(no subject)
Today started out crappy, but with the silver lining of pancakes (which my room still smells of). However, by the end it is fantastic and I am happy. My hand smells like the coffee I spilled on it earlier. This sounds strange, but I keep smelling it before I eventually wash it... there is something disturbing but keen about the smell of skin and coffee. Last year my hand was burned rather badly by a cup of coffee and was reminded
"smell you on my hand for days
I can't wash away your scent"
Finals tomorrow. With a deaf interpreting major, tests are entirely visual. There is no way to study, which only encourages me to never do it. I can't wait to officially change my major.
Today in the shower I was remembering two incidences from my childhood. The first one I must have been in the first or second grade. We lived in base housing in San Antonio and I remember taking a bath in the downstairs washroom. In those days, I would start taking a bath and I would call my mother in when I was ready for her to help me wash my hair. Everything else I could do myself, and at this point I was very close to taking showers and singing the "I Love To Take Showers" ballad in tribute to my rite of passage. I don't recall that evening what spurred my discontent, but I was crying by the time my mother came in to wash my hair. She asked what was wrong, and I was afraid to say, but finally I blurted, "Sometimes I think you don't really love me." My mother started crying, I really hurt her feelings. The second memory was more recent, in high school. Dad was driving us to the grocery store, which is a two-minute trip from the house. I think it was raining. I told my dad that sometimes I just wanted to be allowed into a room with a few breakable objects and the freedom to throw them against the walls and scream and cry and yell. I could walk in, pick up a ceramic lamp and just hurl it to the ground, watching the pieces splinter all over the floor. I could grab a basketball and throw it with such ferocity that it would hit the wall and, upon contact, not bounce but burst open. I could see the concern in my father's eyes when he asked, "That bothers me. What in your life could make you want to do that?"
I don't like wasting my shower time with those memories, but at the same time I know full well the thoughts were not a complete waste. It makes me want to call my mother right now and tell her that I love her. Okay, and I just did.
I don't even remember what it was that my mother did that made me doubt her love for me, and that really bothers me. It could be cast aside as an overactive imagination after Mom wouldn't let me have dessert. I don't know, but the fact that I don't remember now what the cause was makes me wonder if I have merely forgotten, or was there a real reason for my feeling to begin with? At the time my father was displeased with my desire to break things, I couldn't understand what his problem was. To me, it seemed like a perfectly okay means to deal with stress. But now, of course, I see how damaging that means to deal with my problems really was, how surface and transitory it was. Rather than fix what was broken in my life, I would have preferred to destroy something else. What was so ideal about the room contrived to meet my needs was that objects were just there, I could walk into the room and break them and the mess stayed there. Of course, the next time I would walk in, it would be clean. My imaginary room fooled me into thinking that dust wasn't collecting on a room full of broken objects. And the mess didn't walk out the door, there were no consequences to my destruction. Now that I reflect on it, it's pretty scary!
On the flip side, love would be just as scary if it was treated the same way. Imagine I had not a mother, but was cared for by an evil beast who put vinegar in my oatmeal and washed my hair with grease, but only saw that she fed me and bathed me. I would tell her, "I think you really do love me!" with no basis. My words caused my mother to break down in front of me, and what was the reality of my words? There was no truth to them, but my statement was true in its existence. To love something or someone without knowing why, and to be loved without understanding it, is just as damaging. And what about a room that you could run to and love a few objects within its walls? You walk in, there are a few objects that you can pour your love into, and you can leave. When you return to the room, it is empty of all your previous love, so you are fooled into thinking that you never before made a loving impact on anything. That's just as foolish as believing you never destroyed anything before. Even worse, your love is entirely shut off to your real life, holed up in this one room that only you, presumably, enter and leave. While nothing else is changed by your destruction, nothing else is changed by your love. Nobody feels your love on them, and when you go to the room even the objects you tenderly poured your love on aren't there to remind you that you loved them and loved them well.
I'm tremendously glad that I called my mother midway through my thoughts. At first, the memory was pushing me to tears but now I'm almost there because of the beneficence I got to share. More importantly, though, is I can tell you with certainty why I love my mom as I just told her I did and my loving her adds to the love I've previously showed her, and it changes her too. She told me before we said our good-byes, "I'm really glad you called just now." I couldn't have that if I didn't try to understand my love. I couldn't have that if I kept that love in the room.
"smell you on my hand for days
I can't wash away your scent"
Finals tomorrow. With a deaf interpreting major, tests are entirely visual. There is no way to study, which only encourages me to never do it. I can't wait to officially change my major.
Today in the shower I was remembering two incidences from my childhood. The first one I must have been in the first or second grade. We lived in base housing in San Antonio and I remember taking a bath in the downstairs washroom. In those days, I would start taking a bath and I would call my mother in when I was ready for her to help me wash my hair. Everything else I could do myself, and at this point I was very close to taking showers and singing the "I Love To Take Showers" ballad in tribute to my rite of passage. I don't recall that evening what spurred my discontent, but I was crying by the time my mother came in to wash my hair. She asked what was wrong, and I was afraid to say, but finally I blurted, "Sometimes I think you don't really love me." My mother started crying, I really hurt her feelings. The second memory was more recent, in high school. Dad was driving us to the grocery store, which is a two-minute trip from the house. I think it was raining. I told my dad that sometimes I just wanted to be allowed into a room with a few breakable objects and the freedom to throw them against the walls and scream and cry and yell. I could walk in, pick up a ceramic lamp and just hurl it to the ground, watching the pieces splinter all over the floor. I could grab a basketball and throw it with such ferocity that it would hit the wall and, upon contact, not bounce but burst open. I could see the concern in my father's eyes when he asked, "That bothers me. What in your life could make you want to do that?"
I don't like wasting my shower time with those memories, but at the same time I know full well the thoughts were not a complete waste. It makes me want to call my mother right now and tell her that I love her. Okay, and I just did.
I don't even remember what it was that my mother did that made me doubt her love for me, and that really bothers me. It could be cast aside as an overactive imagination after Mom wouldn't let me have dessert. I don't know, but the fact that I don't remember now what the cause was makes me wonder if I have merely forgotten, or was there a real reason for my feeling to begin with? At the time my father was displeased with my desire to break things, I couldn't understand what his problem was. To me, it seemed like a perfectly okay means to deal with stress. But now, of course, I see how damaging that means to deal with my problems really was, how surface and transitory it was. Rather than fix what was broken in my life, I would have preferred to destroy something else. What was so ideal about the room contrived to meet my needs was that objects were just there, I could walk into the room and break them and the mess stayed there. Of course, the next time I would walk in, it would be clean. My imaginary room fooled me into thinking that dust wasn't collecting on a room full of broken objects. And the mess didn't walk out the door, there were no consequences to my destruction. Now that I reflect on it, it's pretty scary!
On the flip side, love would be just as scary if it was treated the same way. Imagine I had not a mother, but was cared for by an evil beast who put vinegar in my oatmeal and washed my hair with grease, but only saw that she fed me and bathed me. I would tell her, "I think you really do love me!" with no basis. My words caused my mother to break down in front of me, and what was the reality of my words? There was no truth to them, but my statement was true in its existence. To love something or someone without knowing why, and to be loved without understanding it, is just as damaging. And what about a room that you could run to and love a few objects within its walls? You walk in, there are a few objects that you can pour your love into, and you can leave. When you return to the room, it is empty of all your previous love, so you are fooled into thinking that you never before made a loving impact on anything. That's just as foolish as believing you never destroyed anything before. Even worse, your love is entirely shut off to your real life, holed up in this one room that only you, presumably, enter and leave. While nothing else is changed by your destruction, nothing else is changed by your love. Nobody feels your love on them, and when you go to the room even the objects you tenderly poured your love on aren't there to remind you that you loved them and loved them well.
I'm tremendously glad that I called my mother midway through my thoughts. At first, the memory was pushing me to tears but now I'm almost there because of the beneficence I got to share. More importantly, though, is I can tell you with certainty why I love my mom as I just told her I did and my loving her adds to the love I've previously showed her, and it changes her too. She told me before we said our good-byes, "I'm really glad you called just now." I couldn't have that if I didn't try to understand my love. I couldn't have that if I kept that love in the room.