I finally got the idea to write that barn-stormer of a post. I was on point of going out, and now I’m sitting on the floor of my bedroom in my winter coat and hat, typing.
Stef speaks in 1233 about people willing to put down the fucking mouthpiece of “virtue” and take up the sword to fight the good fight. He talks about those whom you have offered the sword and the chance to fight for virtue hating you – inevitably – when they fail to take up that sword. When the weakness they have been shifting and evading and avoiding and prevaricating about in themselves is revealed by your virtue.
I realized that my mother’s hatred of me – and the world’s hatred of virtuous people in general – is in direct proportion to our virtue. To our ability to pick up that sword and fight that fight.
I was thinking, earlier, about the person I become around my mother. Or the person I became around her after I was no longer dependent upon her. I told one of my MEs (in the form of one of you, my readers) that he would very probably feel rage upon seeing that person I become. Hatred and fear, reacting in that crucible to become rage. Another one of my MEs said “You are inexorable for that poor woman!”
Yes, and I will tell you why I am. I will justify myself.
I would have less contempt for my mother if she was stupid. I would have less contempt for her if she did not understand virtue. I would have less contempt for my mother if she had no capacity for the exalted, if she was un-philosophical, and – especially – if she had never deFOOed, and then returned to the parents she loathed and knew were abusive. And – though I am glad for the fact I am alive and could not wish it otherwise – I would have far less contempt for her if she had not left me in the hands of these parents she loathed and knew were abusive.
For “contempt” you may substitute hatred, outrage, anger, or anything you like. There is something in the feeling of contempt, I think, that makes the person who feel it equally contemptible. This may or may not be true – and I would like to come up with arguments both sides. But that doesn’t matter at the moment.
Mother’s hatred of my virtue was in direct proportion to the magnitude of the virtue that she strangled and smothered and denied and killed off in her young self. She was not born to become what she became – and that’s the worst of it. No one is born to become base, contemptible, anti-philosophical, abusive, or anything of the sort. That precious, innocent child that was born into the world to my dear friends yesterday has unlimited potential for virtue, if it is not crushed within her – and if she can avoid crushing it herself.
That’s the wildcard, isn’t it. How much of what mother became was determined by her childhood, and how much of it was determined by her own actions. It doesn’t matter. I am living proof – and if you are reading this, so are you – that our early upbringing does NOT have to condemn us to a virtueless life. That one can overcome history – slowly, painfully, but finally.
And so, I am inexorable for “that poor woman.”
One’s capacity to abuse others is directly correlated to one’s capacity to abuse oneself, I think. And so leaving mother in her own company is the best punishment that anyone on earth could devise. I used to think I would like to punish her. But I could not, without denying that virtue and empathy in myself.
What does the fact that I loathe her say about me? Is this “punishment” of her? The fact that I’ve got very little empathy whatever for what she became… is that because I lack empathy for myself? I do not think so. It is right – just – to hate one’s abusers. One cannot do otherwise without self-abnegation. Like this woman on the boards. What is she? She has regressed. She… in all likelihood, was never there.
I’m here. I love my capacity for life, and for work, and for virtue. I love nothing else, really – because all else is an exponent of my life and my work and my virtue. Those capacities are what I cannot reject. Mother rejected them, and committed treason. Against herself and that innocent child born to my grandparents in June of 1952, and, yes, against virtue – and against life. I can’t call what mother is doing “living.” It is a horrible waking death. The living 0. The vivified nought.
If I am being honest with myself, I would say that there is no “mother” left to hate.
Filed under: deFOO, self-work | Tags: deFOO, MEcosystem, mother, self-work
One of my MEs was bitterly complaining in the shower this morning:
“Ah, yes. A little house well-filled, a little land well-tilled, and a little wife well-willed. Oh, the joys of ownership. After Russia?! Don’t be absurd.”
Despite that little voice – I do acknowledge his point of view, I really do! A 9-5 in NYC and acquiring “stuff” is not what I really want – plans proceed. I have just about secured an apartment. I saw a place last night 2 blocks from where I used to live. The apartment is nice enough (clean, in an elevator building) and the one roommate I met seems very nice. Not a potential bosom buddy, mind you, but ok to live with. Today at 1pm I’m to call her and arrange to meet the other roommate, and drop off a check for 1/2 month’s rent + deposit. If I move into that neighborhood I’ll then go re-join the Y, which is not far away, and… yes, that’ll be that.
On the job front, a person from a company I’d like to work for has expressed interest in interviewing me. I have another job interview set up for Monday – but that is for an IT job in Russia. In Siberia. I don’t really want to go to Siberia, but it’s better to have offers on the table than not have offers on the table, and this company is an extremely well-known international software company. Advancement and transfer opportunities are what that job has going for it. Still, another year sans therapy in Novosibirsk… no, that I’ve begun to regard as impossible as well.
The thing is… there’s a really large part of me that believes I’ll never make it. A large part of me that believes that despite my struggles – and even if I struggle harder – I’ll end up as violent and unprincipled as my mother. So had best not make an effort. There’s a large part of me that believes I’ll never be married – so why bother trying to improve myself to the point that marriage (or a relationship of any kind) is possible? If you had asked me… with anyone I’ve ever thrown myself at… whether I thought the relationship would lead to marriage or had any possibilities whatsoever, I would have laughed at you. No. There’s a reason why I’ve never set out to actually date. I mean, I’ve gone on 2 dates in my entire life. Why? That voice cries futility. Why try?
Why try?
Well… to tell you the truth… that voice has always been there, but… at bottom, much as I hate to admit it, I’m an optimist. Maybe that’s the wrong word for it. I throw myself at an abyss, but I’m always confident, at bottom, that things will come off. That I’ll succeed somehow, or at least get through whatever it is. Optimism is probably the wrong word for it. Courting disaster isn’t optimism.
This just popped into my head: I’ve given myself ample opportunities to fail.
Thank you! Thank you, whoever just suggested that. If my operating thought has been that it’s futile and, struggle as I might, I cannot do anything to effect a change or become better or even just avoid becoming my mother… then I have to set myself up to fail. As mother always set me up to fail. Her refrain was “You’re so smart!” (said in a sing-songy condescending voice) and then she would do her best to make my life hell whenever I wanted to study, or she would say yes to my going on a trip somewhere and then turn right round and say no 2 weeks (always invariably 2 weeks) before I was to go, or… anything she could do to set me up to fail.
Is that not the case now? I mean really, I got on a plane back to NYC without even knowing where I was going to stay. That’s just the latest and very mild incarnation. Wasn’t dropping therapy setting myself up to fail? I’d had the desire to travel around the world since I was 12 – and teaching English to finance it had come to my notice at 17. So… why then? Why drop everything then, just as things were progressing?
This part of me, I know, wants to be heard.
Someone else just suggested: If failure was inevitable for her, she’s clear. She didn’t do anything wrong. She wasn’t responsible.
But oh, my dears, she was! We all know she read Rand and deFOOed, and while she didn’t have FDR, she chose the “easy” path (which is in no way easy, and for which she is paying daily) and went back to living with her parents until age 50! In that letter, she wrote us that she knew she had anger problems and went to therapy for it. But she didn’t do anything to stop yelling at us and abusing us. She never yelled us in public places, or where grandmother could hear and stop her. She knew right what she did. It was not inevitable that she should be that way. Truly, truly.
Screwing up our life and abusing our friends doesn’t prove anything. We don’t want to be like that, do we? Becoming a person like mother doesn’t exonerate mother. It just makes it even worse. Don’t let her fool you. And that “easy” road she counsels is the road to a life of unceasing torment. You guys must know that, and see it.
Have we not fully admitted, then, that she is guilty? Is that why we need to keep reading the emails from Rebecca? To “prove” it? I sympathise. I sympathise. If we admit her guilt, then it’s incumbent upon us to… oh, to go that hard road and not be like her.
But you disprove your own thesis, my love, by setting me up to fail. Think on that, will you?
Filed under: FDR, self-work | Tags: deFOO, FDR, friends, languages, mother, self-work
That is “my hovercraft is full of eels” in Latin. (See YouTube clip below if you have no freaking clue where that comes from. Hilarious sketch!) Literally translated, it means “my ship that rests on the air abounds with eels.” Beautiful, wonderful language, is Latin.
But… languages. I’ve been not-so-dilligently working on my Russian. Finally tonight I found a website that teaches the Cyrillic alphabet as I learn best – by giving it in immediately-useable words that I can then sound out to figure out the letters, and then requiring me to re-type/write the words to make sure I can use both words and letters. Very helpful indeed!
Am not looking forward to learning Russian grammar. Admittedly it’s a lot like Latin grammar… except with a couple of extra tenses… and the fact that verbs have gender. What kind of a damned language has verbs that have a gender? Nouns having a gender = ok. I can understand that. But verbs?!
Oh well. Needs must. At the very least, I’ve got to learn the alphabet and some survival phrases. It’s not 100% certain that I’m going to Moscow yet, but it’s looking more and more likely. The big 3 contenders are Russia, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic. The Cyrillic alphabet will be useful in the first 2 countries anyway.
I actually would most like to go to the Czech Republic… but you never know. The winters are certainly milder in Prague than they are in Lviv or Moscow, and an ex-co-worker’s parents live there… so at least I have an introduction going on to some natives who speak English. I don’t want to spend 100% of my time with expats, even though I just know I’ll completely want to abandon everything and return home for about the first 2 weeks, and I’ll cling like mad to anyone who speaks even a word of English. After I’ve gotten the “ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod WTF have I DONE!!!!!!??????” week out of my system (that happens whenever I move – to Dallas, to NYC, to London, and in wherever I’m going next, no doubt it’ll be worse) I’ll want to make some native friends. And, of course… do things like eat, be able to get around, etc. Hence learning the language.
Mea vida adventuris abundat. (No, that’s not correct Latin.)
What else? Oh… a fellow at a kebab shop (what? I didn’t want to cook tonight) started hitting on me. Asked me for my number, and said he wanted to take me out for a drink. I should have lied and said I had a boyfriend, or – hey! here’s an idea! – just left sans diner and made a sandwich at home. I mean… I’m really not sure how to handle that. I’m totally unused to guys taking any sort of interest in me in that way. (No… really. I’m also horribly insecure about that, which leads me to all sorts of humiliating situations which y’all can no doubt think of an example of right off the bat.)
Thank you, FOO and certain gentlemen that I met in my formative years, for completely fucking me over in that area. Though I’ve thought about it a lot lately – and my thoughts in that area have been doubly renewed after a conversation last night with a friend – it’s hard to know how to proceed. I’m operating on the assumption that I only want what I can’t have (i.e. I want a stable, loving relationship with an upright, moral man – but I tell myself that I am absolutely, 100% in the dark as to how to accomplish that) but is that true? No, not entirely. I myself don’t even realize yet how untrue that is, I think.
I went for a run today. God, that was exhausting, but satisfying. Either running more or rock climbing tomorrow – my climbing soreness has gone away, and thanks to decent stretching I feel no bad effects from the run.
Another friend (I can call him a friend, no? It sounds… weird to my own ears when I term him “a friend”) sent me something to read, which I will start tomorrow. For right now, it’s listening to Jane Eyre in French, and re-reading my favorite parts of it in English. It’s amazing how much of the French I can get without having to re-translate in my head.
However… my sudden desire to re-read JE is a signal. It goes back to a certain period in my life – ca. 8-10 years old, when I felt almost more lonely and miserable than I did while living in mother’s house from 12-18. I’d like to talk to friends about that – not about JE, but what that sign portends. There are certain pieces of literature I go back to in certain moods. At least this one is not dire enough to warrant Hamlet. That’s the nihilism lit – or as close as I ever got to it. Hamlet betokens a really bad headspace. JE is only loneliness and wanting someone to love me. I swear to god, from 8-12 years old I couldn’t conceive of marrying a better man than Mr. Rochester, the Byronic hero of JE. Now I can. But that’s still many years off. I wish I had it all settled. I wish I knew what was going to happen – or not even 100%. I don’t need to know what, when, who… or anything like that. I only want a guarantee that I will be happy – someday. That’s what I wanted then, too. I would have given anything to see in my mind’s eye a possibility of ever being happy, when I was a child. That’s sort of where I am now – and why I sometimes do things like throwing myself after men that I know are bad for me. Just to get something settled. Just to… sigh. But there isn’t any guarantee.
Oh well. I can wait. In the interim, I’m doing (or supposedly doing) things which will bring me as close to a guarantee of happiness as I can get. There is an example before me of what I want – realized, living, reachable – but… I’m not there yet. Only another few years’ trek across the desert.
No… I won’t erase any of the above, but the tone doesn’t reflect what I feel. I feel sad, and sick, and tired. I feel as if I know there is a point to all of this, but I don’t want to see it right now. I feel as though I want to wallow in self-abandonment, lethargy, self-punition, and all of the other crap I saw mother do. “Woe is me, people have screwed me over, I’m hard done-by, it’s not my fault or responsibility…”
Except that’s not quite it. I have the “white knight” syndrome. Waiting for someone to sweep in on a white horse, pick me up, and carry me bodily to felicity – without my lifting a finger. Ain’t nobody coming but me. I do not want the fairy transport from A-Q through the jungle – or… I think I do, but in reality the white knight would do more damage than good, and I know it.
That’s right. Someone is going to lose the weight for me. Someone is going to come and clean my bedroom. Someone is going to learn Russian for me. Someone is going to find me a prince among men for a husband. Someone is going to do the work of repairing the damage I’ve done or contemplated amongst my friends. Someone is going to strengthen my relationships with them. Someone is going to pack up all my stuff and magically transport me abroad. Someone is going to pour money into my bank account if I spend it like water. Someone is going to pick up my financial arrangements where I left off and settle everything. Someone is going to read and comment on this new book my friend sent me. Someone is going to do all the little errands I’ve been neglecting. Someone is going to calculate the monies owed my landlord. Someone is going to find me a cheap ticket to Cancun this Christmas.
Well… no. Nobody is going to do any of these things. And when I sit here, and procrastinate, and begin to resent myself (and others who have absolutely nothing to do with what I’m doing to myself) for not doing anything, and wallow in my resentment rather than figure out what’s behind this… the only person I’m fundamentally hurting is myself. The friends I hold dear – if I wound them – can write me off and go happily live their own lives. There is no lasting negative impact on anyone but myself if I fail to sort out my problems. But I won’t take steps to help myself.
Am I not worthy, mother? Screw you. Am I hard done-by? No. I know the solutions. I know that there is light at the end of the tunnel – that all of this work is for a reason. Do I deserve such wonderful friends as I have? You know what, if I don’t, I can fix that. I can do everything in my power to be the sort of person I want to be, and that will earn me the kind of friends I want in my life. So you know what? I’m sick of these fucking habits that were ingrained in me. That YOU – all three of you – ingrained in me. But this isn’t about you guys any more. All three of you are dead – two in fact, and you, mother, in spirit. This time is about me, and getting out from under all this crap. So get off my back! I am going to get you, finally, off my back.
Filed under: self-work, voice blog | Tags: MEcosystem, mother, music, self-work, voice blog, youtube
I made a fateful decision today, found my primal mother, finally broke the barrier of silence with Stef-in-my-head, had 17 pages worth of talks with various people in my head… and that’s not all! Yes, this is a 40-minute recording and I only get to the effing point around minute 30, but it’s worth a listen. It also contains a movie recommendation, some reading of transcripts of my convos, a realization that the anger that I feel when other people describe their childhoods to me is not MY anger at all, and… hey! Loads of good packed into this little audio.
I have also been listening to or thinking about these two songs (the first one is well worth the $1 on iTunes to hear it properly, not via cell phone camera):
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. :)
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, 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:
I sent aunt B an email asking her to send me copies of mother’s tax information, and she replied with this:
–,
Yes, the house is moving right along-to date, E has logged 50 hours of cleaning and we just got to the point where it doesn’t smell anymore. She is using something called, “Krude Kutter.”
We redid both bathrooms-sheetrock, tile, toilet, shower rods. Replaced all the burned out light bulbs, washed all the walls which, surprisingly, the paint is in good shape when you wash the walls-replaced gutters, rewired, fixed air conditioner, tore down old garage etc. etc. You wouldn’t recognize the place. We had to cut the couch apart to get it out and there was a black cloud of dust and dirt. Replaced all the locks and the side garage doors. We have been at it for two weeks and it will probably take another two weeks. The dog is going to be euthanized tomorrow so we are making great progress. The freezer was moved to my garage and the big t.v. to E’s dining room-it took four men to lift it on the truck-having all kinds of fun.
I was going to call you tomorrow as I am going to send your reference it and I need some more info.
B
Well, thanks, B! I really wanted to know that after 10 years of living there, mother’s house is finally clean. (I actually was concerned about the dog, which was morbidly obese and had necrotic flesh hanging from a hernia on its underside last time I heard about it. Mother had refused to get the dog euthanized, though it obviously must have been in some considerable pain.)
Gar! But what about the tax info? I’ll have to work on uncle J next – or, as an absolute last resort, mother.
Filed under: deFOO | Tags: deFOO, department of exquisite irony, FDR, FOO, life story, mother
I got this letter from mother today:
Dear –,
I received your painful note today and I can’t say it is a surprise. I have been aware for a long time that I do not measure up to your standards as a mother and career-wise. I think you have looked around at the world and concluded that other people have so much more than I do. (In a variety of ways.) In some cases it is true but I don’t care what other people have. I only care about us and our relationship. I love you and have always loved you more than anyone else. The decisions I have made about how and where we lived were with your best interests in mind.
I don’t know if you are fully aware that I have struggled with depression most of my adult life and have been on medication off and on for several years but it does not seem to help. I am not offering this as an excuse – it is just a fact of life.
I am very proud of you and your ability to make your way in the world. If you need some space I am willing to give it to you. I will be finished moving [in with her sister E] in about 2 weeks and I hope we can get our relationship on track.
You are what is important to me. Everything else is misc. B.S.
Please stop judging me.
Love you,
Mama Bear
Ok, so let’s consider some basic facts about mother, and some of the things she cites in this letter:
- She has never, ever, in all of the time I have known her, been to therapy. At least, not that I know of. Maybe when I was too young to remember, but from at least the time I was 11 until now, she has not been to therapy. In fact, she sent ME to therapy in order to manage her emotions. The first time was from age 6-8 with a well known child psychologist. He’s published several books on the psychology of children. I loathed him because he insisted on talking to me in baby-talk, and did my earnest best never, EVER to tell him anything of import, because I sensed his loyalty was to mother, not me. Which probably told him quite a lot. The second time was in TX when I was 12. After 5 sessions of my doing my best to be earnest (despite the guy’s obvious boredom and lack of empathy) the therapist told me that I didn’t need to come and see him any more. When I went out to the car to tell mother (who had always refused to even come into the therapist’s office, much less talk to him about my progress as if she actually gave a good goddamn) she absolutely refused to believe me and barged into the therapist’s office demanding that he diagnose me with something. Anything. Just so that I would be “the crazy one” and she wouldn’t. After she had barged out of the therapist’s office in a huff, I looked in on him again. It doesn’t seem like something that a therapist would say to a kid, but I seem to remember him telling me that my mother was the one with the problem, not me. But like I said, I don’t know if that’s self-mythology or an actual memory. I seem to remember it, though. At the very least, though, that day confirmed what I already knew.
- Our move to Texas was certainly not taken with my best interests in mind. I was already established as a straight-A student in the local middle school and had a group (ok, a 3-strong group, which is about as many oft-seen friends as I can stand to have) of quality friends. We lived with my grandparents, who were solidly upper middle-class and provided me with a stable (if not always – or not even usually) pleasant home life. They were wealthy enough to do the simple things in life for me, like, oh… provide me with something nutritious to eat on a regular basis! The move was only proposed by my uncle J and aunt B in order to help aunt E (who had by that time been unemployed for 2 years) with finances by our all three moving in together. Just before the move, aunt E had gotten a job, and therefore resented our unnecessary coming as an imposition. Mother, too, was unable to find work for a good while, and then finally got a job making $5 an hour. When I ate, it was from a gas station using aunt E’s gas credit card, or because grandma had sent me $20 as a present, or because I scraped around under the couch for loose change, or – in dire extremes – because I stole something to eat. Mother refused to (well… she couldn’t) buy groceries, and she also refused to let my grandmother send money for me to buy nutritious food. (I’m not saying she should have taken the help – how embarrassing is it to have your 80-year-old mother providing for your kid when you’re 45 and able to work?! – but she could at least have not undertaken the move in the first place.)
- She has done her earnest best to deprive me of opportunities whenever she could. A great example is my modeling career. Check out the October 1993 issue of Parents Magazine. I’m in it. Between the ages of 6 and 7 I had a rapidly expanding modeling career. I was starting to get calls almost every week for voiceovers, print ads, and other work as well. For one 15-minute voiceover I made $1000. Mother was extremely jealous of my making this money (all of which she stole, incidentally – she told me she was putting it away for me, and I never saw a dime) and decided to cut short my career by going back to school. She didn’t want a degree in cooking (she hates standing on her feet, and she’s a horrible cook!) but she went back to school anyway, and refused to take me into the city on jobs, and so the calls stopped coming. Then she quit school. Never tried to get a job in that field. The only thing I got out of it was a trip to Europe (I went to a bunch of mother’s classes and impressed one of her professors, who let me play on his computer – a very early Mac – in his office so that I didn’t have to sit through her class, and so he let me come on their class trip to London and Ireland) and a vague sense that mother didn’t like me very much.
So… those are all the old grievances. I hate to trot them out, but it seems fitting at the end of our relationship that I should throw them to the four winds. Mother wants to believe that I’ve stopped seeing her because she was (is!) shiftless and has never had a decent job in her life, or because she uprooted me in the middle of my adolescence to trot me off to an abysmal city that I still don’t like, or whatever other reason. She doesn’t see (and the reason I’ve stopped seeing her is because she cannot and will not see) that the reason I’ve stopped seeing her is because of her utter and total lack of virtue. Because of her lack of empathy. Because of her lack of curiosity about and genuine caring and affection for me. Because she bludgeoned me over the head with the argument from morality and because she expects me to toil my life away to provide her with unearned luxury in her old age and because she thinks that all of the above are virtues.
The ironic thing… the thing straight out of the Department of Exquisite Irony is that she read Rand when she was 16 or 17. She saw the same things at the same age (even though Rand’s ethical arguments leave a lot to be desired) and… she could have lived with integrity. She saw a different path than the one that she was on. And she decided, instead of living with a shred of virtue, to be exactly like Hank Rearden’s mom. Well, if she thinks that she’s going to use my virtue to chain me to a rock (it is soooo ironic that her pet name for me was “Buzzard”), Prometheus-like, for vultures to peck at… she’s wrong. She is so very, very wrong.
