bad.
My mother instilled in me the completely naturalized, immutable knowledge that i am Bad. She, as the absolute arbiter of good+evil in my formative years, had the ability to play upon this knowledge in various ways. But from an early point I can't identify, that knowledge was mine, and no longer just one of many messages I was receiving, full of the possibilities of interpretation. No, my essential Badness was Fact, an unassailable truth like The Holocaust Was Wrong, or Birthdays Are Supposed To Be Fun, But Are Actually Terrible.
[As an aside, When I bought Sleater-Kinney's All Hands On the Bad One, I remember thinking are you fucking kidding me? the BAD ONE? But you're all so...CLEAN! Not that I'm invested in a competition here! But my teenage brain could not compute this and i think it's funny how MAD it made me. but then, it's not hard to make me mad.]
My mother's most common reference to my essential Badness was "you're just like your father." This meant "there's no reason to even talk to you because you are so selfish and manipulative." I believed, from the earliest age I can recall, that whether I was aware of it or not -- I was, in fact, manipulating every situation for my benefit. And people wonder why I'm a megalomaniac? I remember any time I got what I wanted, it felt like a victory in my ascent to full-fledged Diabolical Agent. It didn't matter if that's what I wanted to be -- getting something I wanted was both proof of and another step toward where I was inevitably heading.
I was sick, which my mother loved, as with all her children, because it gave her something to use as an excuse for her neuroses and anxieties and phobias. She couldn't leave the house and we couldn't have friends over and nothing could be normal ever because I was sick. The fact that I wasn't ALL THAT SICK in the first place -- and was being told I was sicker than I felt, lest my mother lose this precious crutch she'd jackpotted onto when I had my first asthma attack -- solidified my role as a Duper, and a User, and an Opportunist, and a Manipulator. Even if I wasn't aware of wanting something - being given it was probably due to my powers of, even unconscious, as-yet-UNTRAINED manipulation. I remember crying at my mother folding my paper napkin in half, perfectly, and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was my fault somehow. I wasn't really sick enough to deserve such a symmetrical napkin. I was a Powerful Manipulator; I could make anything happen.
And being a manipulator, mind you, was about the worst thing you could be in my family. Conniving, clever, selfish. And yet, there we were, ALL MANIPULATORS in family lore, except for my mother, who was in retrospect - the only successful manipulator among us.
When I was sick, my mother did things for me, bought me things I didn't need, encouraged me to feel special and outside of everything normal going on in my childhood world. What if it had ended up just me and her in that big house, me agreeing to pretend to be sick forever, so she could 'care' for me to avoid her crushing anxieties and fears for the rest of her life? Thank god I accepted that I was Bad, and so, quickly realized I had nothing to lose by rebelling against her plans. Being Bad emboldened me in this way, even if it meant I was doomed to a life of feeling like an ur-agent, and being blamed for people's relationship problems, anorexia, political confusion, existential crises and the weather. At least I got out.
My getting better -- both physically (have you ever seen a parent so disappointed at the "unprecedented recovery of lost lung capacity?") and mentally (it may have been fun and exotic to be so "sick" that i got to stay home from school WHENEVER I WANTED TO, but it got old when I couldn't escape the house to run around outside with the neighbor kids and became a FREAK WHO MISSED HALF OF SECOND GRADE) is probably among the biggest betrayals my mother ever experienced. No wonder she had almost no interest in me after that!
She was done with parenting. Whether I was doing something that I look back on now in awe (like organizing a massive walkout in 8th grade, calling out the school district for racism and homophobia, which led to alliances with community groups and school-wide conversations about oppression) or something I'm now ashamed of (pushing my friends down gorges in shopping carts...hey, it was a small gorge) or something most parents i knew would have been upset about (sneaking out to go to hotels with my boyfriend, sneaking out to graffiti all over town, sneaking out to drink coffee and smoke at the diner all night) -- my mother had no comment. She was not interested, once she couldn't parent me to her own crazy ends.
So, I had free reign in high school. I thought it was pretty sweet, and instead of when I was a kid and people thought my mom was INSANE, suddenly my mom seemed almost cool. Of course there were the few random occasions when she would appear, like a ghost of my parented past to assert herself inappropriately, possibly by creating an alliance with a teacher who hated me. Or to argue "on my behalf" with a teacher who would then kick me out of class and exciting school trips as a result. Those occasions were the worst. Why did she randomly care the night I drove home, without a license, from visiting my then-boyfriend in Syracuse and got home "late" around 7:30pm, when the previous night, I had never been home at all? Why did that lead to approximately 2 days of "no phone calls after 7pm?" She usually forgot about her own weird rules, which was sort of good, except I knew she was resentfully aware that I was violating them. Getting a clear answer on her intended rules was impossible. And as always in our family, if you didn't already KNOW, you were STUPID and SELFISH. So basically, at any moment, however many years after the fact, you had to be prepared to be called out for your violation.
Of course, my free reign also included the pleasure of being the Bad One in many different contexts, without any advocates. My parents, not speaking to ANYONE IN OUR TOWN, never had a clue what was going on, or if they did they didn't care to get involved. Not that MOST people's parents would have stepped in to help either, sadly. Demonized teenager up against the Nice White Lady Brigade? We can't win. It's an automatic loss. But the cool thing is, when you think you're bad, it's easy to survive everyone hating you. Unfortunately, at some point, you have to deal with hating yourself.
Why am I thinking about all this now? Partly because I was reading my oldest sister's writing about our childhood, and partly because I wonder if I exude Bad to everyone around me, and maybe that's why I still get in so much trouble.
I'm trying not to let these become Facts like my innate Badness did:
[As an aside, When I bought Sleater-Kinney's All Hands On the Bad One, I remember thinking are you fucking kidding me? the BAD ONE? But you're all so...CLEAN! Not that I'm invested in a competition here! But my teenage brain could not compute this and i think it's funny how MAD it made me. but then, it's not hard to make me mad.]
My mother's most common reference to my essential Badness was "you're just like your father." This meant "there's no reason to even talk to you because you are so selfish and manipulative." I believed, from the earliest age I can recall, that whether I was aware of it or not -- I was, in fact, manipulating every situation for my benefit. And people wonder why I'm a megalomaniac? I remember any time I got what I wanted, it felt like a victory in my ascent to full-fledged Diabolical Agent. It didn't matter if that's what I wanted to be -- getting something I wanted was both proof of and another step toward where I was inevitably heading.
I was sick, which my mother loved, as with all her children, because it gave her something to use as an excuse for her neuroses and anxieties and phobias. She couldn't leave the house and we couldn't have friends over and nothing could be normal ever because I was sick. The fact that I wasn't ALL THAT SICK in the first place -- and was being told I was sicker than I felt, lest my mother lose this precious crutch she'd jackpotted onto when I had my first asthma attack -- solidified my role as a Duper, and a User, and an Opportunist, and a Manipulator. Even if I wasn't aware of wanting something - being given it was probably due to my powers of, even unconscious, as-yet-UNTRAINED manipulation. I remember crying at my mother folding my paper napkin in half, perfectly, and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was my fault somehow. I wasn't really sick enough to deserve such a symmetrical napkin. I was a Powerful Manipulator; I could make anything happen.
And being a manipulator, mind you, was about the worst thing you could be in my family. Conniving, clever, selfish. And yet, there we were, ALL MANIPULATORS in family lore, except for my mother, who was in retrospect - the only successful manipulator among us.
When I was sick, my mother did things for me, bought me things I didn't need, encouraged me to feel special and outside of everything normal going on in my childhood world. What if it had ended up just me and her in that big house, me agreeing to pretend to be sick forever, so she could 'care' for me to avoid her crushing anxieties and fears for the rest of her life? Thank god I accepted that I was Bad, and so, quickly realized I had nothing to lose by rebelling against her plans. Being Bad emboldened me in this way, even if it meant I was doomed to a life of feeling like an ur-agent, and being blamed for people's relationship problems, anorexia, political confusion, existential crises and the weather. At least I got out.
My getting better -- both physically (have you ever seen a parent so disappointed at the "unprecedented recovery of lost lung capacity?") and mentally (it may have been fun and exotic to be so "sick" that i got to stay home from school WHENEVER I WANTED TO, but it got old when I couldn't escape the house to run around outside with the neighbor kids and became a FREAK WHO MISSED HALF OF SECOND GRADE) is probably among the biggest betrayals my mother ever experienced. No wonder she had almost no interest in me after that!
She was done with parenting. Whether I was doing something that I look back on now in awe (like organizing a massive walkout in 8th grade, calling out the school district for racism and homophobia, which led to alliances with community groups and school-wide conversations about oppression) or something I'm now ashamed of (pushing my friends down gorges in shopping carts...hey, it was a small gorge) or something most parents i knew would have been upset about (sneaking out to go to hotels with my boyfriend, sneaking out to graffiti all over town, sneaking out to drink coffee and smoke at the diner all night) -- my mother had no comment. She was not interested, once she couldn't parent me to her own crazy ends.
So, I had free reign in high school. I thought it was pretty sweet, and instead of when I was a kid and people thought my mom was INSANE, suddenly my mom seemed almost cool. Of course there were the few random occasions when she would appear, like a ghost of my parented past to assert herself inappropriately, possibly by creating an alliance with a teacher who hated me. Or to argue "on my behalf" with a teacher who would then kick me out of class and exciting school trips as a result. Those occasions were the worst. Why did she randomly care the night I drove home, without a license, from visiting my then-boyfriend in Syracuse and got home "late" around 7:30pm, when the previous night, I had never been home at all? Why did that lead to approximately 2 days of "no phone calls after 7pm?" She usually forgot about her own weird rules, which was sort of good, except I knew she was resentfully aware that I was violating them. Getting a clear answer on her intended rules was impossible. And as always in our family, if you didn't already KNOW, you were STUPID and SELFISH. So basically, at any moment, however many years after the fact, you had to be prepared to be called out for your violation.
Of course, my free reign also included the pleasure of being the Bad One in many different contexts, without any advocates. My parents, not speaking to ANYONE IN OUR TOWN, never had a clue what was going on, or if they did they didn't care to get involved. Not that MOST people's parents would have stepped in to help either, sadly. Demonized teenager up against the Nice White Lady Brigade? We can't win. It's an automatic loss. But the cool thing is, when you think you're bad, it's easy to survive everyone hating you. Unfortunately, at some point, you have to deal with hating yourself.
Why am I thinking about all this now? Partly because I was reading my oldest sister's writing about our childhood, and partly because I wonder if I exude Bad to everyone around me, and maybe that's why I still get in so much trouble.
I'm trying not to let these become Facts like my innate Badness did:
- People only like me because I manipulate them with my charisma to accomplish sinister goals i may not even be aware of.
- People dislike me because they discover they're in my thrall and then, brilliantly, free themselves OR
- People dislike me because they've Known all along and nobody likes an ur-agent.
- Don't hang out with people who are intimidated by me, unless that dynamic can be mutually transformed somehow.
- Don't invest emotional energy in cowards.
- Don't invest in people who are terrified of anger, unless they're actively engaged in a process of dealing with it.
- Don't be friends with people who think that a person can be so POWERFUL as to magically MAKE THINGS HAPPEN to other people.
- Don't be friends with people who scapegoat and demonize to protect their worldview.