Filed under: self-work | Tags: deFOO, hamlet, life story, self-work, shakespeare, therapy
That was actually the name of my first blog: “Unpack My Heart With Words.” I started it, aged 16.
It comes from a scene in – wait for it, wait for it… – Hamlet.
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder’d,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
A scullion!
Fie upon’t! foh!
This happens after a mid-length speech where he discovers that an actor of his acquaintance can show more emotion over a fictional queen than he, Hamlet, can show over a real dead father. He accuses himself – having not immediately killed his uncle for murdering his father – of being “pigeon-livered” (i.e. a coward) and other things. The bit above is him saying that since he doesn’t seem to be taking any action, he has to talk about it (and talk only, instead of acting).
I realized this evening while watching that soliloquy that the “like a whore” bit references confession. A woman – who in the middle ages had very little other recourse to make a living – prostitutes herself, and then goes to confess to the priest. She cannot stop what she is doing – or take actual action to repent – and so she goes to the confessional daily to be “forgiven” for that which she must do but cannot do.
Hamlet “must” kill his uncle, but cannot do it – and repents of it in this speech. The prostitute “must” stop prostituting herself but cannot do it – and repents of it in the confessional.
The reason behind my original blog title was a bit of a jab at myself. But really… I was in the same situation. Which is why I liked Hamlet so much, and why I think I revert back to thinking of my life in terms of that play during a reFOO, as I’ve been experiencing lately.
The situation I was in at 16 was this: I realized mother was corrupt. I read The Fountainhead at 11 and Atlas Shrugged at 13 (not a boast – just the facts) and was pretty heavily into philosophy and libertarianism at that time. Stef wasn’t around… but I realized that my mother was wholly irrational and just plumb fucking insane, but I couldn’t get out of her house. Legally, financially… you name it. I was trapped with the corrupt. What I felt I “must do” – i.e. get the fuck out – was also what I could not do. And so I wrote about my anger and frustration and hatred of her in that blog.
The tagline of my blog was “Fie upon’t!” – basically a nice Elizabethan way of saying “fuck it.” Which is, frankly, pretty much how I felt about life.
I haven’t been saying “fie upon’t” lately in regards to life… but it’s been mighty tempting. That old thought of “you’d best not try” is really tempting… but I think I’m soon going to overcome this latest round of reFOO and Hamlet-itis.
3 of 4 therapists have contacted me back. I got a bad instinctual feeling about one, so he’s out. Once I settle the transportation issue, I’ll schedule consultations with the other 2.
Going to see the estate agent tomorrow to look at apartments. There is a chance I will find one for January 1st move-in. If I can – and I get a good instinctual feeling about the situation (and actually take some time, as requested, to THINK about it) – I will try to get settled by 5 January, and make the first appointment for that week.
I am going to try to do 2 sessions a week – a mid-week session and a Saturday session.
So… frankly, no real progress yet, but there’s a hope of progress soon, and a path cleared to do so. Rand mentioned, through Ellis Wyatt, needing only an unobstructed right-of-way to move the world. That’s what I’m aiming at.
The soliloquy in question:
I finally got the idea to write that barn-stormer of a post. I was on point of going out, and now I’m sitting on the floor of my bedroom in my winter coat and hat, typing.
Stef speaks in 1233 about people willing to put down the fucking mouthpiece of “virtue” and take up the sword to fight the good fight. He talks about those whom you have offered the sword and the chance to fight for virtue hating you – inevitably – when they fail to take up that sword. When the weakness they have been shifting and evading and avoiding and prevaricating about in themselves is revealed by your virtue.
I realized that my mother’s hatred of me – and the world’s hatred of virtuous people in general – is in direct proportion to our virtue. To our ability to pick up that sword and fight that fight.
I was thinking, earlier, about the person I become around my mother. Or the person I became around her after I was no longer dependent upon her. I told one of my MEs (in the form of one of you, my readers) that he would very probably feel rage upon seeing that person I become. Hatred and fear, reacting in that crucible to become rage. Another one of my MEs said “You are inexorable for that poor woman!”
Yes, and I will tell you why I am. I will justify myself.
I would have less contempt for my mother if she was stupid. I would have less contempt for her if she did not understand virtue. I would have less contempt for my mother if she had no capacity for the exalted, if she was un-philosophical, and – especially – if she had never deFOOed, and then returned to the parents she loathed and knew were abusive. And – though I am glad for the fact I am alive and could not wish it otherwise – I would have far less contempt for her if she had not left me in the hands of these parents she loathed and knew were abusive.
For “contempt” you may substitute hatred, outrage, anger, or anything you like. There is something in the feeling of contempt, I think, that makes the person who feel it equally contemptible. This may or may not be true – and I would like to come up with arguments both sides. But that doesn’t matter at the moment.
Mother’s hatred of my virtue was in direct proportion to the magnitude of the virtue that she strangled and smothered and denied and killed off in her young self. She was not born to become what she became – and that’s the worst of it. No one is born to become base, contemptible, anti-philosophical, abusive, or anything of the sort. That precious, innocent child that was born into the world to my dear friends yesterday has unlimited potential for virtue, if it is not crushed within her – and if she can avoid crushing it herself.
That’s the wildcard, isn’t it. How much of what mother became was determined by her childhood, and how much of it was determined by her own actions. It doesn’t matter. I am living proof – and if you are reading this, so are you – that our early upbringing does NOT have to condemn us to a virtueless life. That one can overcome history – slowly, painfully, but finally.
And so, I am inexorable for “that poor woman.”
One’s capacity to abuse others is directly correlated to one’s capacity to abuse oneself, I think. And so leaving mother in her own company is the best punishment that anyone on earth could devise. I used to think I would like to punish her. But I could not, without denying that virtue and empathy in myself.
What does the fact that I loathe her say about me? Is this “punishment” of her? The fact that I’ve got very little empathy whatever for what she became… is that because I lack empathy for myself? I do not think so. It is right – just – to hate one’s abusers. One cannot do otherwise without self-abnegation. Like this woman on the boards. What is she? She has regressed. She… in all likelihood, was never there.
I’m here. I love my capacity for life, and for work, and for virtue. I love nothing else, really – because all else is an exponent of my life and my work and my virtue. Those capacities are what I cannot reject. Mother rejected them, and committed treason. Against herself and that innocent child born to my grandparents in June of 1952, and, yes, against virtue – and against life. I can’t call what mother is doing “living.” It is a horrible waking death. The living 0. The vivified nought.
If I am being honest with myself, I would say that there is no “mother” left to hate.
Filed under: deFOO, self-work | Tags: deFOO, MEcosystem, mother, self-work
One of my MEs was bitterly complaining in the shower this morning:
“Ah, yes. A little house well-filled, a little land well-tilled, and a little wife well-willed. Oh, the joys of ownership. After Russia?! Don’t be absurd.”
Despite that little voice – I do acknowledge his point of view, I really do! A 9-5 in NYC and acquiring “stuff” is not what I really want – plans proceed. I have just about secured an apartment. I saw a place last night 2 blocks from where I used to live. The apartment is nice enough (clean, in an elevator building) and the one roommate I met seems very nice. Not a potential bosom buddy, mind you, but ok to live with. Today at 1pm I’m to call her and arrange to meet the other roommate, and drop off a check for 1/2 month’s rent + deposit. If I move into that neighborhood I’ll then go re-join the Y, which is not far away, and… yes, that’ll be that.
On the job front, a person from a company I’d like to work for has expressed interest in interviewing me. I have another job interview set up for Monday – but that is for an IT job in Russia. In Siberia. I don’t really want to go to Siberia, but it’s better to have offers on the table than not have offers on the table, and this company is an extremely well-known international software company. Advancement and transfer opportunities are what that job has going for it. Still, another year sans therapy in Novosibirsk… no, that I’ve begun to regard as impossible as well.
The thing is… there’s a really large part of me that believes I’ll never make it. A large part of me that believes that despite my struggles – and even if I struggle harder – I’ll end up as violent and unprincipled as my mother. So had best not make an effort. There’s a large part of me that believes I’ll never be married – so why bother trying to improve myself to the point that marriage (or a relationship of any kind) is possible? If you had asked me… with anyone I’ve ever thrown myself at… whether I thought the relationship would lead to marriage or had any possibilities whatsoever, I would have laughed at you. No. There’s a reason why I’ve never set out to actually date. I mean, I’ve gone on 2 dates in my entire life. Why? That voice cries futility. Why try?
Why try?
Well… to tell you the truth… that voice has always been there, but… at bottom, much as I hate to admit it, I’m an optimist. Maybe that’s the wrong word for it. I throw myself at an abyss, but I’m always confident, at bottom, that things will come off. That I’ll succeed somehow, or at least get through whatever it is. Optimism is probably the wrong word for it. Courting disaster isn’t optimism.
This just popped into my head: I’ve given myself ample opportunities to fail.
Thank you! Thank you, whoever just suggested that. If my operating thought has been that it’s futile and, struggle as I might, I cannot do anything to effect a change or become better or even just avoid becoming my mother… then I have to set myself up to fail. As mother always set me up to fail. Her refrain was “You’re so smart!” (said in a sing-songy condescending voice) and then she would do her best to make my life hell whenever I wanted to study, or she would say yes to my going on a trip somewhere and then turn right round and say no 2 weeks (always invariably 2 weeks) before I was to go, or… anything she could do to set me up to fail.
Is that not the case now? I mean really, I got on a plane back to NYC without even knowing where I was going to stay. That’s just the latest and very mild incarnation. Wasn’t dropping therapy setting myself up to fail? I’d had the desire to travel around the world since I was 12 – and teaching English to finance it had come to my notice at 17. So… why then? Why drop everything then, just as things were progressing?
This part of me, I know, wants to be heard.
Someone else just suggested: If failure was inevitable for her, she’s clear. She didn’t do anything wrong. She wasn’t responsible.
But oh, my dears, she was! We all know she read Rand and deFOOed, and while she didn’t have FDR, she chose the “easy” path (which is in no way easy, and for which she is paying daily) and went back to living with her parents until age 50! In that letter, she wrote us that she knew she had anger problems and went to therapy for it. But she didn’t do anything to stop yelling at us and abusing us. She never yelled us in public places, or where grandmother could hear and stop her. She knew right what she did. It was not inevitable that she should be that way. Truly, truly.
Screwing up our life and abusing our friends doesn’t prove anything. We don’t want to be like that, do we? Becoming a person like mother doesn’t exonerate mother. It just makes it even worse. Don’t let her fool you. And that “easy” road she counsels is the road to a life of unceasing torment. You guys must know that, and see it.
Have we not fully admitted, then, that she is guilty? Is that why we need to keep reading the emails from Rebecca? To “prove” it? I sympathise. I sympathise. If we admit her guilt, then it’s incumbent upon us to… oh, to go that hard road and not be like her.
But you disprove your own thesis, my love, by setting me up to fail. Think on that, will you?
I don’t know if it’s delibeate or not, but our lives are parallel. I followed him to London and Moscow and Paris. And… I read this today:
The piller pearisht is whearto I lent
The strongest staye of myne unquyet mynde;
The lyke of it no man agayne can fynde,
Ffrom East to West still seking thoghe he went,
To myne unhappe! for happe away hath rent
Of all my joye the vearye bark and rynde
The thing I leaned on is gone, and though I may wander the world to find it, I cannot. Chance has taken away my joy.
“Here is non hoome. Here nis but wildernesse.”
This is my first day back in New York. I woke up – irrevocably – with the sun, and set to work… for what? The sunrise and the light on the buildings making them shine like delicate alibaster, which used to fill me with such joy… now doesn’t. I feel like the sap has been completely drained out of the tree of my life. Outside, the tree looks whole. Inside, the life force is lost.
Here is no home.
Where, then? The sense of displacement hasn’t come. Food has lost its savor, as it did the last night I was in London… but I know right where I am.
I began to think earlier… “If I got rid of my stuff and left my job and therapist here… only to come back, then what the hell was it all for? What have I accomplished?”
I can point to a journal. And certain lessons. And, of course, the pain I’ve inflicted on self and others. And things like having seen certain places and attained… whatever. I really want to burst into tears in the middle of this library.
I’m going to see several apartments this weekend. I have 2 job interviews lined up. And… it’s not that feeling of restlessness that’s coming up, but this feeling of futility. This feeling of “Well, don’t even do anything, then!”
It’s not right. I’m sort of going along on autopilot – setting up these interviews and viewing these apartments. I found a cheap hostel till Monday. Am storing my bag at my old apartment with the ex-roommates. Everyone I’ve met that I’ve known has been glad to see me… and I don’t want any of them.
I really feel like Lymond’s eagle – symbol of his power as the Voevoda. He trained it… and hated it. Hated that eagle. And then it was shot by a Russian prince. But like Slata Baba, rending her plumage and tearing her jesses and struggling to get out of her unfamiliar master’s grip.
Or… no I don’t. That’s melodramatic.
What I really feel is boredom. A little voice saying “Ok, go here. *sigh* Ok, now go there. You might want to do this. Go set up a bank account. Look at apartments. Pick up your mail. Cash this check. Drop off this stuff. Make an appointment to see the Dean” and other such things. And, mechanically, I do. I obey. But my heart’s not in it.
I don’t want this life that I seem to have – seem to have inherited, somehow, quite against my will. I’m not trapped. I’m not helpless… and while I keep reminding myself of that, I keep feeling that I am. It’s very true that I’m not free in the broadest sense. I cannot go wherever I want. Can’t go work abroad. It’s even difficult to find jobs in other cities in the US once you’re living in one particular place.
That’s not finally the point, though. I realize now that what I wanted as a child and even as an adult – to be safe and cloistered in academe – was an abdication of choice. I wanted a mother to say “Ok, go here. Now do this. Come on, my dear, you can do it!”
I wanted to be shepherded. Even now, a part of me wants to be shepherded. “Ok, darling, we’ve set up this job for you – now all you have to do is go here, and then they’ll give you a little money, ok?”
It’s so tempting – and yet not – to abdicate choice. Which is what most people end up doing, actually. Case in point, mother. Abdicated on the choice to be a good human being – to keep going with the deFOO when things got tough.
I won’t do that. It’s not even tempting any more – to give up on the deFOO. But to “choose” to be in this holding pattern like I am currently is to abdicate choice too. To “choose” not to choose is just to give up and die.
So yes, here is no home. In this holding pattern is not wellbeing or even safety. It’s inherently unsafe – not to choose to either rot like mother or continue schlepping across that desert. Unstable and unsafe – as we’ve been finding out.
You know what the book was going to be about? The one I wanted to take 3 months off and write? The last Byzantine emperor’s mistress takes her (spuriously “legitimized”) son to the court of Trebizond and with the help of a (very real – historically attested) Greek Orthodox priest tries to get Trebizond and the West to launch a 12th Crusade to put her son on the throne of Byzantium. They travel back and forth to loads of different countries trying to get the West to launch a Crusade, and get promise after promise, but nothing comes of it. The epilogue is what really happened – that this was a figment of the mother’s imagination as she lay dying in a pool of her own blood in the Hagia Sophia after the Turks broke into the great cathedral and started slaughtering everyone.
Hm. A mother moving heaven and earth to try to get her son into high office so that she would have financial security and power. Wonder where that idea comes from? O, yes. I forgot. Violante is my mother.
So, no. No boredom, then, or restlessness. I’ve got to make a choice. I mean, just fundamentally. Mechanically. Even not choosing is a choice. I can go forward – the hardest road, but a road whose end I have seen reflected in others – or I can go backward, which is absolutely unthinkable and would absolutely rip my soul from my body and condemn me to a life of misery worse than I can imagine at present – or I can choose to remain in this “holding pattern” which is actually a death spiral into going back, and estrange myself from good people that I love and just generally die to the world.
When you put it like that…
Here is non hoome. This death spiral is no resting place.
I was watching Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner tonight, and as I prepared my own dinner, I began thinking about my grandmother.
There’s a scene in the movie where Katharine Hepburn says to Spencer Tracy something like “We brought her up to think that people who thought that whites are innately superior to blacks are always wrong… and when we said that, we did not add ‘But don’t ever fall in love with a black man.’”
My grandmother did.
This is something that’s always puzzled me a bit. My grandmother had black friends – or one black friend. However, this friend was never spoken of in front of her white friends, or invited to come when they were over. My grandmother invited her over and gave her a luncheon, but they ate at the kitchen table with the second-best china. And while my grandmother often told me that white people were not superior to black people and that it was good to have black friends, she always added that marriage between the races was NOT ok.
I began thinking… about stories that were told to me about my grandmother and grandfather. My grandfather was a businessman who did business with blacks and Jews in the 1940s-1960s, when it was very dangerous to do so – not because of the blacks and Jews, but because of what other whites would do. My grandfather’s business partner was a Jew, and I was told that one time in the 1950s my grandfather went out to survey a farm that he owned, and was met with “GO HOME TO GERMANY, JEW!” and a swastika spray-painted on the side of his barn. He painted over the symbol and went on working, serving on committees, and doing charitable work with Mr. Barman – his Jewish business partner – and Mr. Truth, his black friend and husband of my grandmother’s aforementioned black friend. He also laid down the law at home – refusing to support his alcoholic ex-soldier brother-in-law, who beat his wife and children. One night Great Uncle George got himself thrown in jail, and grandfather supposedly said, “Let him stay there. He deserves it.”
My grandmother, I was told, was a feminist who supported a woman’s right to work in the 1950s and 60s and held down a job while raising her 5 children. That she would have gone mad if she hadn’t worked, but that she always had a 3-course dinner on the table when her children and husband arrived home from work, baked pies and cakes from scratch for the whole neighborhood, sewed and netted and embroidered, and drove during the 1960s a huge metallic gold-colored Buick convertible named after a James Bond film. She had gone on an engineering scholarship to Cornell in the 1930s – one of only two women to enter the engineering school in that year.
I always used to think, “What happened to them by the time it came to me?”
The answer I always got was, “Well, they’re old.”
But no, that’s not an excuse. What happened to these brave, progressive, open-minded, tolerant, philosophical people? What changed between the 1960s, when my mother was a child, and the 1990s? How, in 30 years, did my grandparents turn from people who did charitable work and supported race relations into people who sat smugly back in their bank vault without ever giving a cent away and only associated with blacks behind closed doors?
The truth is… they didn’t. They couldn’t have. A person’s entire being and way of thinking and their psychological makeup doesn’t change that much, even in 30 years, without something big to give it a shove.
So… something either gave them a shove, or they were never progressive, open-minded, philosophical, or indeed anything else.
Who told me these stories of them? My mother – in the tone of “Well, they used to be so much better than they are now, so give them a chance…” but, no. She deFOOed when she was 18, and for 2 years neither saw nor talked to my grandparents. My uncle was a wild, drunken frat boy when he was 18 and only going into the Air Force and getting shot down over Vietnam “cured” him (as my grandmother said) of his wild ways. My eldest aunt got married at 18 to a drunkard who soon left her for a whole string of other women. My next youngest aunt ran off to Mexico. Only grandmother’s favorite did the “right” thing by going to university, getting married, and settling down. And that aunt is such a hide-bound conservative that there’s no penetrating her. She is the coldest woman I’ve ever met.
With such screwed up children, how could my grandparents have been what their children said they were? The answer: they could not have been.
My grandmother – though she is dead – has been the hardest family member for me to let go. It has been hard of me to let go of her memory, because she did not treat me as badly as mother or my aunts and uncle or my grandfather. She’s “the parent who got away.”
But that pedestal is crumbling, slowly.
Filed under: FDR, self-work | Tags: deFOO, FDR, friends, languages, mother, self-work
That is “my hovercraft is full of eels” in Latin. (See YouTube clip below if you have no freaking clue where that comes from. Hilarious sketch!) Literally translated, it means “my ship that rests on the air abounds with eels.” Beautiful, wonderful language, is Latin.
But… languages. I’ve been not-so-dilligently working on my Russian. Finally tonight I found a website that teaches the Cyrillic alphabet as I learn best – by giving it in immediately-useable words that I can then sound out to figure out the letters, and then requiring me to re-type/write the words to make sure I can use both words and letters. Very helpful indeed!
Am not looking forward to learning Russian grammar. Admittedly it’s a lot like Latin grammar… except with a couple of extra tenses… and the fact that verbs have gender. What kind of a damned language has verbs that have a gender? Nouns having a gender = ok. I can understand that. But verbs?!
Oh well. Needs must. At the very least, I’ve got to learn the alphabet and some survival phrases. It’s not 100% certain that I’m going to Moscow yet, but it’s looking more and more likely. The big 3 contenders are Russia, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic. The Cyrillic alphabet will be useful in the first 2 countries anyway.
I actually would most like to go to the Czech Republic… but you never know. The winters are certainly milder in Prague than they are in Lviv or Moscow, and an ex-co-worker’s parents live there… so at least I have an introduction going on to some natives who speak English. I don’t want to spend 100% of my time with expats, even though I just know I’ll completely want to abandon everything and return home for about the first 2 weeks, and I’ll cling like mad to anyone who speaks even a word of English. After I’ve gotten the “ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod WTF have I DONE!!!!!!??????” week out of my system (that happens whenever I move – to Dallas, to NYC, to London, and in wherever I’m going next, no doubt it’ll be worse) I’ll want to make some native friends. And, of course… do things like eat, be able to get around, etc. Hence learning the language.
Mea vida adventuris abundat. (No, that’s not correct Latin.)
What else? Oh… a fellow at a kebab shop (what? I didn’t want to cook tonight) started hitting on me. Asked me for my number, and said he wanted to take me out for a drink. I should have lied and said I had a boyfriend, or – hey! here’s an idea! – just left sans diner and made a sandwich at home. I mean… I’m really not sure how to handle that. I’m totally unused to guys taking any sort of interest in me in that way. (No… really. I’m also horribly insecure about that, which leads me to all sorts of humiliating situations which y’all can no doubt think of an example of right off the bat.)
Thank you, FOO and certain gentlemen that I met in my formative years, for completely fucking me over in that area. Though I’ve thought about it a lot lately – and my thoughts in that area have been doubly renewed after a conversation last night with a friend – it’s hard to know how to proceed. I’m operating on the assumption that I only want what I can’t have (i.e. I want a stable, loving relationship with an upright, moral man – but I tell myself that I am absolutely, 100% in the dark as to how to accomplish that) but is that true? No, not entirely. I myself don’t even realize yet how untrue that is, I think.
I went for a run today. God, that was exhausting, but satisfying. Either running more or rock climbing tomorrow – my climbing soreness has gone away, and thanks to decent stretching I feel no bad effects from the run.
Another friend (I can call him a friend, no? It sounds… weird to my own ears when I term him “a friend”) sent me something to read, which I will start tomorrow. For right now, it’s listening to Jane Eyre in French, and re-reading my favorite parts of it in English. It’s amazing how much of the French I can get without having to re-translate in my head.
However… my sudden desire to re-read JE is a signal. It goes back to a certain period in my life – ca. 8-10 years old, when I felt almost more lonely and miserable than I did while living in mother’s house from 12-18. I’d like to talk to friends about that – not about JE, but what that sign portends. There are certain pieces of literature I go back to in certain moods. At least this one is not dire enough to warrant Hamlet. That’s the nihilism lit – or as close as I ever got to it. Hamlet betokens a really bad headspace. JE is only loneliness and wanting someone to love me. I swear to god, from 8-12 years old I couldn’t conceive of marrying a better man than Mr. Rochester, the Byronic hero of JE. Now I can. But that’s still many years off. I wish I had it all settled. I wish I knew what was going to happen – or not even 100%. I don’t need to know what, when, who… or anything like that. I only want a guarantee that I will be happy – someday. That’s what I wanted then, too. I would have given anything to see in my mind’s eye a possibility of ever being happy, when I was a child. That’s sort of where I am now – and why I sometimes do things like throwing myself after men that I know are bad for me. Just to get something settled. Just to… sigh. But there isn’t any guarantee.
Oh well. I can wait. In the interim, I’m doing (or supposedly doing) things which will bring me as close to a guarantee of happiness as I can get. There is an example before me of what I want – realized, living, reachable – but… I’m not there yet. Only another few years’ trek across the desert.
No… I won’t erase any of the above, but the tone doesn’t reflect what I feel. I feel sad, and sick, and tired. I feel as if I know there is a point to all of this, but I don’t want to see it right now. I feel as though I want to wallow in self-abandonment, lethargy, self-punition, and all of the other crap I saw mother do. “Woe is me, people have screwed me over, I’m hard done-by, it’s not my fault or responsibility…”
Except that’s not quite it. I have the “white knight” syndrome. Waiting for someone to sweep in on a white horse, pick me up, and carry me bodily to felicity – without my lifting a finger. Ain’t nobody coming but me. I do not want the fairy transport from A-Q through the jungle – or… I think I do, but in reality the white knight would do more damage than good, and I know it.
That’s right. Someone is going to lose the weight for me. Someone is going to come and clean my bedroom. Someone is going to learn Russian for me. Someone is going to find me a prince among men for a husband. Someone is going to do the work of repairing the damage I’ve done or contemplated amongst my friends. Someone is going to strengthen my relationships with them. Someone is going to pack up all my stuff and magically transport me abroad. Someone is going to pour money into my bank account if I spend it like water. Someone is going to pick up my financial arrangements where I left off and settle everything. Someone is going to read and comment on this new book my friend sent me. Someone is going to do all the little errands I’ve been neglecting. Someone is going to calculate the monies owed my landlord. Someone is going to find me a cheap ticket to Cancun this Christmas.
Well… no. Nobody is going to do any of these things. And when I sit here, and procrastinate, and begin to resent myself (and others who have absolutely nothing to do with what I’m doing to myself) for not doing anything, and wallow in my resentment rather than figure out what’s behind this… the only person I’m fundamentally hurting is myself. The friends I hold dear – if I wound them – can write me off and go happily live their own lives. There is no lasting negative impact on anyone but myself if I fail to sort out my problems. But I won’t take steps to help myself.
Am I not worthy, mother? Screw you. Am I hard done-by? No. I know the solutions. I know that there is light at the end of the tunnel – that all of this work is for a reason. Do I deserve such wonderful friends as I have? You know what, if I don’t, I can fix that. I can do everything in my power to be the sort of person I want to be, and that will earn me the kind of friends I want in my life. So you know what? I’m sick of these fucking habits that were ingrained in me. That YOU – all three of you – ingrained in me. But this isn’t about you guys any more. All three of you are dead – two in fact, and you, mother, in spirit. This time is about me, and getting out from under all this crap. So get off my back! I am going to get you, finally, off my back.
Filed under: FDR, deFOO, self-work, voice blog | Tags: deFOO, FDR, life story, self-work, voice blog
A reaction to this podcast. And a little more.
I’ve listened to that podcast like 4 times and took notes – and these are my ruminations on both my listenings and the notes I took. Am hoping that Stef will send me our last two convos so that I can take notes on those as well and try to figure out what the fuck this is – though I shan’t post my notes about our private convo. Will also certainly take both convos to the therapist when I go.
I may as well call the following recording “All the lessons that Stef has tried to teach me recently that I have completely ignored, fogged, minimized, been aggressive or passive-aggressive about, and generally shat all over him for – with examples.”
The part starting around minute 17 is what I hope will be helpful to you, my friends – in case you want to skip.
1067 Reactions: the REAL Rubicon
It’s been the sheerest vanity to think that I was not the one who needed to change. That’s completely what mother would say: that other people, and not her, were the problem. Mother, whose favorite phrase was “Stop manipulating me!” when she, herself, was the biggest manipulator I’ve ever known.
Additions and corrections:
1. Apologies for the tittering when I say that every one of the lessons in 1067 was a lesson that I ignored. That’s not funny. Not for one second.
2. Also for the half-snicker when I say for the first time that I’ve never lived my values.
3. The bit when I say for the first time that there’s a statute of limitations on the length of time one’s a victim is… nervousness I think. Maybe a laugh? Defense? Don’t know.
4. The bit where I say that Stef has shown me amply that he does not hate me is… I’m not sure. I was feeling exasperated and disgusted with myself at this point.
5. Same with where I say all the evidence is on the contrary side to mother-in-my-head’s argument that Stef is unfair and hates me.
6. It was a laugh where I said I wouldn’t have sent him an email saying “WTF mate?!”
7. Also where I said I’d re-read the email I sent him back 25 times.
8. Likewise where I talk about my reply telling him that I still hadn’t absorbed his lesson re: isolation.
9. And then I laugh again when I say that laughing is NOT kosher. :(
4-9 obviously provide evidence that I’m still really defensive about my replies to Stef, and indicate – I think – that I’m still very much missing something. Will find that.
(edited since the intial post this afternoon.)
I’ve been thinking on these lines from Dante’s Paradiso this afternoon:
All that you held most dear you will put by
and leave behind you; and this is the arrow
the longbow of your exile first lets fly.You will come to know how bitter as salt and stone
is the bread of others; and how hard the way that goes
up and down stairs which are never your own.
So… I’d be happy to do a formal analysis on that bit of the poem if anyone is interested, but he’s talking – historically speaking – about the war in Florence between the Guelphs and Ghibellines. When he mentions the salt in the bread, it is because they do not put any salt in their bread in Florence (they don’t to this day) and thus of course to Dante the bread everywhere else must have tasted salty.
But… for a couple of reasons it’s odd that this quote should come to me today. The first is because it is used in the forward for a book which is intimately bound up in my history, for it reminds me of Donnie and thus my adolescence. But that’s not the first thing that happened today.
The first thing that happened today was that I was awoken at 7am by my phone ringing. I didn’t know who it was, but the first thought that popped into my head was “Mother’s dead.”
Well, she isn’t. However, the person on the phone was my aunt B – as I’d guessed. I do not usually listen to the phone messages that she leaves me (and now that I have no one, save one person, who needs my phone number, I will very likely be changing it) but I chose to listen to this one.
It contained two pieces of information:
1. She is sending me her credit card information in the mail, with which I may – she so nicely added “if you want to” – buy a plane ticket to go to my cousin’s wedding. This is the second offer in 3 days from a member of my family to subsidize my trip to Houston.
2. Hans has had a heart attack and a stroke, and is in a coma, and very likely to die. Hans was my aunt E’s boyfriend for nigh on 15 years. He abused both my cousins (physically and verbally, and in the case of cousin A – if I had to hazard a guess – sexually) and my aunt, and was generally a horrendous influence on them during a vulnerable time in their lives. Most people in my family hated him. B certainly did. My grandmother called him “The Gigolo” – often to his face – but had an odd relationship with him. They… improbably enough… “liked” each other.
So, as GG pointed out, the news about Hans is a ruse. I only met Hans once in my life. We were not at all close, and I’m certainly not emotionally invested in whether he lives or dies. He abused my cousins. But it is the cousin that he (as I believe) sexually abused that is getting married. B said something like “it’s odd to inform you of the impending death of someone I didn’t like very much, but…” Subtext: the death of Hans is difficult for your cousins and aunt. Come do your duty at the wedding.
Well, I shall not do my “duty” at the wedding. First and foremost, it’s not my duty. I never had any wish or intent to attend the wedding. I have even less of a wish now. It’s really the last place on earth I’d go, frankly. If I’ve told all of them that I will not see them… then they cannot truly expect me to come.
So what can they expect? Why do they continue to phone me? To act as though we’ve not broken? To act as though nothing is wrong at all? In all of the messages that they’ve ever left, no one except mother has ever mentioned my leaving – and she only did that at the beginning. The messages they leave sound like the ones they’ve always left me – sarcastic, foggy, and bereft of good will. And for a reason: they think I’ll “come around.” They still think this is a phase – or do they?
Well… there are arguments either way.
For their thought that it’s a “phase” :
1. They affect not to mention my departure. To my knowledge, no one outside of B and mother knows that I have cut off all contact.
2. The repeated sending of money and goods to woo me.
For their thought that I’ve left for good:
1. See 1 above.
2. See 2 above.
These things can be taken either way, I guess. I’m getting a little foggy, so bear with. Now… either the news has not spread around my family because B and mother think that I’ll “come around” and eventually relent and apologize, and they don’t wish to rock the boat, or they’re keeping it hush-hush because it’s extremely embarrassing.
Hold on. Before I make these arguments… does it matter? I’m giving my thoughts to what they’re thinking now – as if it mattered a whit what they think. My energies could be better spent elsewhere: for example, in figuring out why I still can’t feel anything even after acknowledging that mother knew the consequences of not treating a certain medical condition of mine in my early adolescence. Why I’m still foggy there. And of course… good god, loads of other things comme ca.
So is this a distraction then? It’s a good one. Dear me.
So what else am I missing. GG mentioned that B is giving me a choice between my values and everything that she’s known I’ve held dear for ages – truth, logic, honesty, etc – and… the family. Duty. Tradition. And, of course, she naturally assumes that the family and duty and tradition trump my feelings. Don’t like us? We don’t give a shit. Come anyway. Can’t stand the fact that we continually condescend and put you down and minimize your feelings and, frankly, hate you? Don’t give a shit. Come anyway! Rendered insanely angry by the fact that we stood by while your mother abused you and laughed at you when you asked us for help? Fuck off and get over it. Come anyway!
Yanno… just the thought that she… naturally assumes that I’ll eventually give in… just reinforces the fact that I want to have nothing fucking whatever pas du tout jamais rien to do with them. Thanks, B! Now, to call the phone company and get a new number.
The next 3 lines from Dante in that poem – about falling into bad company on a foreign shore – are instructive.
It’s not them I’m exiled from. I’m not exiled now. I was exiled – from my own world of truth and reason and first principles – when I was among them, and it would be exile to return. I just want to make that clear. :)
Filed under: FDR, deFOO, self-work, vie quotidienne | Tags: deFOO, FDR, FOO, life story, philosophizing, put money in thy purse, self-work, vie quotidienne
Auntie K sent me a card today. Ugh, and I was feeling so good after my talk with Stef this morning.
I opened the card. It was – as I’d expected – a birthday card. Only 5 weeks late. But she’d been busy, she said. Also, if you want to come to your cousin’s wedding, we’ll buy you a plane ticket.
There’s NO way in hell I’m going to my cousin’s wedding. I won’t talk to my mother or aunts via phone, email, or postal mail, so why in HELL would I take time out of my life to go and see them in person.
No, no. The problem is the money. Just as it was with Rebecca, the problem is the money. For, you see, Karen sent me a check for an astronomical sum. Ok, only $500. But still, good god… this money would sooooo help me out this month. (I’ll have $25 in the bank after paying rent.)
The immediate thought that came to my mind was “They’ve bought you again.”
For if I take the money, I’ll be telling them all that my price is $500. I tore up Rebecca’s card and her check for $200. But $500, I’ll be saying, is my price. I’ll pretend I’m still in the family for $500 a pop.
Ugh, what a wrench. I could give the money to Stef. Pay for my ticket to Toronto, and have money left over. Almost pay for my ticket to London. Pay 3/4 of next month’s rent. I could use it for a nice interview suit. Or for books. Pay it towards my student loans.
But NO. I told myself in the store the other day that WE DO NOT STEAL. I’ve been trying to tell myself every time I write a note to a professor that WE DO NOT LIE. But yet this would be both stealing and lying. They’re trying to buy me, yes. They expect via this $500 to confirm my position as still being enmeshed in the family. They expect me to lie for this money. Lie and say that I have the smallest shred of regard for them.
So she forgets my birthday, and then a month and a week later sends me a check with… what isn’t even an apology! So it’s saying “I do not have even enough regard for you to send the money out within a reasonable time after your birthday. I’ve never cared for you. I had the ability when you were 12 to get you away from your mother. I was going to adopt you until you quarreled with my husband over the chemical properties of NutraSweet. But sell your soul to me for the paltry sum of $500!”
The word “sorry” appears nowhere on the card.
Ugh. I shouldn’t be ambivalent. There’s nothing to be ambivalent about. This is purely and entirely a note of hatred, and if I cash the check I am saying I deserve their slight regard. They have no regard for me for they think I am as corrupt as they. They are sure of my acquiescence to their evil!
I just tore the check into small pieces without looking at it. Just threw away $500. Just put the card and note and the small pieces of the check into the trash bin.
Stef said that this is not about other people changing. It’s my wanting to change other people and yet denying my own ability to change. I can’t change, I say. I’m helpless, I say. Not aloud, but in my actions. I am NOT helpless!
We do not steal. We do not lie. We do not associate with corrupt people. We can – if we wish to make money – go out and work for it!
What did Stef say yesterday in the call-in show? If an angel came up to you before you were born and offered you the option of either taking $10,000 for years of abuse, or taking no abuse and no money… where’s the choice there? Number one is not an option! You can work for money without having to endure the abuse.
For it wouldn’t just confirm that I was back in the family if I took that money. It would tell you guys – and most importantly, it would tell ME – how little I regard myself. I will let people abuse me as long as they give me $500 for my trouble? NO!
Ugh, I will not do it.
I’m feeling tense. Less tense than I was when I started writing, but tense. I need to figure out why the pull was so strong. Why I almost rushed straight off to the bank and cried aloud my good fortune. Why I thought of sending her a thank-you note. A fawning one. There are a good many things I need to figure out.
Filed under: voice blog | Tags: deFOO, life story, music, self-work, vie quotidienne, voice blog, youtube
This is ostensibly about Rebecca’s call, but I also share another short memory and some musings on feeling my feelings and the consequences thereof.
Oh, and as long as we’re doing media… (more…)
