i saw my nieces for the first time in over a year on Monday (the 23rd), and was there long enough to end up seeing my brother as well, though only briefly. He seemed all red and tight and angry, like something that was going to explode - he made me think of a very large grape, in shape and redness. That kind of tautness that grape skins have? Like they're holding in a lot of tension?
It was at my mom's house, I'd stopped by to ask her something, and the girls were there - I kind of thought they might be, because Monday used to be their regular 'day at grandma's,' and I was pretty sure school wouldn't've started yet.
So I went in when they said they were going to have tea and asked me if I'd stay (they were all out in the yard when I got there and I was just going to ask mom the question and go, but with two nieces clinging to me and the third gazing on with an - i don't know what - kind of look on her face, I didn't have the heart to just leave them.)
It was ok at first, but then the oldest started tormenting everyone (I think she's 10 now?), she would have tormented me except I've spent so much time working on all this stuf that it hardly fazed me at all. Mostly just the shock that it's gotten so blatantly out of hand in such a short time (the bullying, I mean.) The other girls seemed sort of resigned to it, they put up a little bit of a fuss, but they both seemed to more or less do what domestic animals do when they've been mauled too much by little kids: Just lie there until the kid gets bored and goes away, and try not to do anything that might get them seriously hurt.
So I stood up to her and stood up *for* the others, and taught them little tricks to fend for themselves, right there in front of her, and shifted the balance of power a bit; but it was exhausting, and I had no notion of trying to do it on any kind of regular basis.
I wasn't thinking about how late it was, but then I heard the front door open and knew it was my brother; we scarcely exchanged a word or a glance, except that I caught the red-grapeness out of the corner of my eye and decided to keep my head down. He finally, maybe right as we all were leaving? remembered to blurt something about "Thanks for the very cool birthday card" that I'd left him on the back porch of their house almost three weeks before. At that point I was pretty much just trying to get out of there intact, so wasn't even thinking about it, and it was a pleasant surprise.
Interestingly, the one that clung to me most was the youngest (who's now 5, she tells me); I seem to have adopted the classic, defensive distancing that I remember from my *own* aunts and uncles. A family that never apologizes for anything nor takes responsibility for the effects of their behaviors and words on the other members of the family, and is unwilling to ever DISCUSS anything, carries a lot of old pain.
It seems that, when this is the case, everybody's so busy kind of holding themselves 'still' - you know, like when you've got a bruise or some other sore spot and you're basically just trying not to jar or bump it until it has a chance to heal properly?
But there are SO many sore spots in our family that we can hardly be in the same room with each other.
Except my mother, who blithely and glibly trots out every story and tale as if it were the breeziest, most unconcerning little family anecdote, oblivious to the winces of pain and embarassment, sometimes humiliation and shock, on the faces of her children and other listeners. She's the one who unknowingly rubs salt in the wound (smiling all the while, like a child, "See, aren't i great, aren't i a good storyteller? Just like the grownups?"), drags crushed glass across flayed, raw, bleeding skin. She has ABSOLUTELY NO AWARENESS of the feelings of other human beings, as near as I can tell.
So there are the Oblivions, like my mother, who are the emotional equivalent of the bull in the china shop; and the Passivites, like the middle niece, who just lie there and take it and hope it will be over soon; and the Explodies, like my brother, who lets it build until steam comes out his ears and he resembles one of those old-fashioned boilers, and everybody runs for the hills.
And me? I don't know which camp I'm in. I like to think I've become this detached observer, this Wise Woman (goddesss, how our family could *use* some wisdom!)
I picture myself as Justice (my name is Biblical in origin and means 'the judge', as I understand it, ho ho :-), you know, the one with the scales and everything?The one who impartially weighs the pros and cons and reads out the verdict, assigning responsibility and recompense, assuring fairness and equity for all. Or something like that.
***
I want it to all go away and leave me alone. I've been so much happier this past year - able to make healthier connections with new people, never falling into the absolute depths of blackest despair that had me in their death grip in years past; I walked away and left it behind. I feel that I am standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and admiring its depth, but knowing I definitely don't want to fall down there! 'Cause I'll never get out again! It's a dry, sandy, dusty, chasm with no food, water or shelter from the blazing desert sun; no protection at all. "Run away! Run away," scream my instincts.
The guilt part is a tiny little voice I can barely hear, now - I've wrestled it to the ground so many times that I'm beginning to win. My OWN need for survival is becoming more important than 'looking good' to people whose 'rules' do not in any way, shape or form include concerns about MY health and well-being.
Where's a pretty picture? I've decided I'm going to start posting photos/clips from my massive cache of images just to get them out there, disseminate them, spread them on the ether-wind.
I sorted/gathered my grasshopper pictures today, maybe I'll start with them:
***
The thing is, how long would it have been before someone from my family made contact with *me*? I mean, there's been NO effort, no energy. I walked in as if I'd never left - but it's a kind of gaslighting - my presence? My absence? It's all the same.
Except the youngest niece said, "Auntie ____, it's been years since I've seen you!" Which, from the perspective of a 5-year-old, is pretty accurate, when you get down to it. A year's a fifth of her entire life, after all....
I'm so used to feeding them all, emotionally - being aware of their needs, knowing what they need especially when they don't even know, and yet coming away hungry, myself - starving for the tiniest crumb of emotional sustenance.
The girls, especially the youngest, still give to some degree, they haven't learned to hoard it to themselves, yet; though the oldest is getting scarily good at it already and I'm afraid to learn what the middle girl's 'coping mechanisms' are turning out to be.
My youngest brother is the only one who gives anything back at all of the so-called 'adults', and even he seems to do it in spite of himself - it was reflexive when he was a child, but now he, too, has learned to 'keep it to himself.' Mostly. It's almost as if he surprises himself when he becomes unexpectedly generous. And he fights himself: There's the anger, the guilt, the shame, the resentment.
Sigh. I wish it could all be simpler, somehow, not so horrible and tangled up. I really think it's the money (or lack thereof) that messes everything up: The unfairness, the inequity, grates on everyone's nerves, and nobody wants to talk about how it got that way, and the longer we go without talking about it, the more set everybody gets in their ways, the more unwilling they are to change. The lack of contact reinforces peoples' preconceptions, biases and misconceptions, and the misunderstandings and lack of communication become set in stone. Immovable. Inert.
Sad.
But somehow I don't FEEL it - I've become inured to it. I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing, but I can actually stand this close to the vortex and not get sucked in. And I don't even feel like it's an act of willpower or resistance - I'm just simply not attracted any more. I am indifferent. It has nothing to do with me.
***
I've been thinking, lately, of the 'choices' people make, many of which seem to be like the one a wolf caught in a trap makes when 'choosing' to gnaw its own leg off in order to escape: No choice at all.
Chew my leg off and live, crippled;
or die?
Many so-called 'choices' in life seem like this: Work as a coal miner and slowly die of black lung in order to 'live'? Work some meaningless white-collar job, trapped in a dimly-lit, airless cubicle through many of your most productive life hours so that you can - live???
I don't get it. There HAS to be another way.
***
Bouncing back and forth, working away at this, an invisible splinter that hurts like a sonofabitch, and I keep thinking I've gotten most of it out, yet there's still evidence of infection.
My mom. I haven't spoken to her, except briefly when it's unavoidable when she shows up at a dance, and yet when I showed up at her house the other day it was as if we'd only spoken yesterday, as if there was no animosity, as if everything was normal and fine.
It MAKES ME FUCKING CRAZY!!!!! This business where I CANNOT MAKE ANY IMPACT ON MY FAMILY WHATSOEVER.
It's like you PUNCH THEM IN THE FACE AS HARD AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN, and they don't even blink. They appear not to even notice you, at all! It's like you're this tiny, insignificant, meaningless fly speck that has no power. Maybe that's the origin of all those monster movies - children who've grown up in families like that, or with parents like that. The horrible, scary creature that crushes everything in its path, unstoppable.
Yikes. I don't like where this is going. No WONDER I had so many nightmares as a kid! It's a wonder I don't still have them now. Massive will power at work, plus staying awake until the wee hours until I'm so exhausted I HAVE to go to sleep. Keeping the demons at bay, the ones that lurk continually at the corners of your vision, always just out of conscious view, waiting for you to let down your guard so they can GET you...
Ok, now I'm REALLY going to give myself nightmares if I don't stop.
But I'm on to something, I have to follow this. Maybe not now, right this minute, but understanding the connection between staying away from my 'family' (and certain other kinds of people) and the nightmares and my continued sanity and mental health IS CRUCIAL.
I MUST stay away from them.
I MUST protect myself.
I MUST do this. At all costs.
I CANNOT AFFORD to go there again.
I do not LIKE green eggs and ham.
I will not EAT them, Sam I am.
I feel like I've been fighting an internal battle at a subconscious level for the last four days, sleeping as much as possible to 'gird my loins', maybe? Or maybe as an escape. Hard to tell. Seeing my family now is not good timing. This time is for ME, dammit. The flower only blooms under certain very specific conditions. I've been working up to this particular bloom period for a VERY long time. I WILL NOT let it be sucked dry by some random, drive-by - whatevers. Even just THINKING about it, or AVOIDING thinking about it, is taking up WAY too much time and energy. I can't afford it.
And now today I finally have a trickle of energy, and it's getting sucked into this vortex. This argument, about whether I'm a 'bad person' for not putting their needs ahead of my own.
"Kill it! Kill it!"
I've gotten so I can actually smash certain kinds of spiders (the kind I *know* to be biters) without too much regret; can I get to the point where I can turn my back on people out of self-preservation?
Yes.
I CAN. :-)
***
my shoulders and neck are all tense and sore, scrunched up as if fending off a blow. This is a sure sign that I fear 'getting in trouble' from somewhere. Here it seems apropos to quote from an article on guilt:
As the French playwright Albert Camus wrote in The Fall: ‘The more I accuse myself, the more right I have to judge you. Even better, I make you judge yourself, which comforts me the more.’Hm. I'm not sure that's exactly what I was looking for. But i like the quote, so i'll leave it there. (And i'm not trying to be 'hip' with my lower-case 'i's' and beginnings of sentences - my shift key seems to be on the fritz and it's PISSING ME OFF to the point that i can't be bothered to keep going back and bashing on it to try to make it work right. So it's hit and - miss. Cry me a rivah.)
Ach, here's the quote I was lookin' for, I think:
Erich Fromm suggested that there are two forms of conscience. The first and most exercised is what he called an ‘authoritarian conscience’. Its universe is a fearful one, dominated by angry gods of insecurity, low self-esteem and conformity. It metes out punishment and drives us towards actions that temper its wrathful flames, including consumerism (‘retail therapy’) and malignant narcissistic behaviour like that of Schumaker’s ‘happichondriacs’.This is the key bit, bolded by me for emPHAsis:
For Fromm, guilt was firmly part of this authoritarian conscience:And this:
‘When most people feel “guilty”, they are actually feeling afraid because they have been disobedient. They are not really troubled by a moral issue, as they think they are, but by the fact of having disobeyed a command.’
Child development specialist Penelope Leach echoes this sentiment from the perspective of good parent-child relationships: ‘Guilt is the most destructive of all emotions. It mourns what has been while playing no part in what may be, now or in the future. Whatever you are doing, however you are coping, if you listen to your child and to your own feelings, there will be something you can actually do to make things right.’
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