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.
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:
Filed under: self-work, voice blog, work | Tags: books, life story, philosophizing, self-work, voice blog, work
This post is partially a reaction to my post-1098 ruminations and partly a reaction to reading just the first four pages of a book called The Renaissance Soul by Margaret Lobenstine.
It contains musings on career choice, the need for passion, my ideal life progression vis a vis jobs, a reminiscence on how my historical interests progressed and radically altered… oh, and a bunch of other stuff. Am hoping this will be useful to the people contemplating this stuff, especially GG, C, and N.
This is the positive review I talk about from The Simple Dollar. It also gives a broad overview of the contents of the book, so you can see whether it will be of interest to you or not. I trust Trent’s taste in books from a long experience of reading things he’s reviewed and generally agreeing with that he says.
Without further ado, here is the post:
The Renaissance Soul: Musings on Career and FDR 1098
A partial list of things I’ve been interested in:
animal husbandry, medieval history, homesteading, brewing, embroidery, construction work, 1960s automobiles, guns, Latin, computers, UFOs, siege technology, swords, camping, Welsh, horses, Irish dance, Hughes Aircraft airplanes, 1940s films, greyhounds, stoic philosophy, Baroque opera, Risk, bomb-making (hey! I’m an anarchist), 1950s fashion, French, poetry, Mark Rothko, farming, card games, cooking, wicca (no, was never a practitioner), James Bond, dressage, ballet, Star Wars, holistic medicine, Occitan, physics, animal rescue, mountaineering, early Byzantine clothing, 9th century Spain, the FBI, foxhunting, archery…
Average length of all-consuming interest in said things? 3 months, or thereabouts. How am I ever going to figure out a career path? Lord.
ETA: After a convo in the chat room tonight… I know exactly how I’m going to figure out a career path. I know exactly what’s been trying to hit me over the head since October, and for a long time before that. What Stef said in 1098 and I promptly forgot. That is: it’s not about me. So, not about my self-aggrandizing by becoming a whirlwind Renaissance woman. Not about me serially switching careers in a desperate bid to seek happiness and validation externally. No. No… because there’s one thing that I have a deep and abiding love for. One fixed star. One goddess in my pantheon. The only thing I have ever loved – however far I may stray from her, however obscured she may become, however much my false self fights – in the deep and abiding way that keeps passion alive even in the face of fear and pain and loneliness and derision… is the truth. Not history. Not… any of those things listed above. The bright star in the firmament is truth. Wisdom. Philosophy. And for those things I will never lose passion.
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.
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.
Filed under: self-work | Tags: body image, life story, philosophizing, self-work
Several odd dreams last night. The first involved the World Trade Center somehow, and the second involved women doing very interesting things as they rode bicycles around a park.
I’ve not done anything at all, really. Today there’s the call, obviously, and I need to get some laundry done. But what I really need, now that I’ve processed a lot of things, is to go back over all the conversations I’ve had from Friday morning until this morning and write it all out. Put the final verdict, as it were, on paper.
I’m supposed to write a paper on Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun sometime within the next week. I also have a programming project due tomorrow, which I’ve decided not to do. Decided more by default than anything else, as I’ve not done it, and I won’t cheat.
Speaking of cheating, my MEs kicked in yesterday as I was about to do something rather dishonest. Funny how that works. I’m immensely glad they did. That’s another artifact, I think, of processing all of this.
Instead of doing laundry this instant, I think I’m going to take a walk. Despite the forecast, it’s turned out to be a lovely day.
Oh, and I got some new clothes yesterday. Most of my clothes are winter clothes, or now too big for me. Good problem to have. I find myself gravitating towards lighter colors… and girly stuff. Not as a reaction to anyone, I don’t think… but when I was much younger (12-17) I wore men’s clothes all the time and kept my hair very short because I had less than no self esteem, was afraid of my body, and thought myself ugly. I wanted to cover up – to be intentionally ugly… so that if anyone called me ugly I could tell myself that it was just the fault of the clothes and my man-ish hair. (This is one of the reasons, incidentally, why that insult cut so deep.) In a perverted sort of way… that was actually very vain of me to do.
Now that I’ve begun to feel much better about myself – this has been coming on for the past year or so – I’m also feeling more free to wear more feminine clothes. Losing some weight doesn’t hurt, as the only clothes they make for large girls look either like something my grandmother would wear, or like something the corner prostitute would wear. Not much in between.
I’m not talking about wearing frills and lace, mind you – it doesn’t sort well with my personality. But something besides the normal, quasi-lesbo uniform of boy-cut jeans and t-shirt. Like… a skirt! Just one. No frills. And… a sweater. Cashmere (no, it was on sale very cheaply – I have not come into money). Light green. A spring color! What am I thinking?!?! And… a pink shirt. Yes, my god, the world is coming to an end. Pink!!
I’m still pants deficient. Am still deciding whether I can wear white pants. (Talk about something that’s hard to carry off!) Am… still wondering that I’m no longer afraid of my body, or ashamed of it.
Filed under: attirance, self-work, vie quotidienne | Tags: friends, life story, love, MEcosystem, nucular holocaust, self-work
EDIT: I had some fine words last night about cultivating my lopin before going and throwing myself down in anyone else’s garden. I ignored that advice, and aye am paying. How many times do I need to hear and see each individual lesson? How long is it going to take? I’m… angry with myself now, and am going to go process that. But this is what I wrote before…
So, last night I told a friend the story of my last night with Tom. It was a terrible situation. I hated myself and all the world – but most of all myself. The last part of the story has me returning to my newly-leased apartment and sitting on the futon thinking the words “I’m free… now what do I do with the rest of my life?”
I wasn’t feeling… much of anything that night. I felt real anger (self-directed – I had him take me in anger earlier that night, and could feel some interesting bruises starting to form, and my bad(er) hip starting to dislocate) and despair and… no. Rage. Rage and despair on the way home. But at the end, I was quiescent sitting on that couch at 2am with no lights on in the house and Ruth asleep in her crate.
I wanted it to be easy. I wanted not to have to process anything. I sat there, expecting to cry. No tears came. I expected that I wanted – I thought that I should want to want – Tom to call and apologize. But no. I’d left him asleep. Sated. Unable to move, really. I was always amused that though he was a prince of a lover with everyone else, he couldn’t keep up with me. That’s why he needed mistresses, I suppose: they didn’t leave him incapacitated for 30 minutes afterwards each time. True story. But way TMI.
So… what did I want. I told him, during that conversation, that… well… I wanted to tell him that I wanted more. And I did. But no… what I wanted from him was his understanding. I wanted him to see what more there was. What more the world had to offer besides dynastic marriage and a stream of mistresses who would let him do degrading things to them. I explained what I thought I’d found. Look, Tom, you’ve read Rand: the world isn’t like that either. It’s not the world of your parents – fancy parties, country clubs, senatorial appointments, mistresses, botox, drinking yourself into oblivion – and it’s not that juvenile bizarro-world of Rand’s producers. Look… love is possible. Even if it’s not with me. You’ve never told me you loved me except once. And I didn’t believe it. We don’t… love each other, Tom. But come with me as a friend into that world that I see? Come as a fellow traveler? You’re in hell. This is hell. And the gate to paradise is deeper into hell. But think what’s on the other side, and come with me! Oh, please come with me, for I am scared to go alone.
I was jealous of his mistresses for the longest time. Because I thought that him having sex with his mistresses meant that he loved them. But of course he didn’t. He wasn’t capable of love. Which… is why he couldn’t come with me. Why I couldn’t save him. Not that I can save anyone else that doesn’t want to be saved, of course – and if the people want to be saved, they’ll save themselves. They’ll do everything in their goddamned power to save themselves.
But… I didn’t realize at the time why I was jealous. Or I did, but I dismissed it. Denied my feelings. For the entire thing was a performance. Our relationship. I showed forbearance. Didn’t raise my voice. Got angry… but didn’t yell, didn’t call names. Didn’t let him do those things either. It wasn’t worth it. Go see Alisha, Tom, and when you’ve finished dumping all of your emotional sewage on her, come back and we’ll quaff that last drop together. In fond remembrance of me.
I wanted it to be easy. I didn’t want to have to feel anger. Jealousy. Hurt. Rage. Exasperation. For he was – is – a man of boundless talent… and he went the other way. Six months after I made my offer, he married his principal mistress. A year after I made my offer, he joined the army. He sent me an email last September. I didn’t know either of these things. He assumed I did. “I’m finishing up training in Arizona, and will be going to Japan with my wife.” Alright, Tom. I’m not jealous any more.
One can’t be jealous of the dead.
I wanted… not to have to think. What had been modeled to me as the image of a “successful” marriage. Strong (that is, fundamentally weak) man brings home the bacon, sits down, and shuts up. Wife – perhaps pretty and amiable in her youth, but in her age a horrible, insecure shrew – fries it up. Two children – an heir and a spare, please – a dog, and a white picket fence. Summers in Maine. Good morning, Mrs. Senator.
Oh, but that isn’t what I thought I was getting. I didn’t think love was possible. I thought that’s all there was. All that one could hope to achieve. Wealth, good standing in the community, and tolerance – not love – in the union. I’d seen Tom’s first wife strive for more and fail. Or, no. She started out as a horrible, insecure shrew. She wasn’t intelligent enough to dissemble. And she wanted him back. He treated her like dirt, and she wanted him back.
I ignored all this. Ignored my feelings. Ignored intuition. Ignored… reality. The facts. The truth. Empirical evidence. Until one day I couldn’t. I stood in the dining room, looking out the back window watching him smoke and read a fantasy novel. The only time I could ever really get his attention was when he went out to smoke. (Parallels, parallels, my dear.) But I had suddenly no desire to try to win his attention. I went outside and told him I was leaving for a while. He gave me his charming smile. Which didn’t reach his eyes.
Oh, I wanted… to stay where I was. Treading water. Treading the shit that I’d been forced to swim in from childhood. That sweet walking death. But I knew – all the time I knew – what I was denying.
No bitterness, no recriminations. The relationship with Tom put me exactly where I needed to be. Without that – those long months of feeling horrid all the time – I couldn’t be here now. I’d passed the lifeline before I got involved with him. Was reading StR and LRC quite religiously. I knew who Stef was, obliquely. This was in his very, very first days. So the teacher was setting up his classroom, but this particular student wasn’t ready.
So, love is possible. And it took walking through that particular hellfire for me to realize it. So is it processed? Past and done? Well… more processed than it was. I know now what I did – and what every relationship I entered into was set up to do – and I’m watching.
But yet… I still act as though I want something that – in truth – I can’t want. Still searching for a particular kind of validation… or… anti-validation. But this isn’t a Tom-connected thing.
Oh, and it’s taken me all this time and writing to realize that. Put the suitcase of Tom-memories back on the shelf, oh my dear ones. That baggage is out, and all that remains is the empty suitcase with some shreds of memory clinging to it. The next case to unpack – and I’d left it alone, for I did not think it important – is the one with the Gunthar-memories. The man is unimportant. Oh, so unimportant. But what drove me to him is. Oh, my.
I’m back there. I’m in Gunthar-world. Back four years ago in the Tom interregnum listening to him talk about his ex-girlfriend Selene as he played computer games. With the thought in the back of my mind of “Yes, she was an evil bitch who hated you. But I am so much better. I’m here. Reach out for me!”
And I’m staking my reputation and my happiness and my self-esteem on one sign of affection. Only the Sara that is telling me to stay far away is… myself. Oh, Gunthar, Gunthar. Who was never mine. I still want to show you that I am better than Selene and worthy of your love. She’s hurt you… but I’m here. I’ll deal with what you cannot. No… with what you will not. I will do it… so long as you will show me I am worthy of your love. And when you will not speak to me I’ll go half mad. For all of my pitiful “self-esteem” is yours.
I am so sorry.
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.
