
Where are you? I need you, now. Not later - now.
***
I do not know that I can ever capture the echoing emptiness that is the feeling of 'belonging' to this family. It's like swallowing a vacuum, like having a giant sucking sound in the middle of your being where love ought to go.
Where there ought to be a warm fire burning there is instead: A hole. A space. Nothing. No one there.
This is the feeling of the child, the infant who emerges into the world, into being, after a long battle with darkness and terror. Emerges screaming and fighting and gasping for air and - terrified. She is born terrified. That there will be no one to care for her.
And she was right. No wonder she never wanted to be born in the first place.
***
They think I'm crazy. Because they're men, and they believe that women are supposed to do all the feeling for them.
But I'm a woman, and have had to make my way alone through most of this life, just as if I were a man, but without any of the myriad supports society provides for men.
I am not even spared the misery of being heterosexual - I have longed to be attracted to other women, so that I could escape the prison of heterosexual 'romance'. But I am, instead, simply a failed heterosexual - one who sees no point in the rubbing together of various bits for some fleeting moment of sexual gratification.
I feel caught in the middle, squarely and painfully astride the fence. People seem to think that I've chosen this place, but I didn't. I never felt that I had any choice.
I've been accused of being both 'too tough' and 'too sensitive', so many times I've lost count.
Of course I had to be tough - to survive my mother's neglect, my father's sarcasm and verbal abuse, the bullying from my brother, the endless misogyny from all the men in my entire family.
And a person gets sensitive from being stomped on so many times, oddly enough. Oddly enough, getting stomped tends not to 'toughen' one - one develops a tough outer shell to protect the fragile inner bits that have been so repeatedly and ruthlessly damaged, nearly beyond repair. One develops a rapier tongue and a lightning-fast left hook out of a mere need to survive those who claim to 'love' you. It's all about survival, man.
So don't blame me. I did, and continue to do, what I had to, what I have to, to survive.
****
Denial and repression only get you so far. I find that beyond a certain point, I have to resort to external escape mechanisms.
The only problem is, they're not working any more. My escape hatches are like some kind of nightmare maze that only lead me right back to the very thing from which I seek relief: The truth. Reality.
They don't care.
They never have.
They never will.
No matter how loud or how long I scream and rant and beg and plead.
They just turn their backs on me and walk away, indifferent. Uninterested. I simply don't matter to them.
It is truly like the wolf who must gnaw off her own hind leg to escape the trap: There is no other way out, except death.
And having made this choice, she chooses only another kind of death: The death of her soul, that fragile, precious, unique, irreplacable light that is the flame of her being.
They would extinguish her, through their mere indifference.
How can they not see how bright she is, how beautiful? How brilliant and shiny and special and unique, an opal, full of fire and ever-changing color. She is like a diamond - all facets, flashing every color in the rainbow. She is beauty, embodied.
***
I feel as if I am only holding myself together through sheer force of will, through pure and indomitable stubborness.
But even granite is eventually worn away. And that which is too brittle shatters...
She seeks only to be seen and loved for who she is - "like any bright blade of grass, any shining stalk of wheat."
And so they do, some - some see her in this pure, this simple way.
But it is not enough.
There must be one, at least one, who truly loves every bit of her being, exactly as she is.
Where is this person? I am waiting. I am ready.
Will you come and take care of me now, please?
***
It is as if, if I let down my guard for even a moment, if I relax for even a split second, it will all come tumbling down - it will fall apart, I will explode in in a shower of springs and sprockets and un-reassembleable bits that will never go back together again.
So I can never stop, can never rest, can never let down.
Because if I do, I will see that there is nobody here but me, and never has been...
And then I will fall to bits, and no one will see, or care, or know, until it is too late, and I am gone.
Even if the empty shell of me remained, the essential I, the me inside will be gone.
That beautiful and irreplaceable spark that no one ever saw but me.
That is why the narcissist must spend so much time looking in the mirror: Because no one else is paying any attention. She is afraid she will disappear the instant she looks away. The sense of 'self', oddly enough, is assembled from all those mirror fragments that a lifetime around other people who care about you enough to show you a piece of yourself that you can hold in your hand, your mind, your heart, your soul. A piece of yourself that you can carry away and cherish, and feel to the depths of your being to be true.
Right and proper parents know how to do this instinctively; but most parents are neither right, nor proper.
****
The pit of despair is not so bad. It's actually rather cozy here, though the decor is a bit tedious - black everywhere you look. We could do with a bit of color.
Who's 'we'? Well, it's the schizoid persona that we'll be forced to take on should the raw force of our willpower fail to withstand the relentless onslaught of cognitive dissonance. At some point the twain shall be parted, never to meet again. Or something like that. Couldn't put Humpty together again - he was a frickin' egg, after all - whaddya want, anyway - miracles? Shit. I'll be satisfied just to get through this damn thing - life, that is - which is how my grandfather put it.
***
I seek some kind of reconciliation, some kind of peace, some way to think about all this that makes sense to me, that allows me to walk out of the maze, to be free, to escape the family trap, for good and forever.
The madness that comes from being alone with such thoughts for too long - for most of one's life - lurks at the edges, in the corners of my eyes. Just out of sight, I catch a fleeting glimpse, but it is gone when I look squarely at it. I see just the very tip of its ratlike tail twitching out of view constantly, but can never see the whole beast.
Maybe that's a good thing - the day I can see the whole beast will be the day the world no longer parses at all for me, and they really will have to wrap me up and cart me away to be lumped in with the other vegetables.
You can give them warning, and they'll come and watch,
sightsee,
as if you were some roadside spectacle
nothing to do with them
at all.
You smash to bits on the pavement,
shatter to smithereens.
They remain motionless, unmoved
by your pain,
your suffering,
your tears;
your terror,
your anguish,
your shame.
You are that moth beating itself senselessly to death against the shuttered flame of the lamp.
They make no move to stop your self-immolation.
How can they say "I love you," and yet watch you be destroyed? How can they stand there and do nothing? Are they stupid? Afraid? Both? What is the matter with them? Why do they just stand there and watch?
I do not understand.
You are a shattered being
who has fallen so many times
there's nothing left to put together. Not enough solid bits to hold the glue...
They don't understand caring.
They only understand a distant sort of vague sentimentality - their definition of 'love' is - what? I don't know. I've never understood it. I only know it has nothing to do with any of the things that love is to me.
They are the ones who, seeing the beetle stuck on his back for the thousandth time, crush it, instead of gently turning it over onto its feet again, helping it along its way, helping it to find a safe place.
They don't understand. They aren't even as good as the Pinball Wizard, who, though he was a deaf, dumb and blind kid, could at least play a mean pinball... They're just deaf, dumb and blind. See nothing, hear nothing, speak nothing, understand nothing. They might as well all be deaf mutes for all the fellow feeling they show.
***
It is empty, and alone, and frightening.
Terrifying in its vastness, that essential abandonment of a small child's spirit.
There is no mending it, ever, except by the hand and heart of another lost soul who seeks the same repair and understands what is needed. Who can be both giver and receiver.
Where are you? I need you, now. Not later - now.
***
I do not know that I can ever capture the echoing emptiness that is the feeling of 'belonging' to this family. It's like swallowing a vacuum, like having a giant sucking sound in the middle of your being where love ought to go.
Where there ought to be a warm fire burning there is instead: A hole. A space. Nothing. No one there.
This is the feeling of the child, the infant who emerges into the world, into being, after a long battle with darkness and terror. Emerges screaming and fighting and gasping for air and - terrified. She is born terrified. That there will be no one to care for her.
And she was right. No wonder she never wanted to be born in the first place.
***
They think I'm crazy. Because they're men, and they believe that women are supposed to do all the feeling for them.
But I'm a woman, and have had to make my way alone through most of this life, just as if I were a man, but without any of the myriad supports society provides for men.
I am not even spared the misery of being heterosexual - I have longed to be attracted to other women, so that I could escape the prison of heterosexual 'romance'. But I am, instead, simply a failed heterosexual - one who sees no point in the rubbing together of various bits for some fleeting moment of sexual gratification.
I feel caught in the middle, squarely and painfully astride the fence. People seem to think that I've chosen this place, but I didn't. I never felt that I had any choice.
I've been accused of being both 'too tough' and 'too sensitive', so many times I've lost count.
Of course I had to be tough - to survive my mother's neglect, my father's sarcasm and verbal abuse, the bullying from my brother, the endless misogyny from all the men in my entire family.
And a person gets sensitive from being stomped on so many times, oddly enough. Oddly enough, getting stomped tends not to 'toughen' one - one develops a tough outer shell to protect the fragile inner bits that have been so repeatedly and ruthlessly damaged, nearly beyond repair. One develops a rapier tongue and a lightning-fast left hook out of a mere need to survive those who claim to 'love' you. It's all about survival, man.
So don't blame me. I did, and continue to do, what I had to, what I have to, to survive.
****
Denial and repression only get you so far. I find that beyond a certain point, I have to resort to external escape mechanisms.
The only problem is, they're not working any more. My escape hatches are like some kind of nightmare maze that only lead me right back to the very thing from which I seek relief: The truth. Reality.
They don't care.
They never have.
They never will.
No matter how loud or how long I scream and rant and beg and plead.
They just turn their backs on me and walk away, indifferent. Uninterested. I simply don't matter to them.
It is truly like the wolf who must gnaw off her own hind leg to escape the trap: There is no other way out, except death.
And having made this choice, she chooses only another kind of death: The death of her soul, that fragile, precious, unique, irreplacable light that is the flame of her being.
They would extinguish her, through their mere indifference.
How can they not see how bright she is, how beautiful? How brilliant and shiny and special and unique, an opal, full of fire and ever-changing color. She is like a diamond - all facets, flashing every color in the rainbow. She is beauty, embodied.
***
I feel as if I am only holding myself together through sheer force of will, through pure and indomitable stubborness.
But even granite is eventually worn away. And that which is too brittle shatters...
She seeks only to be seen and loved for who she is - "like any bright blade of grass, any shining stalk of wheat."
And so they do, some - some see her in this pure, this simple way.
But it is not enough.
There must be one, at least one, who truly loves every bit of her being, exactly as she is.
Where is this person? I am waiting. I am ready.
Will you come and take care of me now, please?
***
It is as if, if I let down my guard for even a moment, if I relax for even a split second, it will all come tumbling down - it will fall apart, I will explode in in a shower of springs and sprockets and un-reassembleable bits that will never go back together again.
So I can never stop, can never rest, can never let down.
Because if I do, I will see that there is nobody here but me, and never has been...
And then I will fall to bits, and no one will see, or care, or know, until it is too late, and I am gone.
Even if the empty shell of me remained, the essential I, the me inside will be gone.
That beautiful and irreplaceable spark that no one ever saw but me.
That is why the narcissist must spend so much time looking in the mirror: Because no one else is paying any attention. She is afraid she will disappear the instant she looks away. The sense of 'self', oddly enough, is assembled from all those mirror fragments that a lifetime around other people who care about you enough to show you a piece of yourself that you can hold in your hand, your mind, your heart, your soul. A piece of yourself that you can carry away and cherish, and feel to the depths of your being to be true.
Right and proper parents know how to do this instinctively; but most parents are neither right, nor proper.
****
The pit of despair is not so bad. It's actually rather cozy here, though the decor is a bit tedious - black everywhere you look. We could do with a bit of color.
Who's 'we'? Well, it's the schizoid persona that we'll be forced to take on should the raw force of our willpower fail to withstand the relentless onslaught of cognitive dissonance. At some point the twain shall be parted, never to meet again. Or something like that. Couldn't put Humpty together again - he was a frickin' egg, after all - whaddya want, anyway - miracles? Shit. I'll be satisfied just to get through this damn thing - life, that is - which is how my grandfather put it.
***
I seek some kind of reconciliation, some kind of peace, some way to think about all this that makes sense to me, that allows me to walk out of the maze, to be free, to escape the family trap, for good and forever.
The madness that comes from being alone with such thoughts for too long - for most of one's life - lurks at the edges, in the corners of my eyes. Just out of sight, I catch a fleeting glimpse, but it is gone when I look squarely at it. I see just the very tip of its ratlike tail twitching out of view constantly, but can never see the whole beast.
Maybe that's a good thing - the day I can see the whole beast will be the day the world no longer parses at all for me, and they really will have to wrap me up and cart me away to be lumped in with the other vegetables.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
it is not in the thing itself
that beauty is contained; it is in the eye of the viewer, the mind, the imagination behind the eyes that illuminates what it sees. The eyes cast the light with which the beloved object shines.
It is in the heart and soul of the being who finds beauty in that thing or person that the beauty resides, not in the thing itself.
Without ears to hear it, the falling tree makes no sound.
Without eyes to perceive it, beauty does not exist.
It is in being seen, truly, completely, fully, by someone who loves what they see, that we are born, and become and remain beautiful.
It is the reflections from the eyes of others that let us see who we are and teach us to love that being we call ourself.
In fact, I would say that babies are born loving themselves and all around them. It is only painful experience that teaches us otherwise, that breaks the bonds of love and loving admiration. It is the projected fears and hatreds of others that turn us into something unwanted, ugly, unloveable. We do not do this to ourselves.
It is in the heart and soul of the being who finds beauty in that thing or person that the beauty resides, not in the thing itself.
Without ears to hear it, the falling tree makes no sound.
Without eyes to perceive it, beauty does not exist.
It is in being seen, truly, completely, fully, by someone who loves what they see, that we are born, and become and remain beautiful.
It is the reflections from the eyes of others that let us see who we are and teach us to love that being we call ourself.
In fact, I would say that babies are born loving themselves and all around them. It is only painful experience that teaches us otherwise, that breaks the bonds of love and loving admiration. It is the projected fears and hatreds of others that turn us into something unwanted, ugly, unloveable. We do not do this to ourselves.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
unforgiving, unapologetic parents
I think they must get these notions from the way they were raised, but I'm astonished how many parents seem to think it totally undermines their 'power' if they ever apologize about anything, or admit, in any way, shape or form, that they might just possibly have been wrong about something (am reminded here of my dad making a joke about that very thing, acting like the Fonz in Happy Days - he was constitutionally incapable of saying "I was wrong". Instead he would do this sort of false stutter thing, "I was wr.... I was wr-wr-wr..." but could never actually get the whole word out. It was sort of funny when my dad did this, but also annoying as shit, because it just distracted from the fact that he still never fucking apologized. So there was always this churny sort of sick feeling in your gut that he was pulling something over on you, in addition to being pissed about whatever it was he'd done to make you mad in the first place. Fucking bullshit. Damn, but the whole parenting thing is so fucked up! Alice Miller, people, read your Alice Miller. Break the goddamn chain. Do something fucking different for a change. Definition of insanity and all that... use that so-called 'intelligence', that oh-so-logical brain that you're always bragging about for something other than a frickin' doorstop already. Fer fuck's sake.)
And at the same time these flawless, above-reproach parents are so fucking harsh and critical - so judgmental, so fucking godlike in their absolute unwillingness to show any kind of leniency or understanding. They just come down like a hammer, smashing you into tiny pieces so that they can feel better about themselves for all the times they've been smashed down in their lives. Fucking stupid-ass pieces of shit.
Maybe this is where the whole concept of god comes from? I've often thought this, that people created god to explain all the things that don't make sense to them - a sort of celestial repository for all the unwanted thoughts, fears, needs, etc. Kind of like a mental attic, where all the old, unresolved emotional crap can pile up unnoticed and unheeded. "Give it to god, he'll take care of it."
And the god thing can be a way to mentally let parents off the hook - it displaces the unthinkable, unpalatable recognition that those who brought you into the world see you as no more than a verbal, emotional punching bag on which to take out their old hurts, wounds, resentments. God offers a convenient escape hatch from everything we can't face up to, we can hand him anything that's too big or scary to deal with on our own. That untouchable, unreachable 'parent' on high, on whom we can dump all our responsibilities and cares. A massive delusion, mass psychosis.
Wonder why they don't have it listed in the DSM? Answer: Religion is convenient for the power-mongers. It's an excellent way to keep the sheep distracted.
And at the same time these flawless, above-reproach parents are so fucking harsh and critical - so judgmental, so fucking godlike in their absolute unwillingness to show any kind of leniency or understanding. They just come down like a hammer, smashing you into tiny pieces so that they can feel better about themselves for all the times they've been smashed down in their lives. Fucking stupid-ass pieces of shit.
Maybe this is where the whole concept of god comes from? I've often thought this, that people created god to explain all the things that don't make sense to them - a sort of celestial repository for all the unwanted thoughts, fears, needs, etc. Kind of like a mental attic, where all the old, unresolved emotional crap can pile up unnoticed and unheeded. "Give it to god, he'll take care of it."
And the god thing can be a way to mentally let parents off the hook - it displaces the unthinkable, unpalatable recognition that those who brought you into the world see you as no more than a verbal, emotional punching bag on which to take out their old hurts, wounds, resentments. God offers a convenient escape hatch from everything we can't face up to, we can hand him anything that's too big or scary to deal with on our own. That untouchable, unreachable 'parent' on high, on whom we can dump all our responsibilities and cares. A massive delusion, mass psychosis.
Wonder why they don't have it listed in the DSM? Answer: Religion is convenient for the power-mongers. It's an excellent way to keep the sheep distracted.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
will you miss her when she's gone?
The shrinks have a name for it: The False Self. It's the mask we put on to prove to other people that we're ok, that we can handle it, that we need nothing and no one and are utterly, totally, completely self-sufficient.
We never break down; we never fail; we never have moments of self-doubt or insecurity. We're always together, with it, controlled, on top of things.
"How are you?" "Fine." What the hell else are you supposed to say? Can I say, "I'm not fine"? Then what? Will you care? Will you just ignore me as if I'd never said a word? Does it make you uncomfortable? Is that my fucking job in life - to never fucking rock the boat? To never let you know that everything's not fine, that there's a crack in the varnish, a hole in the boat?
In fact, there are thousands of holes in the boat. So many they can never be repaired. She's sinking, slowly but surely, lower in the water every day. One day you'll look out there, toward the familiar profile of her gunwale against the sky, and there'll be nothing - just a blank space where she used to float. And you won't really feel anything, because you knew all about it - you expected it, all along, it was just a matter of time
Sure there's a brief lump in your throat, it takes you a while to adjust to the new view - that smooth expanse of nothingness where once there used to be a human being.
But you fill the gap quickly with the usual busyness and distraction, and before you know it she's but a faint memory, as if she never existed. Which she never did anyway, except as a sort of vague image in your mind's eye, an idea, a concept. She was never real to you in any way, shape or form. You always kept her at a distance, like the boat - a safe distance away from shore, so you'd never have to really see what terrible shape she was in, how her paint had peeled, her boards rotted, her oarlocks gone and her rope frayed and knotted from breaking so many times. Maybe she didn't sink - maybe she drifted away with the tide. Who knows.
***
The shrinks make it sound as if people with a False Self are an anomaly, are unusual, the exception to the rule.
I would argue that, no, it's just the opposite - we're expected to put on a false self by our whole culture. People spend their entire lives creating these images of who they think they should be, propping them up on the lawn like cardboard cutouts to distract everyone from what's really going on.
Those of us who try to be real, who bleed and cry and ask for help - we're merely seen as weak, as pathetic, as losers. People move away from us, embarrassed by our need and helplessness. They turn away in shame, afraid that somehow our bad luck will rub off on them and they'll catch it too, like some communicable disease.
***
The fact is, no one cares whether I sink or swim. People reach out, but it's always a one-shot deal - there's no continuity, no long-term connection. Relationships seem to be about as strong as wet tissue paper. The people who stay in relationships all seem to have made some kind of deal with the devil that I simply can't stomach: One or the other of them has to suck it up in a way that must be like swallowing broken glass every day. Every relationship I see seems to have some kind of massive power imbalance that totally fucking sucks.
I don't think I'm even capable of falling in love any more - I feel so completely disillusioned and let down about everything. Nothing makes sense; nothing adds up. I feel like I've been wandering, drifting most of my life, looking for some port to anchor in, a safe haven, a place to be out of the weather.
***
The thing is, when you grow up in a family where nobody has your back, nobody sticks up for you, nobody's there to catch you when you fall - you develop this prickly self-defensiveness born out of the inablity to ever truly relax, ever feel truly safe or at home with yourself.
Because no one seems to 'get' you, to be there for you, to understand or care about what you might be going through, even in the most superficial, "I'm curious about that" sort of way - well, you begin to feel like you don't exist. Like you're not there. Like no one can see or hear you.
And you begin to get angry about that, because people are always stepping on you, tripping over you, acting like you're this invisible person that no one can see.
At some point you begin to believe that there must be something severely wrong with you, like you're defective in some way, that you're just simply wrong. As if your very existence was a mistake, an error, something to be deleted from the ledger of life at someone's earliest convenience.
We never break down; we never fail; we never have moments of self-doubt or insecurity. We're always together, with it, controlled, on top of things.
"How are you?" "Fine." What the hell else are you supposed to say? Can I say, "I'm not fine"? Then what? Will you care? Will you just ignore me as if I'd never said a word? Does it make you uncomfortable? Is that my fucking job in life - to never fucking rock the boat? To never let you know that everything's not fine, that there's a crack in the varnish, a hole in the boat?
In fact, there are thousands of holes in the boat. So many they can never be repaired. She's sinking, slowly but surely, lower in the water every day. One day you'll look out there, toward the familiar profile of her gunwale against the sky, and there'll be nothing - just a blank space where she used to float. And you won't really feel anything, because you knew all about it - you expected it, all along, it was just a matter of time
Sure there's a brief lump in your throat, it takes you a while to adjust to the new view - that smooth expanse of nothingness where once there used to be a human being.
But you fill the gap quickly with the usual busyness and distraction, and before you know it she's but a faint memory, as if she never existed. Which she never did anyway, except as a sort of vague image in your mind's eye, an idea, a concept. She was never real to you in any way, shape or form. You always kept her at a distance, like the boat - a safe distance away from shore, so you'd never have to really see what terrible shape she was in, how her paint had peeled, her boards rotted, her oarlocks gone and her rope frayed and knotted from breaking so many times. Maybe she didn't sink - maybe she drifted away with the tide. Who knows.
***
The shrinks make it sound as if people with a False Self are an anomaly, are unusual, the exception to the rule.
I would argue that, no, it's just the opposite - we're expected to put on a false self by our whole culture. People spend their entire lives creating these images of who they think they should be, propping them up on the lawn like cardboard cutouts to distract everyone from what's really going on.
Those of us who try to be real, who bleed and cry and ask for help - we're merely seen as weak, as pathetic, as losers. People move away from us, embarrassed by our need and helplessness. They turn away in shame, afraid that somehow our bad luck will rub off on them and they'll catch it too, like some communicable disease.
***
The fact is, no one cares whether I sink or swim. People reach out, but it's always a one-shot deal - there's no continuity, no long-term connection. Relationships seem to be about as strong as wet tissue paper. The people who stay in relationships all seem to have made some kind of deal with the devil that I simply can't stomach: One or the other of them has to suck it up in a way that must be like swallowing broken glass every day. Every relationship I see seems to have some kind of massive power imbalance that totally fucking sucks.
I don't think I'm even capable of falling in love any more - I feel so completely disillusioned and let down about everything. Nothing makes sense; nothing adds up. I feel like I've been wandering, drifting most of my life, looking for some port to anchor in, a safe haven, a place to be out of the weather.
***
The thing is, when you grow up in a family where nobody has your back, nobody sticks up for you, nobody's there to catch you when you fall - you develop this prickly self-defensiveness born out of the inablity to ever truly relax, ever feel truly safe or at home with yourself.
Because no one seems to 'get' you, to be there for you, to understand or care about what you might be going through, even in the most superficial, "I'm curious about that" sort of way - well, you begin to feel like you don't exist. Like you're not there. Like no one can see or hear you.
And you begin to get angry about that, because people are always stepping on you, tripping over you, acting like you're this invisible person that no one can see.
At some point you begin to believe that there must be something severely wrong with you, like you're defective in some way, that you're just simply wrong. As if your very existence was a mistake, an error, something to be deleted from the ledger of life at someone's earliest convenience.
mirror neurons, culture, childhood
I grew up with a father who was unkind to me, who treated me like a problem to be solved rather than a person. I was continually punished in subtle and not-so-subtle ways for the egregious, heinous sin of having dared to be born female.
My mother, on the other hand, was simply clueless. Half the time (or more than half) she didn't understand what she was seeing, so she mostly responded inappropriately. She 'succeeded' as well as she did (if you define 'succeeded' as 'survived the prevailing fucked-up patriarchal, misogynist, sexist culture with a roof over her head and plenty to eat') because she was able to conform to the cultural requirement of the 'good wife' - i.e., she didn't talk back to her husband, was meek and submissive (frightened, in other words, of losing her 'job') enough in the early years of their marriage to lull my father into a sense of complacency from which he never recovered. He also had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility fostered by his father, who believed strongly in that most poisonous of all cultural 'shoulds': the Protestant work ethic.
To this day I think the stern looks bestowed on me by my father in every picture I can find (and believe me, I've hunted for one where he appeared to be looking upon me with benevolence, with kindness, possibly even fondness, possibly even something so - alien? as a mere and simple friendly smile*, for fuck's sake. Nary a one. Art mimics life, or some damn thing like that) reflect my dad's belief that being a father = having a stern expression at all times. Photos of his dad, my grandfather, capture perfectly the expression that comes to mind when I think of the word 'patrician' - cold, aloof, unresponsive. Ack.
None of the men in my father's family really believe in the work ethic - they all rebel against it in more or less visible ways. But they sure talk the walk, whether or not they walk it. In other words, they follow the letter, but not the spirit of this 'moral principle'. And they for sure as hell pass on the guilt... if guilt were an Olympic event, who'd win, d'ya think? Protestants or Catholics? I'd say we give the C's a good run for their money.
I don't give a shit about the Protestant work ethic - in fact, if I'd been less terrorized/terrified by the whole thing as a child, I would have tried to talk them all out of it and persuade them to actually live life instead. Ach, well. Maybe in another incarnation.
So what I think, is: I was really smart, really sensitive. One parent modeled intentional cruelty, believing that to be simply 'the way of the world' ("It's a jungle out there," as he would have put it). He didn't much like women, and I, being a miniature woman-in-training, got the brunt of his resentment. He verbally backhanded me and mom every chance he got, until I learned to talk back to him - 'smart mouth', as one of my aunts (Dad's younger sister) called it.
But it was a survival technique, and a necessary one. The man who feared that I'd grow up to be yet another 'mouse' very nearly turned me into one by his very own goddamn oppressive 'parenting' techniques. Goddamn fucking clueless git.
Of course he was a mere scrap of a 23-year-old when I was born - skinny, scrawny, trying to be tough, trying to carry the world on his narrow shoulders. The scowls on the faces of the parental units in their wedding picture has never ceased to amaze me. These people do not look happy! They look like somebody lined them up at the business end of a shotgun...and I've always wondered if that was in fact the case.
But mom continues to insist on her rose-colored version of the story (I'll probably never know the truth, just my gut instinct. Course I could always find out the date of their marriage - hm, never thought of that before.)
***
Aside: This is not parent-blaming. That label is a cop-out, slapped on those of us who are struggling with old, parent-imposed baggage by others who were not handicapped in that way - people who, through no effort of their own, were privileged to be at the receiving end of a fairer deal. In other words, they were dealt a better hand in life. Once again, fundamental misattribution error at work, better known as 'people taking credit for things over which they had no control,' and for which they should be given no credit. Like being born white, rich, smart or beautiful. Check your privilege at the door, people.
People who say we're parent-blaming are also those most likely to perpetuate the same power-over, abusive shit on their own kids. Those of us accused of wallowing in self-pity are, often as not, actually trying to do something about it, namely, break the pattern.
And yes, part of the pattern is anger, and being angry. I am rightfully angry at having been born into a comfortable middle-class family and yet having been treated like some kind of - I can't even think of words to describe the feeling - serf. Like I was hobbled, ball and chain around my ankles, for the crime of being born a woman in a man's world. I got caught between a misogynist, sexist man who took out his resentments on me, but in such a way that it took me 40 years to catch on that he planted the seeds of self-hatred all those years ago, and a mother who has never, to this day, been able to face up to her childhood shit. So she perpetuates the patterns ad nauseum, "the sins of the [mothers] shall be visited on the [daughters], yea, unto the seventh generation," or whatever the hell the quote is.
***
A father who was a hammer (albeit a velvet-covered one, which just meant that the bruises were internal and couldn't be seen, kind of like the hit man who learns to 'leave no marks'), and a mother who was this squishy, unsupportive, unprotecting, terrified mouse (marshmallow?) who periodically morphed into a resentful, angry, passive-aggressive child who had no clue what she was dealing with, but faked it to the best of her ability.
(I felt like I was on a roll, then Blogger seized up while my best thoughts were churning around crying out to be put on 'paper', and now I seem to have lost my clarity. Dammit. Sigh. Just have to do the best I can.)
They were both too young, I can see that. But I can't forgive them for how they treated me. I should have had a bright future, all the hope and potential in the world. But they were both so caught up in their own dysfunctional shit that it's a wonder I didn't become a complete basket case. I think my only saving grace was my bright mind, which dragged my kicking, screaming, terrified child self into a safe, dark corner of books and stories, where no one could touch me.
***
What I remember is the scowls on my parents' faces. They seemed to think that parenting primarily entailed being very serious, which shows in many of the photos taken when I was little. Several pictures show me clowning in ways that seem guaranteed to irritate the shit out of any parent-in-training who's trying to impress friends/family with her/his fitness to be a parent. The only problem was, the more serious they got, the more I had to 'act out' to relieve the fucking endless tension...
And yes, they were broke. Miserably so. And I was no good as a clown - or, let's say, more accurately, my parents didn't 'get' my sense of humor. I didn't relate to them, nor they to me. I was this little alien being who'd somehow materialized into the wrong family, and never the twain did meet.
I won't even give them credit for 'doing their best' - yes, they did their best to jump through the cultural hurdles that time period imposed on new parents. But neither of them had the intuitive sense god gave a frickin' rock, so I was stuck with these two clueless wonders, each clueless in their own way.
***
I, however, was smart and sensitive, intuitive, perceptive and responsive in all the ways my parents were not. I made up for their shortcomings by becoming the ultimate conformist - I became whatever they needed me to be (yes, this is quite a common survival technique for children in fucked up families - not claiming to be special here), which in my case was mostly invisible. I was my mom's full-time job for the first three years of my life, until my brother came along, at which point he sucked up all the oxygen in the room, and mom was much more attuned to his needs, not to mention he was much more vocal - mom called him the 'fire engine', he had an ear-splitting wail that wouldn't quit til he got what he needed. I think I was much more intimidated by my mother's fear and anger, and so reacted to her unfriendly looks with fear and, eventually, silence. I literally lost my ability to express my needs. Also she must have been completely exhausted by raising two small children single-handedly (dad was never around, between bridge, poker, work and hanging out with his family), and probably was less 'fussy' with my brother because she simply didn't have the energy.
I was naturally much more quiet, and so became the Invisible one. I think that's why I so loved Kipling's story of the tiger, who faded invisibly into the grass, his stripes turning him into just another pattern of shadow and light. And Esme Weatherwax in the Pratchett books, who can 'fade' into the background til you're no longer aware of her presence. I think I have sometimes unnerved people with how quiet I can be (based on a few comments that come to mind) - even my breathing is affected sometimes, so shallow that I make no sound whatsoever. Yikes. Kind of scary when I start to put all the pieces together.
***
The anger is real, and valid. Fuck all y'all who judge without having walked the miles in these shoes.
I now care less about being angry because I finally understand what happened, and I got there at my speed, in my own way, and on my terms. That's the best part - I get to decide what matters to me, what's important to me. I don't have to listen to those doubting, damning, shaming voices any more. I can say FUCK 'em, without hesitation, regret or remorse.
I get to go at the speed that's comfortable for me, and not have to 'hurry up' or 'grow up' too fast because it's inconvenient or uncomfortable for somebody else to have to adapt to my pace.
I get to walk without tripping (and without being tripped by that fucker).
I get to talk when I see fit, not when it's deemed acceptable by somebody else.
It's all a power trip, a power game, and those of us on the 'downside' of said power shit are cursed to forever bear the double burden of both getting the short end of the stick and being blamed for it, too. Like an unruly slave who 'got out of line' would sometimes be labeled with some make-believe, phony-ass diagnosis of drapetomania, which basically meant she (the slave) wasn't puttin' up with none of that shit, and was bein' too damn uppity. But of course slaves were born to be slaves, of course they were, how could it be otherwise? So any resentment or resistance on their part had to be down to some kind of fucking mental disturbance. Yeah, right. Like how fucking are mentally disturbed are you going to be when I shove this shotgun up your ass and pull the fucking trigger??? I'd say, all parts of y'all goin' to be seriously disturbed by that shit. So get over yourself already. You're not so special - you jest ain't been stomped hard enough in this lifetime to see what the hell all the fuckin' racket's about. To you it's just meaningless noise. But to the rest of us it actually means something, and reason we won't 'quieten down' is 'cause we want ya'll to fuckin' listen up already.
Anyway. Damn, but it felt good to write all that down! I wonder how many violent fantasies are basically revenge fantasies toward the various oppressors in one's life? I noticed myself thinking that while watching the Harry Potter movies - being especially taken by the stark contrasts between the 'good' guys and 'bad' guys - the whole good vs. evil thing. Especially watching the bullies (and there are many of them in these stories) get their comeuppance. Credits to Alice Miller. If only the rest of the culture would catch on to what is right in front of our noises: Mean, thoughtless parents produce children who become cruel, vicious, bullying parents in their own turn. And the cycle goes on, and on.
(Encountered an article today that said that the part of the central nervous system that processes physical pain is the same network that processes feelings of humiliation. Which might explain why so many people react violently to being humiliated! Makes sense - if we are affiliative creatures who depend on bonds of kinship and friendship for our sense of safety, security and belonging in a world where to be alone means to be shunned - naked and alone out on that savannah where there be tigers, and you'll get et if'n you ain't careful. You therefore want to be safely protected by others of your kind! Why the hell else do we have the most highly developed social networking skills of all god's critters? Answer: We're a tribal species. We need other people to survive, we soft-skinned, shell-less, dull-toothed and relatively slow bipeds. Pain and humiliation go against the bonding process, triggering all kinds of negative chemical reactions in the body. 'Not good,' as Cap'n Jack would say. So we have all kinds of incentive to avoid situations which cause us either physical or emotional pain, because they signal a rift between us and those we need most: Our kin. And thus it makes sense that the nervous system processes both humiliation and physical pain along the system pathway: They're both signals of something gone wrong in a social situation. Argh - getting bleary, need sleep. 'Pologies for any incoherence.)
***
Anger is part of the process (at least when you come from a family that doesn't support individual growth) of splitting away from the parent plant (the 'family') and becoming one's own person.
Anger happens when you finally get enough distance and enough life experience to realize that they way your folks did things isn't the only way, and that many of the things they did and said were damaging and destructive, if not simply outright cruel.
Anger is the fuel that keeps you motivated; that keeps you hunting for reasons, for solutions, for ways to make things work. To solve the 'problem' that you've been made out to be; to stop feeling like 'the problem' and put the blame to rest squarely where it belonged all along: On the shoulders of those who should have been fucking paying attention, but weren't.
So. Now I get to clean up the mess, deal with the consequences. And as my anger slowly dies down into a heap of coals with the occasional flare-up, I get to experiment with different ways of being and doing that my parents never showed me and/or didn't know about. I get to discover new paths, new ways. I get to decide for myself what's important, what matters. I am no longer in thrall to their angry glares, resentful scowls, judgmental looks. They have no power over me any more.
But it's like an earthquake - there are aftershocks in the form of relapses, regressions, etc., as I (mainly by trial and error) discover what actually works. I have to try out new anger techniques on strangers, then bring them closer and closer to home as I discover who my true friends are by testing the strength of our relationships. Adjusting the distance between me and others to match my comfort level, my willingness to trust based on my new standards, based on my rules.
(Sanctimonious, that's the word I was looking for earlier. Can't remember now where I meant to put it, so will store it here for later. Need a nap now.)
*Edited to add: I've remembered a photo where dad and I are clowning around and he's grinning a goofy grin at me. I remember there was this brief stretch where I was finally ok with dad because I'd become pretty, in spite of his constant backhanded remarks throughout my teenage years.
I have to say it felt kind of creepy - like being hit on by your own dad. I mean it would have been one thing if he'd been truly, genuinely friendly to me my whole life, and had made me feel like he liked me just the way I was. But in reality he could be unspeakably cruel and thoughtless - saying things that absolutely mortified me, cut me to the bone so that I felt like nothing and no one. He made it seem that I was unattractive but that it didn't matter - "We aren't here for decorative purposes," he'd say, as if that would somehow relieve the pain.
I didn't actually think I was ugly - I didn't think I was anything, really, not even plain. I just felt like - nothing. Like no one could see me. I remember gazing into the mirror by candlelight one night when I was about twelve, admiring my perfect skin, my gorgeous eyes, my pretty smile. And feeling unappreciated and resenting already that my youth and beauty were being wasted on someone so incapable of seeing me. I felt lost, already, even then - I feared that no one would ever see my beauty, no one would ever appreciate me for who I was.
When dad finally decided I was not so bad to look at after all, in my late teens or early 20s, it was too little, too late - I already felt betrayed and abandoned. I remember meeting him at a bar somewhere and thinking, Wow, this should be really cool, he's treating me like a grownup.
But it just felt kind of skeezy - I wondered if the people in the bar thought that I was some young chick my dad was cheating with, and if my dad was somehow kind of getting off on the idea that people might think I was his girlfriend rather than his daughter - it was pretty fucking weird, really. I remember feeling kind of shocked that this was my fucking father acting this way, and putting kind of a mental distance between me and him so that I wouldn't have to think about it too hard. It was really kind of gross.
My mother, on the other hand, was simply clueless. Half the time (or more than half) she didn't understand what she was seeing, so she mostly responded inappropriately. She 'succeeded' as well as she did (if you define 'succeeded' as 'survived the prevailing fucked-up patriarchal, misogynist, sexist culture with a roof over her head and plenty to eat') because she was able to conform to the cultural requirement of the 'good wife' - i.e., she didn't talk back to her husband, was meek and submissive (frightened, in other words, of losing her 'job') enough in the early years of their marriage to lull my father into a sense of complacency from which he never recovered. He also had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility fostered by his father, who believed strongly in that most poisonous of all cultural 'shoulds': the Protestant work ethic.
To this day I think the stern looks bestowed on me by my father in every picture I can find (and believe me, I've hunted for one where he appeared to be looking upon me with benevolence, with kindness, possibly even fondness, possibly even something so - alien? as a mere and simple friendly smile*, for fuck's sake. Nary a one. Art mimics life, or some damn thing like that) reflect my dad's belief that being a father = having a stern expression at all times. Photos of his dad, my grandfather, capture perfectly the expression that comes to mind when I think of the word 'patrician' - cold, aloof, unresponsive. Ack.
None of the men in my father's family really believe in the work ethic - they all rebel against it in more or less visible ways. But they sure talk the walk, whether or not they walk it. In other words, they follow the letter, but not the spirit of this 'moral principle'. And they for sure as hell pass on the guilt... if guilt were an Olympic event, who'd win, d'ya think? Protestants or Catholics? I'd say we give the C's a good run for their money.
I don't give a shit about the Protestant work ethic - in fact, if I'd been less terrorized/terrified by the whole thing as a child, I would have tried to talk them all out of it and persuade them to actually live life instead. Ach, well. Maybe in another incarnation.
So what I think, is: I was really smart, really sensitive. One parent modeled intentional cruelty, believing that to be simply 'the way of the world' ("It's a jungle out there," as he would have put it). He didn't much like women, and I, being a miniature woman-in-training, got the brunt of his resentment. He verbally backhanded me and mom every chance he got, until I learned to talk back to him - 'smart mouth', as one of my aunts (Dad's younger sister) called it.
But it was a survival technique, and a necessary one. The man who feared that I'd grow up to be yet another 'mouse' very nearly turned me into one by his very own goddamn oppressive 'parenting' techniques. Goddamn fucking clueless git.
Of course he was a mere scrap of a 23-year-old when I was born - skinny, scrawny, trying to be tough, trying to carry the world on his narrow shoulders. The scowls on the faces of the parental units in their wedding picture has never ceased to amaze me. These people do not look happy! They look like somebody lined them up at the business end of a shotgun...and I've always wondered if that was in fact the case.
But mom continues to insist on her rose-colored version of the story (I'll probably never know the truth, just my gut instinct. Course I could always find out the date of their marriage - hm, never thought of that before.)
***
Aside: This is not parent-blaming. That label is a cop-out, slapped on those of us who are struggling with old, parent-imposed baggage by others who were not handicapped in that way - people who, through no effort of their own, were privileged to be at the receiving end of a fairer deal. In other words, they were dealt a better hand in life. Once again, fundamental misattribution error at work, better known as 'people taking credit for things over which they had no control,' and for which they should be given no credit. Like being born white, rich, smart or beautiful. Check your privilege at the door, people.
People who say we're parent-blaming are also those most likely to perpetuate the same power-over, abusive shit on their own kids. Those of us accused of wallowing in self-pity are, often as not, actually trying to do something about it, namely, break the pattern.
And yes, part of the pattern is anger, and being angry. I am rightfully angry at having been born into a comfortable middle-class family and yet having been treated like some kind of - I can't even think of words to describe the feeling - serf. Like I was hobbled, ball and chain around my ankles, for the crime of being born a woman in a man's world. I got caught between a misogynist, sexist man who took out his resentments on me, but in such a way that it took me 40 years to catch on that he planted the seeds of self-hatred all those years ago, and a mother who has never, to this day, been able to face up to her childhood shit. So she perpetuates the patterns ad nauseum, "the sins of the [mothers] shall be visited on the [daughters], yea, unto the seventh generation," or whatever the hell the quote is.
***
A father who was a hammer (albeit a velvet-covered one, which just meant that the bruises were internal and couldn't be seen, kind of like the hit man who learns to 'leave no marks'), and a mother who was this squishy, unsupportive, unprotecting, terrified mouse (marshmallow?) who periodically morphed into a resentful, angry, passive-aggressive child who had no clue what she was dealing with, but faked it to the best of her ability.
(I felt like I was on a roll, then Blogger seized up while my best thoughts were churning around crying out to be put on 'paper', and now I seem to have lost my clarity. Dammit. Sigh. Just have to do the best I can.)
They were both too young, I can see that. But I can't forgive them for how they treated me. I should have had a bright future, all the hope and potential in the world. But they were both so caught up in their own dysfunctional shit that it's a wonder I didn't become a complete basket case. I think my only saving grace was my bright mind, which dragged my kicking, screaming, terrified child self into a safe, dark corner of books and stories, where no one could touch me.
***
What I remember is the scowls on my parents' faces. They seemed to think that parenting primarily entailed being very serious, which shows in many of the photos taken when I was little. Several pictures show me clowning in ways that seem guaranteed to irritate the shit out of any parent-in-training who's trying to impress friends/family with her/his fitness to be a parent. The only problem was, the more serious they got, the more I had to 'act out' to relieve the fucking endless tension...
And yes, they were broke. Miserably so. And I was no good as a clown - or, let's say, more accurately, my parents didn't 'get' my sense of humor. I didn't relate to them, nor they to me. I was this little alien being who'd somehow materialized into the wrong family, and never the twain did meet.
I won't even give them credit for 'doing their best' - yes, they did their best to jump through the cultural hurdles that time period imposed on new parents. But neither of them had the intuitive sense god gave a frickin' rock, so I was stuck with these two clueless wonders, each clueless in their own way.
***
I, however, was smart and sensitive, intuitive, perceptive and responsive in all the ways my parents were not. I made up for their shortcomings by becoming the ultimate conformist - I became whatever they needed me to be (yes, this is quite a common survival technique for children in fucked up families - not claiming to be special here), which in my case was mostly invisible. I was my mom's full-time job for the first three years of my life, until my brother came along, at which point he sucked up all the oxygen in the room, and mom was much more attuned to his needs, not to mention he was much more vocal - mom called him the 'fire engine', he had an ear-splitting wail that wouldn't quit til he got what he needed. I think I was much more intimidated by my mother's fear and anger, and so reacted to her unfriendly looks with fear and, eventually, silence. I literally lost my ability to express my needs. Also she must have been completely exhausted by raising two small children single-handedly (dad was never around, between bridge, poker, work and hanging out with his family), and probably was less 'fussy' with my brother because she simply didn't have the energy.
I was naturally much more quiet, and so became the Invisible one. I think that's why I so loved Kipling's story of the tiger, who faded invisibly into the grass, his stripes turning him into just another pattern of shadow and light. And Esme Weatherwax in the Pratchett books, who can 'fade' into the background til you're no longer aware of her presence. I think I have sometimes unnerved people with how quiet I can be (based on a few comments that come to mind) - even my breathing is affected sometimes, so shallow that I make no sound whatsoever. Yikes. Kind of scary when I start to put all the pieces together.
***
The anger is real, and valid. Fuck all y'all who judge without having walked the miles in these shoes.
I now care less about being angry because I finally understand what happened, and I got there at my speed, in my own way, and on my terms. That's the best part - I get to decide what matters to me, what's important to me. I don't have to listen to those doubting, damning, shaming voices any more. I can say FUCK 'em, without hesitation, regret or remorse.
I get to go at the speed that's comfortable for me, and not have to 'hurry up' or 'grow up' too fast because it's inconvenient or uncomfortable for somebody else to have to adapt to my pace.
I get to walk without tripping (and without being tripped by that fucker).
I get to talk when I see fit, not when it's deemed acceptable by somebody else.
It's all a power trip, a power game, and those of us on the 'downside' of said power shit are cursed to forever bear the double burden of both getting the short end of the stick and being blamed for it, too. Like an unruly slave who 'got out of line' would sometimes be labeled with some make-believe, phony-ass diagnosis of drapetomania, which basically meant she (the slave) wasn't puttin' up with none of that shit, and was bein' too damn uppity. But of course slaves were born to be slaves, of course they were, how could it be otherwise? So any resentment or resistance on their part had to be down to some kind of fucking mental disturbance. Yeah, right. Like how fucking are mentally disturbed are you going to be when I shove this shotgun up your ass and pull the fucking trigger??? I'd say, all parts of y'all goin' to be seriously disturbed by that shit. So get over yourself already. You're not so special - you jest ain't been stomped hard enough in this lifetime to see what the hell all the fuckin' racket's about. To you it's just meaningless noise. But to the rest of us it actually means something, and reason we won't 'quieten down' is 'cause we want ya'll to fuckin' listen up already.
Anyway. Damn, but it felt good to write all that down! I wonder how many violent fantasies are basically revenge fantasies toward the various oppressors in one's life? I noticed myself thinking that while watching the Harry Potter movies - being especially taken by the stark contrasts between the 'good' guys and 'bad' guys - the whole good vs. evil thing. Especially watching the bullies (and there are many of them in these stories) get their comeuppance. Credits to Alice Miller. If only the rest of the culture would catch on to what is right in front of our noises: Mean, thoughtless parents produce children who become cruel, vicious, bullying parents in their own turn. And the cycle goes on, and on.
(Encountered an article today that said that the part of the central nervous system that processes physical pain is the same network that processes feelings of humiliation. Which might explain why so many people react violently to being humiliated! Makes sense - if we are affiliative creatures who depend on bonds of kinship and friendship for our sense of safety, security and belonging in a world where to be alone means to be shunned - naked and alone out on that savannah where there be tigers, and you'll get et if'n you ain't careful. You therefore want to be safely protected by others of your kind! Why the hell else do we have the most highly developed social networking skills of all god's critters? Answer: We're a tribal species. We need other people to survive, we soft-skinned, shell-less, dull-toothed and relatively slow bipeds. Pain and humiliation go against the bonding process, triggering all kinds of negative chemical reactions in the body. 'Not good,' as Cap'n Jack would say. So we have all kinds of incentive to avoid situations which cause us either physical or emotional pain, because they signal a rift between us and those we need most: Our kin. And thus it makes sense that the nervous system processes both humiliation and physical pain along the system pathway: They're both signals of something gone wrong in a social situation. Argh - getting bleary, need sleep. 'Pologies for any incoherence.)
***
Anger is part of the process (at least when you come from a family that doesn't support individual growth) of splitting away from the parent plant (the 'family') and becoming one's own person.
Anger happens when you finally get enough distance and enough life experience to realize that they way your folks did things isn't the only way, and that many of the things they did and said were damaging and destructive, if not simply outright cruel.
Anger is the fuel that keeps you motivated; that keeps you hunting for reasons, for solutions, for ways to make things work. To solve the 'problem' that you've been made out to be; to stop feeling like 'the problem' and put the blame to rest squarely where it belonged all along: On the shoulders of those who should have been fucking paying attention, but weren't.
So. Now I get to clean up the mess, deal with the consequences. And as my anger slowly dies down into a heap of coals with the occasional flare-up, I get to experiment with different ways of being and doing that my parents never showed me and/or didn't know about. I get to discover new paths, new ways. I get to decide for myself what's important, what matters. I am no longer in thrall to their angry glares, resentful scowls, judgmental looks. They have no power over me any more.
But it's like an earthquake - there are aftershocks in the form of relapses, regressions, etc., as I (mainly by trial and error) discover what actually works. I have to try out new anger techniques on strangers, then bring them closer and closer to home as I discover who my true friends are by testing the strength of our relationships. Adjusting the distance between me and others to match my comfort level, my willingness to trust based on my new standards, based on my rules.
(Sanctimonious, that's the word I was looking for earlier. Can't remember now where I meant to put it, so will store it here for later. Need a nap now.)
*Edited to add: I've remembered a photo where dad and I are clowning around and he's grinning a goofy grin at me. I remember there was this brief stretch where I was finally ok with dad because I'd become pretty, in spite of his constant backhanded remarks throughout my teenage years.
I have to say it felt kind of creepy - like being hit on by your own dad. I mean it would have been one thing if he'd been truly, genuinely friendly to me my whole life, and had made me feel like he liked me just the way I was. But in reality he could be unspeakably cruel and thoughtless - saying things that absolutely mortified me, cut me to the bone so that I felt like nothing and no one. He made it seem that I was unattractive but that it didn't matter - "We aren't here for decorative purposes," he'd say, as if that would somehow relieve the pain.
I didn't actually think I was ugly - I didn't think I was anything, really, not even plain. I just felt like - nothing. Like no one could see me. I remember gazing into the mirror by candlelight one night when I was about twelve, admiring my perfect skin, my gorgeous eyes, my pretty smile. And feeling unappreciated and resenting already that my youth and beauty were being wasted on someone so incapable of seeing me. I felt lost, already, even then - I feared that no one would ever see my beauty, no one would ever appreciate me for who I was.
When dad finally decided I was not so bad to look at after all, in my late teens or early 20s, it was too little, too late - I already felt betrayed and abandoned. I remember meeting him at a bar somewhere and thinking, Wow, this should be really cool, he's treating me like a grownup.
But it just felt kind of skeezy - I wondered if the people in the bar thought that I was some young chick my dad was cheating with, and if my dad was somehow kind of getting off on the idea that people might think I was his girlfriend rather than his daughter - it was pretty fucking weird, really. I remember feeling kind of shocked that this was my fucking father acting this way, and putting kind of a mental distance between me and him so that I wouldn't have to think about it too hard. It was really kind of gross.
Friday, September 11, 2009
getting closer to the source
This is a bit exhausting - still trying to piece together and make sense of, single-handedly, without evidence and/or support from anyone in the family (i.e., no witnesses) what actually happened in my childhood to lead to the experiences I have today of trauma, sleeplessness, social anxiety and various other high stress-related symptoms and behaviors.
I feel like I'm trying to assemble a puzzle while having no idea whatsoever what the finished picture will look like, and trying to find the pieces by feel rather than by sight. In other words, everything seems to take at least 70 times longer than it 'ought' too...
Sigh. Well, at least I'm making progress. I'm no longer leaning on my old friend Jack, which means my body is not dealing with the ravages of alcohol on top of everything else. I'm sleeping better, with fewer nightmares and more continous, uninterrupted hours of sleep. I still have strange dreams, and still have trouble going to bed at any sort of 'normal' time of night, but I'm less fearful of actually falling asleep. I've learned how to get through the peri-panic moments so that I don't get sucked down the rabbit hole of dread. I've established enough contacts with people I trust so that I can call somebody if I really get stuck. So I don't feel so alone with it any more.
And now I'm beginning the process of trying to re-assemble the rest of my life, all the things that have been on hold for the last 10 years while I tried to figure out what the hell was going on, what it was inside me that continually undermined and sabotaged my best efforts to 'get ahead'.
Well, I'm not going to make a list - it's too long, and still in progress. And honestly, I don't need it. It would just be for show. But time is too short now to waste on such a project, and it's become clear that no one will ever read, understand or care about it besides me anyway. So why bother?
That last statement seems like it ought to feel depressing to write, but in fact it doesn't. It feels like a mere, bald, plain statement of fact.
And in fact I don't need such lists, such affirmations any more. Because I have the more real, solid evidence of having been hugged and encouraged and supported enough by my many friends who've come through for me in ways I never expected. Healing is well under way.
It's interesting to see what path things take. I no longer feel like I have any 'control' over any of it - it's more like I'm simply removing impediments to the growth of this plant/being named Grasshopper. And then seeing who she turns out to be when her flower (beautiful sunflower!) finally, finally, after all these years, gets her chance to bloom.
***
The anger is gradually subsiding - it was a knife, necessary to the process of cleaving away all the dead wood that barred my path for so many years. There's still a fair percentage of my daily energy going to maintaining that clear path - like a samurai machete-wielding goddess, I hack my way through the mental monsters and demons that plague me. But I do so with a single-mindedness that would do any cape-wearing hero proud: I no longer flinch or apologize, but simply get on with my business, do what I have to do.
Sometimes my 'goddess' is Wonder Woman with her bullet-deflecting wristlets; sometimes she's a big, black Jemima figure with a headscarf and overalls, shotgun on her hip and pitchfork at the ready. A no-nonsense, fierce, don't-mess-with-me mama who keeps a cigar in her pocket and can break any man in half over her knee. (Queen Latifah seems to embody, at least in her films, this fierce mother-bear protectiveness that I so missed having in my childhood.)
Whoever and whatever she is, she's fierce and strong and takes good care of me. She keeps me safe, fends off the bad guys, and sometimes scares the shit out of me with her directness and her total and complete unwillingness to take no crap from nobody, nohow.
***
The critical, judgmental voices are getting quieter and quieter, smaller and harder to decipher, like that 'wah-wah-wah' sound used to represent adult voices in the old Charlie Brown cartoons.
I feel more and more comfortable telling them to just shut the fuck up, and feel less and less remorse about having done so.
If anything encroaches on my peace and serenity, I just tell it to fuck off. It's amazing how well it works, and how blissfully, blessedly silent the internal, nagging voices are becoming.
I'm less and less hyper-vigilant - less triggered by loud voices and random scowly faces caught out of the corner of my eye.
I've adopted a total acceptance policy (been using it for quite some time, actually, but it's gradually spreading to encompass every area of my life), what some might refer to as 'radical acceptance' (yes, I know there's a book by that name.)
So if I find myself doing some kind of OCD behavior, rather than judging it, I simply accept it, encourage it, even, and ask it what it's doing. I get curious about it, and try to find out why I might be doing that particular thing (like checking that the back door is locked 20 times before I can actually go out the front door. Answer? It has to do with security, or lack thereof, and having lost many things of great sentimental value to a burglary about 10 years ago. When something traumatic happens and you don't have the emotional resources to help you cope with it at the time that it happens, you tend to store the memories away until such time as you feel safe enough to look at them and help them heal. Meantime, the 'trauma' can leak out in all kinds of weird ways that you may or may not associate with the original source of the problem.)
Today's google search link harvest:
I feel like I'm trying to assemble a puzzle while having no idea whatsoever what the finished picture will look like, and trying to find the pieces by feel rather than by sight. In other words, everything seems to take at least 70 times longer than it 'ought' too...
Sigh. Well, at least I'm making progress. I'm no longer leaning on my old friend Jack, which means my body is not dealing with the ravages of alcohol on top of everything else. I'm sleeping better, with fewer nightmares and more continous, uninterrupted hours of sleep. I still have strange dreams, and still have trouble going to bed at any sort of 'normal' time of night, but I'm less fearful of actually falling asleep. I've learned how to get through the peri-panic moments so that I don't get sucked down the rabbit hole of dread. I've established enough contacts with people I trust so that I can call somebody if I really get stuck. So I don't feel so alone with it any more.
And now I'm beginning the process of trying to re-assemble the rest of my life, all the things that have been on hold for the last 10 years while I tried to figure out what the hell was going on, what it was inside me that continually undermined and sabotaged my best efforts to 'get ahead'.
Well, I'm not going to make a list - it's too long, and still in progress. And honestly, I don't need it. It would just be for show. But time is too short now to waste on such a project, and it's become clear that no one will ever read, understand or care about it besides me anyway. So why bother?
That last statement seems like it ought to feel depressing to write, but in fact it doesn't. It feels like a mere, bald, plain statement of fact.
And in fact I don't need such lists, such affirmations any more. Because I have the more real, solid evidence of having been hugged and encouraged and supported enough by my many friends who've come through for me in ways I never expected. Healing is well under way.
It's interesting to see what path things take. I no longer feel like I have any 'control' over any of it - it's more like I'm simply removing impediments to the growth of this plant/being named Grasshopper. And then seeing who she turns out to be when her flower (beautiful sunflower!) finally, finally, after all these years, gets her chance to bloom.
***
The anger is gradually subsiding - it was a knife, necessary to the process of cleaving away all the dead wood that barred my path for so many years. There's still a fair percentage of my daily energy going to maintaining that clear path - like a samurai machete-wielding goddess, I hack my way through the mental monsters and demons that plague me. But I do so with a single-mindedness that would do any cape-wearing hero proud: I no longer flinch or apologize, but simply get on with my business, do what I have to do.
Sometimes my 'goddess' is Wonder Woman with her bullet-deflecting wristlets; sometimes she's a big, black Jemima figure with a headscarf and overalls, shotgun on her hip and pitchfork at the ready. A no-nonsense, fierce, don't-mess-with-me mama who keeps a cigar in her pocket and can break any man in half over her knee. (Queen Latifah seems to embody, at least in her films, this fierce mother-bear protectiveness that I so missed having in my childhood.)
Whoever and whatever she is, she's fierce and strong and takes good care of me. She keeps me safe, fends off the bad guys, and sometimes scares the shit out of me with her directness and her total and complete unwillingness to take no crap from nobody, nohow.
***
The critical, judgmental voices are getting quieter and quieter, smaller and harder to decipher, like that 'wah-wah-wah' sound used to represent adult voices in the old Charlie Brown cartoons.
I feel more and more comfortable telling them to just shut the fuck up, and feel less and less remorse about having done so.
If anything encroaches on my peace and serenity, I just tell it to fuck off. It's amazing how well it works, and how blissfully, blessedly silent the internal, nagging voices are becoming.
I'm less and less hyper-vigilant - less triggered by loud voices and random scowly faces caught out of the corner of my eye.
I've adopted a total acceptance policy (been using it for quite some time, actually, but it's gradually spreading to encompass every area of my life), what some might refer to as 'radical acceptance' (yes, I know there's a book by that name.)
So if I find myself doing some kind of OCD behavior, rather than judging it, I simply accept it, encourage it, even, and ask it what it's doing. I get curious about it, and try to find out why I might be doing that particular thing (like checking that the back door is locked 20 times before I can actually go out the front door. Answer? It has to do with security, or lack thereof, and having lost many things of great sentimental value to a burglary about 10 years ago. When something traumatic happens and you don't have the emotional resources to help you cope with it at the time that it happens, you tend to store the memories away until such time as you feel safe enough to look at them and help them heal. Meantime, the 'trauma' can leak out in all kinds of weird ways that you may or may not associate with the original source of the problem.)
Today's google search link harvest:
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
why
do I feel suicidal every time I'm around my family? If I even speak to one of them, I find myself blurting out things like, "I may not be around much longer", "I can't take it any more". It's like I just can't hold it inside any longer - the pain of being unheard for my entire life. I keep saying it's as if I were bleeding to death alongside a road and nobody stopped to help me - that's what my family feels like. Only the bleeding is all internal, invisible (at least to them), and no one notices til it's too late. It reminds me of when I had gallstones and hadn't eaten for two weeks because of the pain and I had to harass the doctor to pay any attention to me because I 'looked too healthy'. Fuck. It was all I could do to not grab the asshole by the lapels and shake him.
"Look, I know I'm not as important as that heart attack you're dealing with down the hall," I said, "but I haven't eaten in two weeks and every time I eat there's this excruciating pain, unlike any pain I've ever had in my life. I know I look perfectly healthy, but I'm not - there's something wrong." The very first guy I saw at my first emergency room said something about, "Well, it could be gallstones, but you just don't fit the profile." Fuck. Why can't these idiots look past their stupid assumptions and see what's right in front of their noses?
I finally persuaded him to at least refer me for an ultrasound (what the fuck am I paying you assholes all this money for, anyway? Jesus fucking christ.) Sure enough, gallstones. Though there was a weird moment where the lab tech called another tech into the room to say, "Look, her liver's way up here!" And blah blah blah - I guess I was otherwise extremely healthy, and they'd never really seen a normal, healthy body before under their scans - most of the women who came in were 'fair, fat and forty', which is the standard profile for people who tend to get gallstones.
Anyway. The whole point is, nobody ever believed me. I was not a hypochondriac; I hardly ever came in at all, except for routine exams and pap smears. My so-called 'regular doctor' practically didn't know who I was, I came in so infrequently. And yet the one and only time I came in with a serious complaint, they treated me like - I don't know what. Like I didn't know what was going on with my own fucking body. Jesus. The hubris, the arrogance. I've encountered this so many times now with the medical profession, whether standard or alternative, and with dentists as well. In fact anybody with any 'credentials' seems to be almost entirely about 'proving' themselves, something to do with ego. Truly, nobody ever grows up. We're all just children in oversized bodies. Sigh.
And my family is the same: I don't know if it's because of all my years of silence and only speaking up now, but it's as if I've lied, or cheated, or - I don't know what. They just won't listen, won't hear. I've read recently that people resist having their motives questioned, their - whatsit - morality? or something - impugned. Their 'honor', maybe? Dunno. Seems like truth doesn't matter to most people at all - it's all about image, the mirage, the projection. Like the Wizard of Oz, once again. All smoke and mirrors, no substance. Fuck.
It's that invisible feeling - like I don't matter, like nobody cares, nobody hears. No matter how loud I shout or scream, all they hear is that I'm being inconvenient for them. They don't appear to hear, see or otherwise perceive the pain. They're like that 'deaf, dumb and blind kid,' only they don't even play a mean pinball... (song reference.)
Feeling like you don't exist. Like the pain inside of you will just explode - like you'll explode - your mind, your body. Like a gasket, or some gizmo that's been under pressure too long and has worn out. Something just gives out - heart, mind, soul, spirit. Something.
But I don't want to go. I don't want to die. I just don't want to deal with them any more. I want them to go away and leave me alone. The problem is, they're only too happy to do just that. In fact it's just more of the same - I can't even appreciate it as the cessation of an unpleasant noise because there never was any noise to begin with - just the deafening SILENCE.
Silence. Fucking SILENCE. By speaking my truth, I've alienated them all - they've closed ranks, shut me out, now more than ever. But it's not the blessed relief of silence after too much noise - no, it's the further pain of being totally ignored on top of never having been taken seriously in the first place.
If anybody from the family ever reads this and cares enough to try to understand, THIS is where the pain comes from: The silence of having nobody to care, nobody to listen. Having everybody walk away and turn their backs on you every single time you express any kind of emotional need that makes them the least bit uncomfortable.
***
From an article on the powerful long-term effects of prolonged emotional invalidation:
The culture at large is complicit in these games of dominance and manipulation: A culture that believes in 'might makes right' and 'survival of the fittest' isn't going to have much compassion for those who lose at the game of life. Contempt is what you'll get, adding insult to the injury of already having 'failed' in the eyes of so many who look on and judge those of us who, by nature, inclination, temperament, circumstance or some combination thereof, are not suited to 'winning' the so-called game. Particularly if you're a woman, where, in this 'game', you're not even a player, not even on a 'team' at all, but are instead the ultimate object of derision: The ball. To be kicked and abused at will. Merely a means by which the 'teams' compete with one another. You (the woman) in and of yourself have no intrinsic value or merit other than as a means of manipulating the other guy into feeling more or less superior.
The enforcers in this game are the Pshrynks. They take the role of referee, and like all refs, are never truly impartial - they have their favorites, preferences, biases. They see what they want to see. More ideas on how we are blamed for 'playing the victim' by all parties: Beyond the Psychiatric Box.
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
"Look, I know I'm not as important as that heart attack you're dealing with down the hall," I said, "but I haven't eaten in two weeks and every time I eat there's this excruciating pain, unlike any pain I've ever had in my life. I know I look perfectly healthy, but I'm not - there's something wrong." The very first guy I saw at my first emergency room said something about, "Well, it could be gallstones, but you just don't fit the profile." Fuck. Why can't these idiots look past their stupid assumptions and see what's right in front of their noses?
I finally persuaded him to at least refer me for an ultrasound (what the fuck am I paying you assholes all this money for, anyway? Jesus fucking christ.) Sure enough, gallstones. Though there was a weird moment where the lab tech called another tech into the room to say, "Look, her liver's way up here!" And blah blah blah - I guess I was otherwise extremely healthy, and they'd never really seen a normal, healthy body before under their scans - most of the women who came in were 'fair, fat and forty', which is the standard profile for people who tend to get gallstones.
Anyway. The whole point is, nobody ever believed me. I was not a hypochondriac; I hardly ever came in at all, except for routine exams and pap smears. My so-called 'regular doctor' practically didn't know who I was, I came in so infrequently. And yet the one and only time I came in with a serious complaint, they treated me like - I don't know what. Like I didn't know what was going on with my own fucking body. Jesus. The hubris, the arrogance. I've encountered this so many times now with the medical profession, whether standard or alternative, and with dentists as well. In fact anybody with any 'credentials' seems to be almost entirely about 'proving' themselves, something to do with ego. Truly, nobody ever grows up. We're all just children in oversized bodies. Sigh.
And my family is the same: I don't know if it's because of all my years of silence and only speaking up now, but it's as if I've lied, or cheated, or - I don't know what. They just won't listen, won't hear. I've read recently that people resist having their motives questioned, their - whatsit - morality? or something - impugned. Their 'honor', maybe? Dunno. Seems like truth doesn't matter to most people at all - it's all about image, the mirage, the projection. Like the Wizard of Oz, once again. All smoke and mirrors, no substance. Fuck.
It's that invisible feeling - like I don't matter, like nobody cares, nobody hears. No matter how loud I shout or scream, all they hear is that I'm being inconvenient for them. They don't appear to hear, see or otherwise perceive the pain. They're like that 'deaf, dumb and blind kid,' only they don't even play a mean pinball... (song reference.)
Feeling like you don't exist. Like the pain inside of you will just explode - like you'll explode - your mind, your body. Like a gasket, or some gizmo that's been under pressure too long and has worn out. Something just gives out - heart, mind, soul, spirit. Something.
But I don't want to go. I don't want to die. I just don't want to deal with them any more. I want them to go away and leave me alone. The problem is, they're only too happy to do just that. In fact it's just more of the same - I can't even appreciate it as the cessation of an unpleasant noise because there never was any noise to begin with - just the deafening SILENCE.
Silence. Fucking SILENCE. By speaking my truth, I've alienated them all - they've closed ranks, shut me out, now more than ever. But it's not the blessed relief of silence after too much noise - no, it's the further pain of being totally ignored on top of never having been taken seriously in the first place.
If anybody from the family ever reads this and cares enough to try to understand, THIS is where the pain comes from: The silence of having nobody to care, nobody to listen. Having everybody walk away and turn their backs on you every single time you express any kind of emotional need that makes them the least bit uncomfortable.
***
From an article on the powerful long-term effects of prolonged emotional invalidation:
"We regularly invalidate others because we ourselves were, and are often invalidated, so it has become habitual. Below are a few of the many ways we are invalidated:***You Can't Heal an Emotional Wound with Logic
- We are told we shouldn't feel the way we feel
- We are dictated not to feel the way we feel
- We are told we are too sensitive, too "dramatic"
- We are ignored
- We are judged
- We are led to believe there is something wrong with us for feeling how we feel
People with high IQ and low EQ tend to use logic to address emotional issues. They may say, "You are not being rational. There is no reason for you to feel the way you do. Let's look at the facts." Businesses, for example, and "professionals" are traditionally out of balance towards logic at the expense of emotions. This tends to alienate people and diminish their potential.
Actually, all emotions do have a basis in reality, and feelings are facts, fleeting though they may be. But trying to dress an emotional wound, with logic tends to either confuse, sadden or infuriate a person. Or it may eventually isolate them from their feelings, with a resulting loss of major part of their natural intelligence."
The culture at large is complicit in these games of dominance and manipulation: A culture that believes in 'might makes right' and 'survival of the fittest' isn't going to have much compassion for those who lose at the game of life. Contempt is what you'll get, adding insult to the injury of already having 'failed' in the eyes of so many who look on and judge those of us who, by nature, inclination, temperament, circumstance or some combination thereof, are not suited to 'winning' the so-called game. Particularly if you're a woman, where, in this 'game', you're not even a player, not even on a 'team' at all, but are instead the ultimate object of derision: The ball. To be kicked and abused at will. Merely a means by which the 'teams' compete with one another. You (the woman) in and of yourself have no intrinsic value or merit other than as a means of manipulating the other guy into feeling more or less superior.
The enforcers in this game are the Pshrynks. They take the role of referee, and like all refs, are never truly impartial - they have their favorites, preferences, biases. They see what they want to see. More ideas on how we are blamed for 'playing the victim' by all parties: Beyond the Psychiatric Box.
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Friday, August 21, 2009
stories
It often seems that the stories we tell about who we are are almost as powerful, if not more so, than who we actually are.
I first noticed this while working as an architect in my 20s - the guys I worked with would constantly puff themselves up to look larger than life, bullshitting like there was no tomorrow.
Nobody seemed to notice! I was always dumbfounded by how many people would take them at their word, at face value, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. There was one guy who was a patent shyster, sitting at his desk all day running some kind of personal business, but because his manager liked the guy, it took them years to get rid of him. Men see themselves in other men, and so have sympathy for them, no matter how bad the behavior. But when it comes to having sympathy for women? Not so much. Men see what they want to see, and not what's actually there.
It's almost as if men (not all of them, but many) so admire the very art of bullshitting itself that they're willing to 'suspend disbelief' just for the sheer enjoyment of a good story. Maybe it's a bit like enjoying a magician's tricks, even though you know you're just being fooled.
(Thought for another time: Do people actually like being fooled? Why would that be? I feel like I'm missing something here, something fairly important, but can't get hold of it just now - maybe after some sleep :-)
****
So the thing to do, it seems to me, is to choose a story you like, and tell it well, and consistently, building the details gradually over time in such a way that you can discover which of them are
really you, and which are imaginary, figments, wishful thinking.
I think integrity must be the ability of a person to align who she wishes to be with who she actually is. Or possibly it's the amount of effort she puts toward said alignment, which people with similar levels of integrity can usually perceive. Which means she'll get credit for trying even when she fails, which she inevitably will, being human and all.
I first noticed this while working as an architect in my 20s - the guys I worked with would constantly puff themselves up to look larger than life, bullshitting like there was no tomorrow.
Nobody seemed to notice! I was always dumbfounded by how many people would take them at their word, at face value, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. There was one guy who was a patent shyster, sitting at his desk all day running some kind of personal business, but because his manager liked the guy, it took them years to get rid of him. Men see themselves in other men, and so have sympathy for them, no matter how bad the behavior. But when it comes to having sympathy for women? Not so much. Men see what they want to see, and not what's actually there.
It's almost as if men (not all of them, but many) so admire the very art of bullshitting itself that they're willing to 'suspend disbelief' just for the sheer enjoyment of a good story. Maybe it's a bit like enjoying a magician's tricks, even though you know you're just being fooled.
(Thought for another time: Do people actually like being fooled? Why would that be? I feel like I'm missing something here, something fairly important, but can't get hold of it just now - maybe after some sleep :-)
****
So the thing to do, it seems to me, is to choose a story you like, and tell it well, and consistently, building the details gradually over time in such a way that you can discover which of them are
really you, and which are imaginary, figments, wishful thinking.
I think integrity must be the ability of a person to align who she wishes to be with who she actually is. Or possibly it's the amount of effort she puts toward said alignment, which people with similar levels of integrity can usually perceive. Which means she'll get credit for trying even when she fails, which she inevitably will, being human and all.
indifferent family
People say they love you so that they can maintain their self-image as a loving person. The thing to watch, though, is what they actually do. It's tough when you grow up in a family where there are constant contradictions between what people claim to feel toward you versus what they actually demonstrate with their behavior. You learn to distrust your own perceptions - you become very confused by the constant cognitive dissonance. It's a form of gaslighting, a kind of constant and insidious bullshit that can become such an ingrained part of the fabric of your life that you can no longer perceive it, kind of like the water the fish swims in - she pretty much takes it for granted.
My brother, for example. I think he likes the idea of himself as a magnanimous, generous guy. And successful - that's important too. Because one of the ways people measure their success is by their ability to give away money.
"See? I've got so much money, I can afford to give some away! Look at me, aren't I great?" Puffed chest, broad grin, like the little boy's first time riding a bicycle.
Thing is, they have no awareness whatsoever of the people or person they're 'helping' - it's all about them, as usual. All about maintaining their self-esteem, their sense of self-worth.
It's not about you at all, is it? It's really about them, and them feeling good about themselves. They really couldn't care less if what they do actually helps you - it's like the parent who says, "You'll take what you get and like it," and then the very same parent wonders why, when they're trapped in old age in the old folks home, no one comes to visit them. Selfish jerks.
The trouble is, when your family sometimes does nice things, it keeps you off guard. There's even a name for it: Stockholm syndrome. You're always waiting for that tiny crumb, that little scrap that keeps you trapped there, hoping against hope that all the other times that they were mean, selfish, careless, thoughtless, inconsiderate, rude, unkind - were just blips on the radar. Despite the massive evidence against such hope, it's what keeps us alive, keeps us from jumping off the nearest bridge.
We take that single speck of apparent kindness - such as a superficially friendly word - and weigh it against all the mountains of evidence that say, This person doesn't really care about me, and then we put our thumb on the scales so that we can't see the reality of the imbalance.
Denial is our favorite coping mechanism, or so it seems to me. Those of us who are suicidal, I think we get there because the mountain of evidence against believing that people are inherently kind finally becomes so huge that we can no longer ignore it, no longer avoid the truth. When reality piles up to the point that it completely obscures everything else, it's kind of hard to miss.
Or, as Lily Tomlin put it, "Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it."
My brother, for example. I think he likes the idea of himself as a magnanimous, generous guy. And successful - that's important too. Because one of the ways people measure their success is by their ability to give away money.
"See? I've got so much money, I can afford to give some away! Look at me, aren't I great?" Puffed chest, broad grin, like the little boy's first time riding a bicycle.
Thing is, they have no awareness whatsoever of the people or person they're 'helping' - it's all about them, as usual. All about maintaining their self-esteem, their sense of self-worth.
It's not about you at all, is it? It's really about them, and them feeling good about themselves. They really couldn't care less if what they do actually helps you - it's like the parent who says, "You'll take what you get and like it," and then the very same parent wonders why, when they're trapped in old age in the old folks home, no one comes to visit them. Selfish jerks.
The trouble is, when your family sometimes does nice things, it keeps you off guard. There's even a name for it: Stockholm syndrome. You're always waiting for that tiny crumb, that little scrap that keeps you trapped there, hoping against hope that all the other times that they were mean, selfish, careless, thoughtless, inconsiderate, rude, unkind - were just blips on the radar. Despite the massive evidence against such hope, it's what keeps us alive, keeps us from jumping off the nearest bridge.
We take that single speck of apparent kindness - such as a superficially friendly word - and weigh it against all the mountains of evidence that say, This person doesn't really care about me, and then we put our thumb on the scales so that we can't see the reality of the imbalance.
Denial is our favorite coping mechanism, or so it seems to me. Those of us who are suicidal, I think we get there because the mountain of evidence against believing that people are inherently kind finally becomes so huge that we can no longer ignore it, no longer avoid the truth. When reality piles up to the point that it completely obscures everything else, it's kind of hard to miss.
Or, as Lily Tomlin put it, "Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it."
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
If I could do it over again...
I'd tell my dad what I felt. Every single time. No matter what. I wouldn't bottle things up.
And I don't blame myself for being afraid of my parents - all children are afraid of parents who abuse their power to take advantage of a child's inherently trusting nature.
It's all the little things - the incessant scowl no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try to please him.
The laughter when you're hurt or scared or struggling with something - the mockery, the bottomless feeling that you're no good, that they'll never help you, they'll never credit you with anything or show you how to anything that's really important, like how to frickin' survive on this crazy planet.
And I don't blame myself for being afraid of my parents - all children are afraid of parents who abuse their power to take advantage of a child's inherently trusting nature.
It's all the little things - the incessant scowl no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try to please him.
The laughter when you're hurt or scared or struggling with something - the mockery, the bottomless feeling that you're no good, that they'll never help you, they'll never credit you with anything or show you how to anything that's really important, like how to frickin' survive on this crazy planet.
anger
Anger comes up when things feel unfair.
When things feel unfair and you are completely unable to do anything to change the situation, that's when depression starts, and eventually possibly feelings of suicide.
The suicide is not because you really want to die; it's because you feel trapped and hopeless, and can't find a way out.
People murmur sympathetic noises, but DO nothing. They sit on their hands, watching you sink lower and lower in the water, til just the very tip of your nose is visible.
They say, "I'd help you if I could," comfortably ensconced in their half-million-dollar homes, packing for their next vacation, while you're wondering how the hell you're going to pay your measly $500 rent. Rent? Or electric bill? Which will it be? How much longer can you promise to pay them (while failing to come through with the actual dough) before they finally cut you off?
People in these fancy houses speak of how they're 'pinching pennies'.
I wonder what they mean by this? Yes, maybe they've cut back on their lattes, or only buy a $50 haircut instead of a $75 one.
But in real terms? They give up very little. Yes, they may struggle to pay that outrageous mortgage payment every month, but they pay it, it's worth every penny for the status they get from living in this fancy house in this fancy neighborhood.
It gets so you can't enjoy the smallest thing in life, knowing that every move you make toward pleasure is costing you money that 'should' be put toward the bills.
But how can you live with no pleasure, nothing to look forward to? Answer: You can't.
They say the best things in life are free.
'They', are, as usual, full of shit.
As some *other* 'they' used to say in the old days, TANSTAAFL, or, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."
Everything has a cost. Absolutely everything, without exception.
***
You want to be let off the hook. You want to be relieved of your guilty conscience. You want to be appreciated for what you have given (which is lots of time and 'listening' energy, for which I am very grateful.)
However: When it comes down to it, I can't eat these things. I can't wear them, or pay the rent with your sympathetic ear.
I wish you would say, "I won't help you," rather than "I can't help you," which seems to me to be patently, obviously a fiction, an outright lie.
Why am I expected to bolster your ego needs at the same time that I've already swallowed my pride to ask for help in the first place, and have had the humiliation of being turned down?
Because this is the very nature of inequity, unfairness, power imbalance: Those who have it take it for granted; those who don't, suffer. Period. End of story.
The best one can hope for in this dog-eat-dog world is to not be the last dog in the chain.
There's a scene in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies where the pirates pull up in some small boats to visit Tia Dalma, a powerful seer. As they climb single file onto the landing, each one says to the next, "Mind the boat." This continues down the chain 'til the only one left is a guy with no tongue who finds himself lower even than the parrot, who does possess a tongue, as well as an acute ability to mimic whatever's necessary for its survival.
Hm. That last line: "Whatever's necessary for survival."
Have to think about that. The key is to define 'survival', which I think varies as one moves up or down the economic ladder.
***
I'm done letting people off the hook. From here on out, I'm calling them on their shit.
When things feel unfair and you are completely unable to do anything to change the situation, that's when depression starts, and eventually possibly feelings of suicide.
The suicide is not because you really want to die; it's because you feel trapped and hopeless, and can't find a way out.
People murmur sympathetic noises, but DO nothing. They sit on their hands, watching you sink lower and lower in the water, til just the very tip of your nose is visible.
They say, "I'd help you if I could," comfortably ensconced in their half-million-dollar homes, packing for their next vacation, while you're wondering how the hell you're going to pay your measly $500 rent. Rent? Or electric bill? Which will it be? How much longer can you promise to pay them (while failing to come through with the actual dough) before they finally cut you off?
People in these fancy houses speak of how they're 'pinching pennies'.
I wonder what they mean by this? Yes, maybe they've cut back on their lattes, or only buy a $50 haircut instead of a $75 one.
But in real terms? They give up very little. Yes, they may struggle to pay that outrageous mortgage payment every month, but they pay it, it's worth every penny for the status they get from living in this fancy house in this fancy neighborhood.
It gets so you can't enjoy the smallest thing in life, knowing that every move you make toward pleasure is costing you money that 'should' be put toward the bills.
But how can you live with no pleasure, nothing to look forward to? Answer: You can't.
They say the best things in life are free.
'They', are, as usual, full of shit.
As some *other* 'they' used to say in the old days, TANSTAAFL, or, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."
Everything has a cost. Absolutely everything, without exception.
***
You want to be let off the hook. You want to be relieved of your guilty conscience. You want to be appreciated for what you have given (which is lots of time and 'listening' energy, for which I am very grateful.)
However: When it comes down to it, I can't eat these things. I can't wear them, or pay the rent with your sympathetic ear.
I wish you would say, "I won't help you," rather than "I can't help you," which seems to me to be patently, obviously a fiction, an outright lie.
Why am I expected to bolster your ego needs at the same time that I've already swallowed my pride to ask for help in the first place, and have had the humiliation of being turned down?
Because this is the very nature of inequity, unfairness, power imbalance: Those who have it take it for granted; those who don't, suffer. Period. End of story.
The best one can hope for in this dog-eat-dog world is to not be the last dog in the chain.
There's a scene in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies where the pirates pull up in some small boats to visit Tia Dalma, a powerful seer. As they climb single file onto the landing, each one says to the next, "Mind the boat." This continues down the chain 'til the only one left is a guy with no tongue who finds himself lower even than the parrot, who does possess a tongue, as well as an acute ability to mimic whatever's necessary for its survival.
Hm. That last line: "Whatever's necessary for survival."
Have to think about that. The key is to define 'survival', which I think varies as one moves up or down the economic ladder.
***
I'm done letting people off the hook. From here on out, I'm calling them on their shit.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
my mother *still* resents
my need for anybody but her.
her need to be the center of somebody's universe - anybody's universe - was so great that it became a vortex that tried to suck me in, tried to consume me.
Any time I tried to express a need of my own, tried to escape, tried to be independent, autonomous - she resented it. Became angry.
By her lights I was selfish and inconsiderate for ever needing anything that didn't benefit her in some way, reflect back on her. Like my achievements with music - it was something she'd always wanted for herself, so when I made some inroads, she fed off that heady wind of success like a crack addict inhaling a snootful (not that I know anything about *that*, just the image that first came to mind.)
She abandoned me when I showed any interest in others; to this day, when I ask about my father, when I asked if she'd make copies of photos she had of him and me together (you know, he died over 20 years ago, and I have almost nothing left of him - much was stolen when I got robbed 10 years ago, and all I have left is a mechanical pencil he used in college, plus somewhere a set of compasses that I used for a little bit myself in my architectural drafting classes)
...she got angry and upset that I wanted the photos because it wasn't about her. Fuck. Like they're competing, long after he's dead, after she's never once, in 20 fucking years asked me how I am, how I feel, how it affected me to have my father die when I was so young. All she can think of is that I'm not asking for pictures of her.
Well, yeah, mom - does it occur to you that dad is dead, that pictures are all I have left of him? Whereas you, you're right here in front of me. Though you might as well not be for all the communication we have.
Her need is so great, and she doesn't see my needs at all.
My needs come to her as a - what - an offense. A crime. As if I am somehow hurting her by needing something that she can't give. As if I am intentionally inflicting mental anguish on her by needing anything at all of my very own, anything at all that has nothing to do with her.
She set me up with a room of my own; she set me up to have the kind of privacy she never experienced growing up in a one-room cinder-block house with two parents and two younger brothers.
She resented me when I shut her out - when I took advantage of all that highly-vaunted secrecy and privacy to actually have some space of my own.
So even though she made the actual, tangible effort, she was never able to make the mental leap that recognized that my experience was different from hers.
She never seemed to be able to grasp that we were not one and the same person - that I was and am a separate being, a separate human with totally separate feelings, needs and desires from her.
Maybe that's where this saying (and behavior?) of 'It's not all about you' comes from - those of us who think it's 'all about us' grew up with parents (or at least one parent) who acted exactly this way.
In other words, the parent could not see us as separate. They constantly blurred, or ignored entirely, the line between 'me' and 'she', such that there was no line. There was no boundary, no border, no separation.
****
Now, after all this time, I think she finally doesn't care any more. Or, she does what all children of alcoholics do: Blocks it from her mind. Pretends it never happened. See no evil, speak no evil, whatever. Denial and dissociation are techniques I *should* have learned from her as a cradle language. Or maybe I did, it's just that now I choose them consciously as ways to deal with old emotions until the right conditions are available for me to finally cope with things the way I actually need to.
her need to be the center of somebody's universe - anybody's universe - was so great that it became a vortex that tried to suck me in, tried to consume me.
Any time I tried to express a need of my own, tried to escape, tried to be independent, autonomous - she resented it. Became angry.
By her lights I was selfish and inconsiderate for ever needing anything that didn't benefit her in some way, reflect back on her. Like my achievements with music - it was something she'd always wanted for herself, so when I made some inroads, she fed off that heady wind of success like a crack addict inhaling a snootful (not that I know anything about *that*, just the image that first came to mind.)
She abandoned me when I showed any interest in others; to this day, when I ask about my father, when I asked if she'd make copies of photos she had of him and me together (you know, he died over 20 years ago, and I have almost nothing left of him - much was stolen when I got robbed 10 years ago, and all I have left is a mechanical pencil he used in college, plus somewhere a set of compasses that I used for a little bit myself in my architectural drafting classes)
...she got angry and upset that I wanted the photos because it wasn't about her. Fuck. Like they're competing, long after he's dead, after she's never once, in 20 fucking years asked me how I am, how I feel, how it affected me to have my father die when I was so young. All she can think of is that I'm not asking for pictures of her.
Well, yeah, mom - does it occur to you that dad is dead, that pictures are all I have left of him? Whereas you, you're right here in front of me. Though you might as well not be for all the communication we have.
Her need is so great, and she doesn't see my needs at all.
My needs come to her as a - what - an offense. A crime. As if I am somehow hurting her by needing something that she can't give. As if I am intentionally inflicting mental anguish on her by needing anything at all of my very own, anything at all that has nothing to do with her.
She set me up with a room of my own; she set me up to have the kind of privacy she never experienced growing up in a one-room cinder-block house with two parents and two younger brothers.
She resented me when I shut her out - when I took advantage of all that highly-vaunted secrecy and privacy to actually have some space of my own.
So even though she made the actual, tangible effort, she was never able to make the mental leap that recognized that my experience was different from hers.
She never seemed to be able to grasp that we were not one and the same person - that I was and am a separate being, a separate human with totally separate feelings, needs and desires from her.
Maybe that's where this saying (and behavior?) of 'It's not all about you' comes from - those of us who think it's 'all about us' grew up with parents (or at least one parent) who acted exactly this way.
In other words, the parent could not see us as separate. They constantly blurred, or ignored entirely, the line between 'me' and 'she', such that there was no line. There was no boundary, no border, no separation.
****
Now, after all this time, I think she finally doesn't care any more. Or, she does what all children of alcoholics do: Blocks it from her mind. Pretends it never happened. See no evil, speak no evil, whatever. Denial and dissociation are techniques I *should* have learned from her as a cradle language. Or maybe I did, it's just that now I choose them consciously as ways to deal with old emotions until the right conditions are available for me to finally cope with things the way I actually need to.
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