(no subject)
The head-games in my family are starting to wear away at what sanity I've won back for myself. I don't understand the rules; I don't think any of us do. None of us eat right, sleep right, live right. I don't think I've had a serious conversation in over a month with anyone in the family, which means anyone, because I don't see anyone, without someone either bursting into tears or leaving the room screaming imprecations. I never quite know what's happening between my mother and father - it's as if I'm watching them through thick translucent glass, I can't make out any details.
When a family is falling apart, as mine is, truth ceases to exist. I don't mean that it's hard to find, or that ten years from now it will all make sense even if it's confusing now. Certainly facts exist: at such and such a time in the winter of 2010, my mother kicked me out of the house for a week, my father left the house again, I called my mother an evil bitch, my brother wrote a suicide note, and so on. But facts aren't truth. We're a medicated, therapized family, all of whom go to professionals for affirmation of our victimhood, and all of whom spout platitudes and truisms at one another more and more heatedly as we attempt to make our relatives into villains. Our ability to be compassionate often extends only to ourselves. We are a family that shuns the person sobbing alone; we do not comfort.
I'm often angry, but it's always in response to a stimulus - a fight a half-hour ago, say. I don't have any slow-burning heat in me; it's not that there's no fuel, just that I can't supply the energy to hate. While, briefly, my mother and I were getting along, my mother told me I had more resignation than most forty-year-old women she knows. She sounded sad; I don't know.
I know that my father drinks alone early and late and bullies my mother, that my mother berates my father, my mother sobs for help to her parents, and that her parents turn her away. I know that my mother screams and rages at me for my failures, turns to me for comfort when she's drunk, and that she holds me responsible for things I can't possibly control. I know I am decadent in my self-destruction, that I seize onto self-righteousness as a substitute for happiness, that I have within me the seeds of a bitter, raging woman myself. My brother is all moody silence and explosive rage, flashing from one to the next too quickly to predict or anticipate. Even the dog knows; one night he barked and howled all through a screaming match fought over fast-cooling food.
All these miserable summers and winters begin to blend into one another: was it in 2005, or 2006, that my mother had an abortion on Valentine's Day? Which summer was it that my father broke my mother's eardrum, and which Christmas that he threw her to the floor and threatened to throw her out of the house? When was it that my mother first told me that I was worthless, pathetic, lazy, and good for nothing? When did my brother stop smiling?
Ten years from now, I hope it has faded even more. I hope I start to believe it was like in the books and stories, very pat. I will define myself internally as long-suffering and brave, speak only occasionally of my childhood, and not correct my friends or lovers when they pity me. I don't need pity. My family drinks pity - self-pity - like wine. It intoxicates us and fuels our excesses of temper. I need divine justice. I need an archangel to strike me with lightening and fill me with a clear, bright justice, a steady purpose. But God's acts are not for mortals to command; if it comes, it will come. More likely I will become free by a series of small accidents. There will be no grand revelations, no sudden insights into human nature or the nature of the universe. I will not be made noble by suffering; I merely hope I will not be made wholly base.
Writing this calms me somewhat. I have a little distance, now: by writing, it all seems like it's happening to someone else, someone whose life I have control over, even if the only control is a definition of terms. Self-pity, nobility, suffering, archangels. Perhaps I should write a book, someday - after my parents are dead; I have no wish to shame them. It will all be lies, but I will probably believe them.
When a family is falling apart, as mine is, truth ceases to exist. I don't mean that it's hard to find, or that ten years from now it will all make sense even if it's confusing now. Certainly facts exist: at such and such a time in the winter of 2010, my mother kicked me out of the house for a week, my father left the house again, I called my mother an evil bitch, my brother wrote a suicide note, and so on. But facts aren't truth. We're a medicated, therapized family, all of whom go to professionals for affirmation of our victimhood, and all of whom spout platitudes and truisms at one another more and more heatedly as we attempt to make our relatives into villains. Our ability to be compassionate often extends only to ourselves. We are a family that shuns the person sobbing alone; we do not comfort.
I'm often angry, but it's always in response to a stimulus - a fight a half-hour ago, say. I don't have any slow-burning heat in me; it's not that there's no fuel, just that I can't supply the energy to hate. While, briefly, my mother and I were getting along, my mother told me I had more resignation than most forty-year-old women she knows. She sounded sad; I don't know.
I know that my father drinks alone early and late and bullies my mother, that my mother berates my father, my mother sobs for help to her parents, and that her parents turn her away. I know that my mother screams and rages at me for my failures, turns to me for comfort when she's drunk, and that she holds me responsible for things I can't possibly control. I know I am decadent in my self-destruction, that I seize onto self-righteousness as a substitute for happiness, that I have within me the seeds of a bitter, raging woman myself. My brother is all moody silence and explosive rage, flashing from one to the next too quickly to predict or anticipate. Even the dog knows; one night he barked and howled all through a screaming match fought over fast-cooling food.
All these miserable summers and winters begin to blend into one another: was it in 2005, or 2006, that my mother had an abortion on Valentine's Day? Which summer was it that my father broke my mother's eardrum, and which Christmas that he threw her to the floor and threatened to throw her out of the house? When was it that my mother first told me that I was worthless, pathetic, lazy, and good for nothing? When did my brother stop smiling?
Ten years from now, I hope it has faded even more. I hope I start to believe it was like in the books and stories, very pat. I will define myself internally as long-suffering and brave, speak only occasionally of my childhood, and not correct my friends or lovers when they pity me. I don't need pity. My family drinks pity - self-pity - like wine. It intoxicates us and fuels our excesses of temper. I need divine justice. I need an archangel to strike me with lightening and fill me with a clear, bright justice, a steady purpose. But God's acts are not for mortals to command; if it comes, it will come. More likely I will become free by a series of small accidents. There will be no grand revelations, no sudden insights into human nature or the nature of the universe. I will not be made noble by suffering; I merely hope I will not be made wholly base.
Writing this calms me somewhat. I have a little distance, now: by writing, it all seems like it's happening to someone else, someone whose life I have control over, even if the only control is a definition of terms. Self-pity, nobility, suffering, archangels. Perhaps I should write a book, someday - after my parents are dead; I have no wish to shame them. It will all be lies, but I will probably believe them.