I think that how people live says a lot about them. Scratch that. I know that how people live says a lot about them.
Mother lived in a place that was decaying around her. My grandmother chose the living room colors, and painted over the 1970s dark wood panelling first with nauseating bubblegum pink, and then with an annoying fluorescent shade of blue. Mother complained about both colors – and the fact that the gaps in the wood panelling had never been filled in, so that the paint sunk into the recesses – but never did anything about it. The furniture was breaking down under her enormous weight. Her favorite place to sit was an enormous oversized easy-chair… which she just fit into. The upholstery was hideous, but it didn’t matter – she would always sit on a towel (ostensibly to protect the chair, as she went around without underwear) – because within a year the springs on the chair were so worn down that it was like sitting on a hard bench of compressed cotton.
In the dining room, partially blocking out the sight of the mis-hung (originally vertically striped, but now hanging at an angle of some 30 degrees) wallpaper, was a 64″ jumbo tv. Mother had to place it in the dining room, because if she put it on one of the living room walls she couldn’t see the whole screen from her chair. This television was invariably on, and playing either Oprah or Dr. Phil. The only art in the entire house was a framed Renoir – a bad reproduction of a lady in a black and white striped dress with a parasol. Mother did not choose that art.
It got worse in mother’s bedroom, where a mattress and a box-spring sat on the floor. The room’s only other furniture was yet another television. In the afternoons, mother would sprawl on this bed and watch soap operas. When she was gone to work at night, I used to jump up and down on this bed – to get rid of “excess” energy and tension. (I still hop up and down in one place sometimes whenever I’m impatient or upset.)
Like mother, everything was shabby and dirty and indifferent. The kitchen crawled with roaches. The white tile on the floors was invariably dirty. The wallpaper clashed with the Renoir and with the television in the dining room, and the sickly yellow of mother’s bedroom walls lent a funerary air to that room. The whole house felt as though it was about to crumble. As though that was the place that people went to die. (This was eventually proven correct, when one of the couches in the living room was replaced with a hospital bed for my grandfather, who was – not quickly enough – dying.)
Anyway… enough about that house.
The apartment that I have just rented and am looking into furnishing is a good apartment, but it’s not the apartment I want. The place I’m moving into is about a block from the harbor in a small town in Connecticut. It has the usual granite countertops, etc, nice dormered living room and bedrooms, and won’t get too dark – I think – despite the dearth of windows. There is a master bedroom, a smaller bedroom to use as an office, and a living room which looks out towards the harbor. I don’t plan on buying much furniture, since nobody will ever come to the apartment except me.
The apartment I want however…
The apartment is in a high-rise building right around 23rd street. It’s on a very high floor, and has floor-to-ceiling glass on three walls. The windows face towards the skyscrapers uptown, and the places where the walls meet look like two prows of a ship cutting through waves – sailing towards the skyscrapers. It’s furnished very simply and sparsely – a few pieces of mid-century modern-esque furniture (like this, for instance) – a couch and two chairs – form a semicircle (or two sides of a rectangle) facing towards the front windows. They have their backs to the black-and-white modern kitchen, and to the bedroom behind – entirely closed in, but with white drapes hung on the walls to simulate windows. Black and white, and modern, is the theme of that apartment.
Right now, that apartment I want is kind of like me – or… at least the way I fancy myself. It’s kind of… sterile, if you catch my drift. Black-brown and white. No accents – I thought about adding blue silk accent pillows to the description, but they seemed out of place in my mind’s eye. That apartment – with its white furniture and drapery and carpets – is not a place for children. Not a high-traffic place with a lot of entertaining. There are no guest rooms. It’s a portrait gallery with no portraits in it, really – it is built to show off the city behind its glass walls… but also, I think (since there are no drapes on those walls of windows), built to show off the inhabitant inside. Living alone on top of the world in the sight of 8 million people. A beautiful – too beautiful – but lonely place.
Before that, the ideal house was something like this – extremely small – placed out in the middle of a prairie somewhere in Wyoming.
The house I was going to buy in TX if I didn’t get into Columbia was a 1920s Craftsman-style which was gorgeous on the outside but needed a lot of work – the plumbing and electric was all original to the house.
In the eulogy that “my husband” wrote a month or so ago, he talked of having a large house with a number of always-filled guest rooms, and children, and animals. Some sort of rambling Colonial with bright furniture and a homey atmosphere came to mind. Right now, I can’t see myself in that house, or that place, or that lifestyle. What has to change in order to make me want that? Should I even set that as a goal or move towards it? I don’t think so. I think that whatever changes are needed will come about organically – without my setting it as a goal – as a consequence of other work. I may be wrong… but that’s sort of what I feel like.
So I’m moving into a quiet, sheltered, dormered affair in a small harborside town. When I stepped into it, it felt “safe.” I’ve already thought of art for it – this, and this, and this. All sort of painterly and otherworldly. My favorite paintings – The Ambassadors, Las Meninas, and others… seem to have no place in this apartment. Which may yet be alright. The Almond Blossoms seems to be more like where I am than Las Meninas does.
This is something that I’ve avoided discussing with… pretty much everyone. I told Minty… then Stef. And… just… the empathy that I found in them is… something which… is quite different than anything I’ve ever gotten before. And I’d like to share it with my loyal readers… because I trust you to understand.
It has to deal with a disability that I have which was exacerbated by mother’s actions – or lack thereof. I was thinking of one other person in particular when I recorded it, who mentioned that he believes that something he struggles with was, too, caused by his parents. Maybe it’ll be helpful for folks. I don’t know.
Nota bene: there are about 2 sentences of TMI, but they’re relevant and you can get over it. :)
(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: self-work, voice blog | Tags: FOO, life story, mother, self-work, voice blog
I wasn’t sure I was going to release this. For the past 2 or 3 days I’ve been working a lot with mother – several situations I’ve been in have triggered really strong responses which… aren’t so much to do with the situation, but with the repressed terror of being around my mother in her rages and depressions. But… I still seek to woo her and win her love – as I did then – even though I have deFOO’ed. The slavery of need.
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.
So, my French teacher asked us to write a post on the bulletin board about our parents. How have our opinions about them changed over the years? I was going to lie… and then, I thought better of it. Here’s what I wrote (I tapped this out without checking the grammar or anything, so it’s in very bad French):
Quand j’étais très jeune, je voulais l’affection de ma mère et mes grands-parents. Maintenant, je ne me sens concernée de gagner cette affection. Je ne parle jamais avec eux. Pourquoi? Ce que était changé, était mon avis. Mon avis à propos de leur vertu. Ils n’en ont aucun. Je voulais de croire en leur vertu, mais c’était au cause de ma jeunesse. Chaque enfant doit croire en le vertu de leurs parents. Ils deviendront fou s’ils pas. Mais ce temps est passé. Maintenant, je peux les voir pour ce qu’ils sont: malveillant. Ils ne m’ont jamais aimé. C’est triste. Mais c’est vrai.
When I was very young, I wanted the affection of my mother and my grandparents. Now, I do not concern myself with gaining that affection. I never speak with them. Why? What changed was my opinion. My opinion about their virtue. They didn’t have any. I wanted to believe in their virtue, but that was because of my youth. Every child needs to believe in the virtue of their parents. They’ll go crazy if they don’t. But that time is past. Now, I can view them for what they are: evil. They never loved me. How sad. But it’s true.
Filed under: self-work, voice blog | Tags: FOO, food, life story, self-work, voice blog
Voice Version (with extra memories, notes, explanations, easter eggs, etc.)
So I was cooking tonight. Just to get stuff made for the week: I’ve already consumed enough food today. And I started thinking a bit about my relationship to food.
I’ve always liked cooking more than eating. This was as true when I was much younger (7 or 8) as it is today. I watched Julia Child and The Galloping Gourmet and Yan Can Cook on PBS religiously on the weekends between the ages of 6 and 10. (My grandmother got cable tv after that, and I had the Food Network in its very earliest days, before Emeril became unwatchable.) My grandmother hated to cook, and my mother made me quit my modeling career so that she could go back to school for hotel and restaurant management when I was about 8. (My mother, to this day, cannot cook. She’s an awful cook.)
So… my grandmother hated cooking. I can remember that, 3 nights a week, the dinner she made for me and my grandfather would consist of:
1. A hamburger – burnt on the outside, raw in the middle
2. A spoonful of cottage cheese
3. Some indifferent pieces of iceberg lettuce, and a plate of tomatoes with sweet n’ low on them
Not exactly appetizing. The other nights, we got either burnt London broil with the above accompaniments, or chicken breasts broiled in cream of mushroom soup with the above accompaniments. Breakfast was always cheerios. Lunch was always (for me – my grandfather, being a businessman, was luckier) a PB&J.
When I was 8, I started to take over some of the cooking. Of course my grandfather, who for 50 years had eaten the above fare every night of the week, was NOT amused. The first thing I tried was French onion soup with potatoes in it. Of course, being 8, I didn’t know how long potatoes took to cook, nor how to chop them up small enough so that they’d boil quickly in soup. I gave my grandfather the soup with the potatoes still half-raw. He didn’t complain. Maybe he didn’t want to hurt my feelings. Maybe he didn’t notice. The next thing I tried was chicken curry. I set the table very nicely, brought in a few candles, and turned the lights in the kitchen low. My grandmother complained incessantly: she couldn’t see what she was eating (you don’t like the ambiance?) and the curry was too spicy (I used mild curry powder – maybe she didn’t like cardamom) and I served dinner far too late (6:30) and she was missing Brokaw.
There’s no pleasing some people.
To my grandmother, cooking was a duty. Something that she – as “mother” of the house – had to do. No more, no less. Not fun, not an adventure, not a chance to try new things… but a duty. Which she executed with mechanical precision, if very poorly. That is, everything was uniformly disgusting. Brownie points there.
To my mother, however, food was a way to woo me. She would take me out to dinner often. Almost every Saturday. To woo me. To “catch up” with me. I never saw her during the week. She worked on Sunday nights. But on Saturday I belonged to her. She would buy me things and stuff me full of food and try to pretend as though we loved each other. As though she knew me or gave a shit about me. As though everything was alright. Mother was – and is – grossly obese. At least 350 pounds on a 5′7 frame. She has a hard time walking, she’s so fat. I’ve always been chubby too, as I’ve mentioned before. Mother stuffed me from my youngest days. All of the time we spent together revolved around eating. And revolved, more generally, around spending money. The more stuff mother bought me, and the more food she fed me, the greater her love supposedly was. (To this day I feel extremely anxious and embarrassed when most people buy me presents. Or buy me anything. The fact that I did not feel anxious or embarrassed when Jake sent me a book for my birthday just goes to show, I guess, the “quality” of the people I used to know. Jake, I know, was not trying to woo me by sending me a present. Everyone else – from mother all the way up to dallasC – was.) One Christmas, she bought me $1000 worth of presents. Rebecca returned some of them without consulting mother, but mother just went out and re-bought them. I cried so hard with shame for receiving all of those gifts. I didn’t want stuff. I wanted mother. And… the gifts just brought home that I didn’t have her. Ever.
And so by age 11.75, when I moved to Houston with mother, I was dangerously overweight. This aggravated a joint condition that I have – which mother (against the advice of doctors) never did anything about and from which I still suffer what is, on occasion, excruciating pain – and caused me to be ridiculed in school. (I was ridiculed in New York as well, of course.) The dinners out stopped, of course. She no longer had to win me back from my grandparents. For they were 1700 miles away and thus out of the picture. And, of course, mother was poor. She went from being able to blow her entire salary (she lived with my grandparents rent-free and was responsible for no contributions towards either her bills or mine) to having to maintain half a house on minimum wage. (My aunt Elaine lived with us, but was unemployed. They barely scraped by together. The original plan hatched by my aunt Rebecca was to have the two move in together and thus split the costs of the house, ensuring that neither would be homeless. My grandparents wished me to stay with them, but mother wouldn’t hear of it. They were sick of her horrible attitude and her incessant fighting with my grandmother, though. I was present at the conversation in which my grandfather told my mother what scheme had been cooked up, and that she was to settle her affairs and leave their house within two months. This was in October, and we left New York shortly before Christmas.)
In fact… everything ceased. Mother couldn’t afford to buy groceries. At first, she would borrow (or steal) my aunt’s gas credit card and drive me over to the gas station to get what I could for dinner. This food, of course, was invariably loaded with sugar, salt, and fat. Eventually, when she had maxed out the gas credit card, there was no more money for food – or so she told me. Mother worked in a grocery store and so she ate there. I was left to shift for myself. Mother told me I could eat at school, but of course I had no money and no job – and looked too underage to even get a job under the table – and thus, of course, I couldn’t eat. You all know what I resorted to. Curiously enough, I would never steal money from Elaine, as she was the only protectress I really had and I didn’t wish to fall out with her. Mother never had any money to steal. Whenever there WAS money, I stocked up on ramen. And pasta. (A large can of pasta sauce which was good for 6 meals cost 99 cents, and enough noodles for 4 meals cost 89 cents at Wal-Mart.) When there was very little money, I used to scrounge in the couch cushions until I could find $1.07 to buy myself 2 liters of soda. I drank the whole thing in a sitting, of course, and after that was so hopped up on sugar and caffeine that I could go without eating. This, of course, completely screwed up my blood glucose regulation.
Whenever mother got a windfall, she would buy me chinese food or pizza. Instead of saving the $20 that my grandmother would occasionally throw my way, I usually blew it on one of those two things. I told my grandmother in our weekly calls that mother was not buying me groceries. Mother denied this vehemently and screamed at me – after hanging up the phone, of course – for telling lies. Then the calls with my grandmother dropped to once every 2 weeks, and she sent no more money at all.
Whenever mother would go grocery shopping, it was always a $300 blow-out affair in which she would buy – not nutritious stuff – but junk. When I complained, she told me to fuck off, and that there was plenty of stuff to make a meal with. Of course, all the fresh food was gone within a week, and it took 2 months in between mother’s urges to go out and spend money on groceries. Sure, mother, there’s plenty of stuff to make a meal with. Let me just heat up my ramen and wash it down with this here 2-liter bottle of soda. Real nutritious. What a great mother you are.
So to mother, food was a means of control. She would woo me with it. She would withhold it. She would make me beg. Food wasn’t nourishment, or love, or even… duty. It was control.
To me, food was love. And it was the only “love” I had. Whenever I went over to Kay’s house as a young kid (between 6 and 10) I would invariably eat dinner with her. She was an old-age pensioner living on Social Security, but she usually shared with me what she had. Chicken cutlets, or – wonder of wonders! – spaghetti. I liked Kay’s spaghetti. I liked Kay. She was the only adult who ever really paid attention to me, and allowed me to be a kid in her presence. And I responded by adoring her. Talking with her by the hour, and listening to her stories. Playing cards. Listening to her play the organ and sing. I tried to pick out tunes on the organ – I had “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen” (the song she was named after) – memorized. I don’t think I could play it now.
And then I’d march up the road at about 5:30 for a second dinner. I couldn’t always finish what my grandmother gave me. At such times she would call Kay and ask if I’d eaten with her, and then chide me for eating two dinners. At the time, of course, I thought it was all about the food. Kay’s food was better than grandmother’s. But of course it wasn’t. Mother had tried to instill in me that food equaled love. And though the fare was humble, I liked Kay, and that added an uncommon flavor to the food. As the Biblical proverb goes: “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.” So I ate my dinner of herbs with Kay, and went home to the stalled ox at grandmother’s. The herbs imparted more relish.
I wanted love, of course. I needed to construe my grandmother’s duty as love. I wanted love, in the form of food, from the adults in my life. Kay was a little older than grandmother… and she was better to me than grandmother. And she gave me that love, and – though she was poor – that food freely.
When I moved out of mother’s house and in with roommates, it was much better. I had a little money, and threw dinner parties when I could. Just me, my roommates, and a mutual friend. Four around the dinner table. Of course, I served only the best. The guests raved. And, more importantly, I felt love in those gatherings. I enjoyed them. Not only the praise, of course, but the convivial atmosphere. But most importantly of all, I never needed to do the dishes.
The man of the couple that I lived with, Stephen, was a manic depressive and – though I was never fully told by his wife – I believe him to have been schizoid as well. As his illness grew worse and he took his medication less and less often, he would stuff himself with ever-growing quantities of food. The dinner parties stopped. No one was allowed into the house in his depressions, which grew ever worse and worse. The quantities of food he consumed grew ever more obscene. I was sick – revolted. But our pathologies intersected. I did not, however, cook for him any more. For I wanted love, NOT to feed into someone’s depression and self-hatred. Or so I thought. Then I left.
When I started living alone, the highlight of my week was grocery shopping. I would comb specialty food stores and high-end markets for interesting-looking foodstuffs. Most of which, mind you, I never ate. I just liked shopping for food. Handling it. Judging it. Imagining what I could do with it. Not to nourish myself or anyone else, but just for its own sake. I would spend Saturday mornings watching the Food Network. Good Eats. The Barefoot Contessa. All of those shows. Food as science. Food as status. Food – as with Emeril, whom I had ceased being able to stand – as showmanship. I brought food to Tom when I could. He liked to eat, but he enjoyed cooking himself. Liked the artistry, and would praise me for a well-made dish. I liked watching him eat.
I liked watching most people eat. When I went up to visit a “friend” called C in Missouri, the morning after the first night we met was spent in a diner. I wasn’t hungry. But I watched him eat. With some fascination, actually. The same with most other friends. I usually wasn’t hungry – I’m usually not, even right now – but I enjoyed the sight of them enjoying their food. Of taking pleasure in something. I’d be interested in watching a painter work on a canvas in much the same way. It was a sort of vicarious joy. Food – done artistically, with love – being consumed by its intended recipient. Enjoyed. Savored. Or… I always imagined that they were savoring it, my friends. I always imagined that they thought of where their food came from. What it meant. That they had the same associations, the same love, the same pleasure in seeing the pleasure of others.
When I didn’t have anyone to share food with (the first 3 or 4 months I moved up to Dallas, when two of the 3 people I knew there had moved away, and the third was off-limits) I was depressed. Not just from not having anyone to share food with, mind you, but from having no one to love and no one who loved me in general. But I’d think of my loneliness most acutely when I stood in the kitchen of the new apartment that I loathed, cooking. I didn’t cook because I was hungry, but to fill a void. And when the food was ready I would either put it in the refrigerator and forget about it, or throw it away right then, or eat it. And I would eat savagely. To punish myself. With tears in my eyes. And I hated the food and my skill in preparing it and the fact that I was alone… and myself. I would make myself sick. (There are tears in my eyes as I type this.) And I would leave the dishes in the sink. Until I could no longer cook in the kitchen. Until I dared not even go in the kitchen. I fouled that temple to love, and only rarely could I be persuaded to clean it. Then, when it got too terrible, I would clean. With bitterness. And think of the meals I’d not consumed – or of which I’d consumed too much – for which I was then paying through my labor. Retribution.
Of course, I was doing what mother had been doing to me. Using food to control myself.
Then, when Jen left Tom and I could share food again, and when I moved into an apartment I liked in a suburb of Fort Worth, I began to eat more healthfully. And to exercise. And I met one new friend. I only had him over for dinner once – I had no table, you see, so I couldn’t serve him properly – but he gave me a rave review. I still remember the menu:
1. Roast breast of chicken stuffed with herbed goat cheese and shallots.
2. Roasted spiced potatoes
3. Arugula and warm pear salad with honey-lemon vinaigrette
4. Asparagus with lemon and persillade
And some other things. I didn’t eat a bite. I wasn’t hungry. Just sat and watched him eat and admire my cooking and praise me. I was wooing him with that dinner.
Of course, I’ve been wooing everyone I ever cooked for. From C (the Dallas C, not the Missouri C) to my medieval history professor from my first attempt at college when I was 18 to Tom to my parents to… oh, everyone. Please eat. Please enjoy. Please admire my skill. Please praise me. Please love me. Please let me know that I have the power to give you some pleasure.
What is different now? It’s rare for me now to cook when I’m not hungry. (Unfortunately, it’s not rare for me to eat when I’m not hungry, since my hungry/full signals are so fucked up.) Occasionally I will cook things it turns out I don’t want to eat. At such times I’ll give them to my roommate, who seems to enjoy them. Tonight, though, I asked her to taste some lentils I had prepared. I knew they were excellent, but… I wanted her “feedback.” Or, no. Her praise. Why does it matter?
Of course, I don’t feel loved. I still feel like it’s a one-way street – love or regard or care or friendship goes out… but usually it doesn’t feel like it’s coming back from anywhere. Sometimes that’s not the case. Sometimes I feel loved. Maybe it will get better. I think – or… I hope – it will get better.
But… praise for my abilities isn’t the sort of regard I want. I don’t want to have to woo people – or feel I have to. But suppressing the symptoms – or trying to – isn’t the answer either. What’s the answer? I don’t know yet. Or, sure I do. Love myself first. The Catholic Church supposedly has a (spiritual, not actual) vault containing the unlimited virtue of Jesus Christ and the saints. This was the basis for the medieval and renaissance practice of selling indulgences. Well… I need to have a vault of virtue too. Not to sell or give away – or, maybe eventually to distribute to my dear ones where I receive a trade of their virtue in return, so the amount in neither of our vaults is ever diminished – but… to have. To have that virtue – that treasure – within me. And the dividends that that treasure in the vault pays is love. Love of self (not in the way of narcissism) and true love of others.
So… there’s my relationship with food. Now you know.
Filed under: self-work, voice blog | Tags: deFOO, FOO, life story, self-work, vie quotidienne, voice blog
Actually, this is a happy post. Three FOO contacts today, which I discuss. Also, a movie recommendation, some memories, a few curious things… and a big thank you and shout-out to everyone who has been so wonderful this weekend. Enjoy!
Filed under: deFOO, self-work | Tags: Complaints Department, FOO, put money in thy purse, self-work, vie quotidienne
So, I got an email from B today. I thought I’d blocked all her email addresses, but, hélas, there is one I didn’t know she had. I reproduce the email below:
Hi —,
Happy Birthday (Sunday). Per your request, I’m not going to bug you, just want to wish you a happy birthday and let you know I sent you a birthday card/check-hope you received it.
Have a good one. Hope you are well
Love
B
Gosh dangit! When I first read the email, I was quite annoyed indeed. Annoyed that I had to receive the email, annoyed that she had another address I didn’t block, and… annoyed that I now have to make a decision. The check will probably be for about $200. I could use the money, but as we’ve established before, my family believes that I can be bought – and I am indeed bought and paid for if I take the money and repay her with my time or a pseudo-relationship.
Now, there’s a part of myself telling myself that I can cash the check and still not talk to her or otherwise acknowledge her. But I do not think that part is right. Because if I cash the check, B will take that as a symbol of my still being connected to the family. She will take it as a symbol of my still being willing to treat with her, and more importantly to be bribed by her, as she has bribed me from age 11 onwards.
Now, I think, my only choice is whether to throw the entire card in the garbage without having read it (it surely will contain a note from mother also), to send the unopened card back marked “return to sender,” or to open the envelope, read the notes it contains, take a good look at the check, and throw it out.
The part of myself that is telling myself that I might just as well cash the check is suggesting as an alternative the middle course – to send the envelope back. “Make a statement,” it cries! But no, I think that is false as well. For if I send the envelope back, I am still making an effort to demonstrate to them my strong dislike.
So the choices are to read or not to read. There is nothing in the letter for me of pleasure or joy. Nothing except abatement of curiosity – for I am curious – and… oh, why not say it: a chance to manage some “negative” emotions!
And now that little voice is telling me that Stef always opens letters from his brother. But who cares what Stef does? This is my letter – when it comes.
So, has anyone any suggestions? I cannot see anything positive in opening the letter, but I am curious – mostly – as to how much the bribe is this time, even though I now know I shall not take it. I do not wish to know anything about them, really. I say this truly, though… it’s odd because in the past there was a sort of morbid curiosity. Not any more, really. (For example, I deleted – unlistened – the vm that mother left me the night that N came to visit.)
Why, I must ask, does the money still have such a hold? Even though I shan’t cash the check, I still want to know how much it is. I suppose I still… associate money with love. Is it that I want to know “how much they want me back” ? For the measure of the bribe is not a measure of their love. It’s a measure of their desperation to hide their evil. And truly, I don’t want to look at that. For I already know. That’s why I no longer see them. I already know how desperate they are to hide their evil. So looking at the check can do me no good.
Why? The answer I’m being passed is that I still don’t… believe. I know intellectually but do not yet believe what they’ve done. What they are. I want to open the letter, this voice says, to prove once again to myself that they are bad people. That they do not love or respect or care about me. As if I needed proof. As if my life to this point has not been proof.
So, in the garbage with the letter, where the damn thing belongs. I shan’t open it. Shan’t read it. Definitely shan’t take the bribe – even if I’d use the $ either to pay for school stuff or to give to Stef, which would probably be what I’d do.
Now I’m keen to go over to Lerner, see if the letter is there, and throw it out. I feel… not indignant… not… hm. It’s just a feeling of “This is right. Your decision is right. Get to the doing of it.”
I shall have to examine that feeling later. But I have work errands to do on campus, to include a stop at Lerner.
If anyone has comments/suggestions, I’d love to hear them.
Filed under: FDR, attirance | Tags: FDR, FOO, life story, love, mother, music, philosophizing, youtube
The evening light here is very beautiful. It’s laid out in long stripes, which makes the wood floors glow and suffuses everything with a warm yellow glow. I would love for the light always to be like this here.
Am listening again to that jig set that I posted last night and sort of thinking.
Had a very useful conversation today. It’s very amazing to me to see the things that we do without noticing – or if not without noticing, without understanding the antecedents and ramifications of what we’re doing – pointed out and explained to me by an outside observer. The thing that I kept repeating to him in my email was “I lack perspective.” I do, absolutely. I don’t want to say that I can’t wait to listen again to the conversation, but I want to. I need to – a great deal. It’s like with anything else – you need people to point it out to you over and over and over again until you see. Until you can point it out to yourself and stop it.
I do tend to think in dire terms. I do tend to lack perspective. I do tend to… do so many things to keep myself in turmoil. To keep something around to fight – myself or all the world. I would say I don’t wish to fight… but that is not entirely true. I must not say that I must not wish to start battles with myself. I wish to stop losing them. And not to lose them means not to start them. My life needs… less storm and stress.
They sicken of the calm that know the storm, right? That’s probably the best quote I can think of on addiction to anxiety management. Can I make it the other way around? Can I – knowing the calm – give up the storm? If I say I want peace and joy and mutual support and love… and I have said it, and said it to him… then why cannot I set out to achieve that? I can. There is nothing to stop me.
The evening light has gone away now, and it is twilight where I sit. The Florentine calendar counts each new day as beginning at sunset. So this is a new day – in all senses of that word. No… grandiloquent (or grand, eloquent) speeches needed. No sturm und drang. It’s interesting that… I’ve usually been the rock. But only because I couldn’t feel a thing. Never anything for anyone.
Is there a golden mean for feeling? Is there a way to feel just enough? I remember the night my grandmother died. R and E were in New York “taking care of” her, which means of course they were on hand to lift the first goodies out of the house. But it was E – I think – that called mother to tell her that my grandmother had died. Mother came into my room to tell me, and tears were beginning to form in the corners of her eyes. Then she went into her room (it was the smaller bedroom – the one my grandfather was to have – then, as we were still living with Elaine, who had the master bedroom) and sat on the bed. I stayed in my room for a moment, trying to figure out what I felt. I tried crying – but couldn’t. I couldn’t feel anything. I walked into mother’s room to see how she was taking it. I assumed I’d see no large demonstrations of emotion, as they hated each other. But mother was sobbing. Crocodile tears, I think.
She looked at me… with I cannot remember what sort of look. She asked me if I was not sad – why I did not weep. I told her I felt nothing. Mother said… nothing. Then I walked back into my room and continued talking to D online. I did not tell him what had just happened.
The family mythology about my grandmother’s death goes like this: she wanted very much to die. She, who had spent her lifetime denying her faculties that she might be the perfect wife was ready, at last, to go. But yet my grandfather – quickly losing his mind – was still alive. My grandmother, having made the final dispositions for the care of her last child – her husband – and ensuring he would be taken care of, simply stopped eating. Three days later, she was dead. Having done her final duty, she killed herself that she might not be a burden to others. I do not know if it is true. Killing herself when she felt herself ready to die sounds like something she would do. But I cannot say whether it is literal truth.
I felt nothing either when my grandfather died. Was annoyed with mother for weeping. Because my grandfather, though alive… had not been himself for many years. The doddering, incontinent idiot that he became – Alzheimer’s – had nothing to do with my grandfather. It was a body, no more, that died that day. Yet she wept.
The only thing I could weep for was what I thought to be love. For nothing less than a Grand Amour. But yet that was false, and I knew it. I did not – come to think – weep for love of him. I didn’t… no… that was not love. I wept for what I thought to be my evil. I wouldn’t see his. And, of course, I blew mine up to mythic proportions. In that way was I trained. “Love” equals drama. It equals big emotions. It equals storm and stress and guilt and self-loathing and other things.
Yet those were not loves. My mother’s love for her parents was nonexistent. I did not love – not in the proper sense – D, nor did he truly know or love me. Pitiful clinging is not love. Yet how often have I re-created that? How often have I called pitiful clinging love? How often have I labeled false relationships in which there was no true joy or mutual support and little enough transitory happiness love? How often have I re-created what I had? With my family, with friends, with the men I’ve been with…
I do not want what I had. I do not want to re-create what I had. I want something that I have never yet had: trust, mutual support, joy… a relationship with a solid basis – not one built on mutual illusion. I do not want what I had because I’ve never… actually… had… anything.
It is odd to say that I have never loved before. It feels… odd. But it feels true.
But I love now. Myself first and foremost. This good earth. The things that I may be and do here. And… yes. Yes, I love generally, but specifically as well. Not in the sense of one person being the final arbiter of my soul. I am that. Not in the sense of his being necessary to my continued existence. He isn’t. In the sole sense of wishing his felicity on this earth, and of being glad to do what I may to secure it. (Though whether that is possible remains to be seen.)
It is full evening now. I can see barely through the gloaming. The sun is a faint, cold, pale presence behind and obscured by the buildings on the other side of the street.
Marguerite de Navarre said “Never shall a man attain to the perfect love of God who has not loved to perfection some creature in this world.” Well… God does not exist. I do not want his perfect love. I wish to love and be loved by many people in my time. I think I shall be – know I shall be. So, what then? Secure my own happiness first, then worry about whatever else. For whatever else comes… I am – and have only – me.
And have a song:
