Writer’s Block today...
The times they are a-changing
How would you describe the last decade in one sentence?
OK! One sentence, "I have come a long way, Baby!"
My life has gone so far beyond anything one could call "ordinary change" that I went back into old journals to see what I could find. Back then I was between husbands, living with my mother, and trying to figure out what to do with my future. Thank the Universe that I could still DO such a thing... even though I was getting old fast! I found this and it kind of says it all though certainly not in one sentence. Here's what I said then:
To my "favorite" daughter... who is the favorite because she bothers to listen and dares to hear!
'My own post-World War II generation grew up in a time when women were infantilized and treated as property. They were kept as fallow gardens... but thankfully there was always wild seed which arrived on the wind. Though what they wrote went was unauthorized, women blazed away anyway. Though what they painted went unrecognized, it fed the soul anyway. Women had to beg for the instruments and the spaces needed for their arts, and if none were forthcoming, they made space in trees, caves, woods, and closets.
Dancing was barely tolerated, if at all, so they danced in the forest where no one could see them, or in the basement, or on the way out to empty the trash. Self-decoration caused suspicion. Joyful body or dress increased the danger of being harmed or sexually assaulted. The very clothes on one's shoulders could not be called one's own.
It was a time when parents who abused their children were simply called "strict," when the spiritual lacerations of profoundly exploited women were referred to as "nervous breakdowns," when girls and women who were tightly girdled, tightly reined, and tightly muzzled were called "nice," and those other females who managed to slip the collar for a moment were branded "bad."' from "Women Who Run With the Wolves" by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.
Okay, so maybe this is not your reality... but it is mine. If you really want to know where you come from you'll pay attention to my reality.
Part of your generation's problem with mine is that you apply today's standards to it. We taught you that your choices were limitless. That was not our reality. That was our desire to give you something better. I am not a child of today. I was raised in an atmosphere that told me that the only "good" life for me was one where I sacrificed it all for my man and my children, suffered in silence and somehow I would get to live happily ever after.
Download a copy of "Stand By Your Man" by Tammy Wynette and listen carefully to the words. They were very powerful and very subliminal messages. Sure, my conscious mind knew there were other choices for me but in my heart I knew for sure that only one choice was the "right" choice. Only one would be respected.
Trouble is they didn't teach their sons that. "Behind every successful man stands his second (sometimes his third) wife!"
My mother to this day tries to force me to get up and get something to eat for my sometimes husband when he drops in to visit and sometimes when I don't... she gets up and does it herself, implying (and sometimes even stating aloud) that she is a good woman and I am not. She doesn't even LIKE him, yet she will serve him because he has a dick! This is a "good woman."
Mine was the generation of liberated women who did not want to be liberated! Our entire reality was destroyed by liberation, leaving us floundering in a world between worlds, not fitting in our mother's generation nor in our daughter's. Mine was the generation that was promised "Leave It to Beaver" and given "Murphy Brown." You cannot imagine how unprepared we were to be Murphy Browns! We don't even LIKE Murphy Brown!
My art was "amusing" and my music was good but trivialized "There's no money in music."
No one ever told me I would need to make money! I don't know how to make "making money" a priority. I have no interest in making money.
I have interest in creating beautiful things, beautiful plates full of beautiful food, beautiful living environs for those in my charge, and beautiful little people! My name is Mother. This is the pathway my creative juices chose to flow... years ago when the truth I was told required it. This is the medium in which I work and I am gloriously good at it! Even though it took me a long time to learn it!
Every time I had an inspired or creative experience that I tried to share I was told, "There goes Sarah Bernhardt again!" or "You're crazy!" How many times do you think you hear that before you start to believe it? Even live it? It is still my mother's favorite statement! She says this to me at least once or twice every day. When you hear this stuff 24/7 over the course of 20 or so years you begin to doubt your own judgment.
Sure I know I am not crazy! But still there is always this little bit of doubt that stops me before I take any giant step into a new reality. What I am doing here is a huge step into a new reality for me. I am learning not to suffer in silence! I am learning the value of venting. I am learning to say, "I don't like this." "This frightens me." I am angry about something." And you... all of you who have need for me to always be who I always was are so uncomfortable with this. You want me to "stop whining" and be who I was while simultaneously finding a way to be someone new!
I make about $160 a week for four hours work which isn't much but is what I could expect working for Wal-Mart for 30 hours or so and living with my mother who lives on the pension her man provided her I can survive on that. Except that I don't think I will survive living with her much longer. Her guilt poison is eating my stomach away. I live on Tums!
If I take another job I will have to give up this one which doesn't make much sense to me to... work harder for much the same money. I barely have energy enough for this one. If I leave mother I'd have to buy a car too... I drive the paid-for car her husband provided her. If I take another job I'd be looking at giving up this one since the hours would conflict.
This job is the only thing I'm hanging my self esteem and my sanity on. Shall I do that? Do ya think? And if I leave mother's I'd have to pay rent somewhere. I'm in a trap. One I created myself, for sure, but no less a trap and I see no way out but dying.
My mother is the worst passive aggressive I have ever met. What's frustrating about passive aggressives is that since they swear they are not being aggressive you cannot fight back. In her reality women were not allowed anger so she found a more surreptitious way to express it. With a passive aggressive you are left trying to swallow your anger or denying it. If I fight with her about calling me crazy she professes to be kidding. Who's she kidding? She really thinks I am crazy. The shrinks call that "the hot potato syndrome"
You defend your own instability by saying "I'm all right. It's the world that's all wrong." This stuff is not supposed to hurt me though. I am expected to sit and suffer in silence like a good daughter.
I am pushing 60 years old now. My body is giving up on me. I have been sick in one form or another for about 3 years. I usually just tell myself, "This is just normal aging." and sometimes that's how I feel but it leaves me feeling very vulnerable. I don't know how to lay down and be sick anymore than I know how to make money.
I have had an annoying infection for more than 6 months that makes me of not much interest to my husband and for all I know he may have given it to me. I have no medical insurance. I finally scraped up $100 to see a doctor about it and he gave me a prescription for another $100 worth of meds and 5 days after I finished the medication it starts again. The doctor has recommended I have an abdominal ultrasound to look for masses but that has to wait til I can save up $400 for it. Right! And how much will I have to save up when they find one?
A week ago last Saturday, as if things weren't bad enough, I dropped a full big bottle of shampoo in the shower and broke my toe on the way to work. No, I did not go have it Xrayed! I don't need several hundred dollars worth of hospital to know it is broken. I do what they would do. I tape it to the toe next to it and move on. The main reason I am spending so much time at here is that I cannot walk the dogs (the only children I have left). I need them to be here where there is a fence so they can run and I do not have to follow.
My upper plate split in two. It is 30 years old. I am still struggling to find $350 to get a new one made, a little thing 'til you have to live with it. It gets super glued every 6 weeks or so.
I feel like I am walking a tight rope with vertigo and just waiting for the moment that I fall off.
This is not a momentary lapse of sanity. It is the culmination of a lot of years of being taken advantage of and criticized for doing what I thought in my best judgment was right. Maybe it wasn't but it was my best guess at the time. God knows I got a lot of advice to do what I did... and then a lot of criticism for doing it.
But if I hadn't taken their advice I would never had met you or Jo so I guess in the long run I wouldn't have missed that dance anyway but it burns my ass when THEY criticize me for having married him! Or the way I handled getting out of it.
So... if and when I do fall off the wire, you will be charged with the responsibility of explaining why to all these stupid people who were more than happy to be served, to take everything I had to give... and have no clue or interest in what they were doing to me back when it mattered.
Your mother loves you unconditionally, but that doesn't mean you don't piss me off sometimes, only that I still love you when you do. I love the others unconditionally too but that does not mean I will put my tail between my legs and allow them to manipulate and injure me over and over. And it does not mean that I will accept the blame for their miserable lives.
They call it "your life" because it it yours. Yours to live, yours to fix. Mommy cannot "kiss it and make it better" when you are so tall that she can no longer reach you and so aware... that you no longer believe in her "Mommy Magic."
How would you describe the last decade in one sentence?
OK! One sentence, "I have come a long way, Baby!"
My life has gone so far beyond anything one could call "ordinary change" that I went back into old journals to see what I could find. Back then I was between husbands, living with my mother, and trying to figure out what to do with my future. Thank the Universe that I could still DO such a thing... even though I was getting old fast! I found this and it kind of says it all though certainly not in one sentence. Here's what I said then:
To my "favorite" daughter... who is the favorite because she bothers to listen and dares to hear!
'My own post-World War II generation grew up in a time when women were infantilized and treated as property. They were kept as fallow gardens... but thankfully there was always wild seed which arrived on the wind. Though what they wrote went was unauthorized, women blazed away anyway. Though what they painted went unrecognized, it fed the soul anyway. Women had to beg for the instruments and the spaces needed for their arts, and if none were forthcoming, they made space in trees, caves, woods, and closets.
Dancing was barely tolerated, if at all, so they danced in the forest where no one could see them, or in the basement, or on the way out to empty the trash. Self-decoration caused suspicion. Joyful body or dress increased the danger of being harmed or sexually assaulted. The very clothes on one's shoulders could not be called one's own.
It was a time when parents who abused their children were simply called "strict," when the spiritual lacerations of profoundly exploited women were referred to as "nervous breakdowns," when girls and women who were tightly girdled, tightly reined, and tightly muzzled were called "nice," and those other females who managed to slip the collar for a moment were branded "bad."' from "Women Who Run With the Wolves" by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.
Okay, so maybe this is not your reality... but it is mine. If you really want to know where you come from you'll pay attention to my reality.
Part of your generation's problem with mine is that you apply today's standards to it. We taught you that your choices were limitless. That was not our reality. That was our desire to give you something better. I am not a child of today. I was raised in an atmosphere that told me that the only "good" life for me was one where I sacrificed it all for my man and my children, suffered in silence and somehow I would get to live happily ever after.
Download a copy of "Stand By Your Man" by Tammy Wynette and listen carefully to the words. They were very powerful and very subliminal messages. Sure, my conscious mind knew there were other choices for me but in my heart I knew for sure that only one choice was the "right" choice. Only one would be respected.
Trouble is they didn't teach their sons that. "Behind every successful man stands his second (sometimes his third) wife!"
My mother to this day tries to force me to get up and get something to eat for my sometimes husband when he drops in to visit and sometimes when I don't... she gets up and does it herself, implying (and sometimes even stating aloud) that she is a good woman and I am not. She doesn't even LIKE him, yet she will serve him because he has a dick! This is a "good woman."
Mine was the generation of liberated women who did not want to be liberated! Our entire reality was destroyed by liberation, leaving us floundering in a world between worlds, not fitting in our mother's generation nor in our daughter's. Mine was the generation that was promised "Leave It to Beaver" and given "Murphy Brown." You cannot imagine how unprepared we were to be Murphy Browns! We don't even LIKE Murphy Brown!
My art was "amusing" and my music was good but trivialized "There's no money in music."
No one ever told me I would need to make money! I don't know how to make "making money" a priority. I have no interest in making money.
I have interest in creating beautiful things, beautiful plates full of beautiful food, beautiful living environs for those in my charge, and beautiful little people! My name is Mother. This is the pathway my creative juices chose to flow... years ago when the truth I was told required it. This is the medium in which I work and I am gloriously good at it! Even though it took me a long time to learn it!
Every time I had an inspired or creative experience that I tried to share I was told, "There goes Sarah Bernhardt again!" or "You're crazy!" How many times do you think you hear that before you start to believe it? Even live it? It is still my mother's favorite statement! She says this to me at least once or twice every day. When you hear this stuff 24/7 over the course of 20 or so years you begin to doubt your own judgment.
Sure I know I am not crazy! But still there is always this little bit of doubt that stops me before I take any giant step into a new reality. What I am doing here is a huge step into a new reality for me. I am learning not to suffer in silence! I am learning the value of venting. I am learning to say, "I don't like this." "This frightens me." I am angry about something." And you... all of you who have need for me to always be who I always was are so uncomfortable with this. You want me to "stop whining" and be who I was while simultaneously finding a way to be someone new!
I make about $160 a week for four hours work which isn't much but is what I could expect working for Wal-Mart for 30 hours or so and living with my mother who lives on the pension her man provided her I can survive on that. Except that I don't think I will survive living with her much longer. Her guilt poison is eating my stomach away. I live on Tums!
If I take another job I will have to give up this one which doesn't make much sense to me to... work harder for much the same money. I barely have energy enough for this one. If I leave mother I'd have to buy a car too... I drive the paid-for car her husband provided her. If I take another job I'd be looking at giving up this one since the hours would conflict.
This job is the only thing I'm hanging my self esteem and my sanity on. Shall I do that? Do ya think? And if I leave mother's I'd have to pay rent somewhere. I'm in a trap. One I created myself, for sure, but no less a trap and I see no way out but dying.
My mother is the worst passive aggressive I have ever met. What's frustrating about passive aggressives is that since they swear they are not being aggressive you cannot fight back. In her reality women were not allowed anger so she found a more surreptitious way to express it. With a passive aggressive you are left trying to swallow your anger or denying it. If I fight with her about calling me crazy she professes to be kidding. Who's she kidding? She really thinks I am crazy. The shrinks call that "the hot potato syndrome"
You defend your own instability by saying "I'm all right. It's the world that's all wrong." This stuff is not supposed to hurt me though. I am expected to sit and suffer in silence like a good daughter.
I am pushing 60 years old now. My body is giving up on me. I have been sick in one form or another for about 3 years. I usually just tell myself, "This is just normal aging." and sometimes that's how I feel but it leaves me feeling very vulnerable. I don't know how to lay down and be sick anymore than I know how to make money.
I have had an annoying infection for more than 6 months that makes me of not much interest to my husband and for all I know he may have given it to me. I have no medical insurance. I finally scraped up $100 to see a doctor about it and he gave me a prescription for another $100 worth of meds and 5 days after I finished the medication it starts again. The doctor has recommended I have an abdominal ultrasound to look for masses but that has to wait til I can save up $400 for it. Right! And how much will I have to save up when they find one?
A week ago last Saturday, as if things weren't bad enough, I dropped a full big bottle of shampoo in the shower and broke my toe on the way to work. No, I did not go have it Xrayed! I don't need several hundred dollars worth of hospital to know it is broken. I do what they would do. I tape it to the toe next to it and move on. The main reason I am spending so much time at here is that I cannot walk the dogs (the only children I have left). I need them to be here where there is a fence so they can run and I do not have to follow.
My upper plate split in two. It is 30 years old. I am still struggling to find $350 to get a new one made, a little thing 'til you have to live with it. It gets super glued every 6 weeks or so.
I feel like I am walking a tight rope with vertigo and just waiting for the moment that I fall off.
This is not a momentary lapse of sanity. It is the culmination of a lot of years of being taken advantage of and criticized for doing what I thought in my best judgment was right. Maybe it wasn't but it was my best guess at the time. God knows I got a lot of advice to do what I did... and then a lot of criticism for doing it.
But if I hadn't taken their advice I would never had met you or Jo so I guess in the long run I wouldn't have missed that dance anyway but it burns my ass when THEY criticize me for having married him! Or the way I handled getting out of it.
So... if and when I do fall off the wire, you will be charged with the responsibility of explaining why to all these stupid people who were more than happy to be served, to take everything I had to give... and have no clue or interest in what they were doing to me back when it mattered.
Your mother loves you unconditionally, but that doesn't mean you don't piss me off sometimes, only that I still love you when you do. I love the others unconditionally too but that does not mean I will put my tail between my legs and allow them to manipulate and injure me over and over. And it does not mean that I will accept the blame for their miserable lives.
They call it "your life" because it it yours. Yours to live, yours to fix. Mommy cannot "kiss it and make it better" when you are so tall that she can no longer reach you and so aware... that you no longer believe in her "Mommy Magic."