To Make My Father Proud ... Startling Realizations About My Childhood
Last night... (Written novel-style.)
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I came home from Thistledown's birthday party feeling pretty good. Paladin had been sick, so he couldn't come. He was terribly sad about this, of course. He missed my book-release party and a birthday party with all of his favorite people over it. He had caught the illness from me, and I had gotten it due to stressing myself too much over the release of my book.
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He started to come down with it about the time I finally got better. (I wrote this post about a sign from the universe I ignored while I was sick, and this follow-up post about a sign I listened to.)
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It had been weird for me to be sick. "I don't think of it as a bad thing," I told Knotweed, who had her blond hair twisted into curls. "It was a meditation the universe imposed on me because I needed it. Whenever I tried to read, write, sit at my computer or doing anything at all, a fly would come along and buzz in my face until I stopped. Even when I started in on negative thoughts or plotting on making money, there would be the fly again."
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I smiled as I told her this. "It was something I needed. I had been so busy going-going-going all the time. I needed to take a break to be mindful."
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Inwardly I have thought about how this will pass. I will come into a non-mindful place again. I will get wrapped up in everything again. I will become bogged down by stress again. I knew the peace and mindfulness would pass, and even in that, I found myself content.
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It is okay to be just where I am. It is okay to be. I need not do. I am that I am.
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Paladin was lying on the futon in our living room as I took off my shoes.
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"Look at my new socks!" I exclaimed. They were purple and white flora designs. The socks were a gift from Knotweed for the celebration of releasing my book - organic and sustainably woven in a wind-powered factory according to the label.
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"They look like that other pair of yours," Paladin said.
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"They are. I bought one pair of these at Feel Rite. They're my favorite socks and now I have two pairs! And they're soo comfortable."
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I proceeded to put away the leftover food I brought home. I had leftover carob-banana ice-cream I had made. I had thrown the leftover apple slices and dried figs from the salad that Thistledown had made into the carob-banana ice-cream. It will make good smoothie ingredients later, I thought.
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I also brought home with me the kombucha I had brought. I brought the kombucha with me in case there wouldn't be enough to eat, but this time there was plenty. I even still had the pineapple slices I brought with me. Thistledown had made a dish with sliced pineapple, so it seemed unnecessary to bring out the pineapple I brought.
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It wasn't until the next day that I realized I had forgotten to bring back my leftover garlic cashew cheese. Not that I minded the loss of the cashew cheese, but I did want the small, round glass-lock back before I went traveling to Redbud Community the following week.
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After finishing the mundane tasks of getting everything put away and undressing I sat on the other futon in our living room which had recently become my bed again.
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"Ficus, Thistledown and I spent a lot of time talking about school years today," I commented to Paladin. I was sitting up in my bed, and he was laying down under a pile of blankets despite the heat blasting into the small room. I was naked and perfectly comfortable in the warm air.
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"Thistledown was shy and quiet in school. She had trouble making friends at first, but then she spent a year with her grandparents, and that same year she got better at her school work and she started making friends too," I said.
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"She is quiet and shy now," Paladin remarked.
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"Yes, just like I was loud and outspoken in school and I still am. Although I'm less loud and more respectful about being outspoken."
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Paladin chuckled.
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"I was so desperate for attention as a child," I said to Paladin. "Ficus pointed out that it might be because I was a minority. I had never thought of that before. After all, I was one of just a couple white students at the schools I went to. The majority were black, and many were Puerto Rican. For the first fourteen years I just thought black people were loud, mean, rude and angry... Then when I started desperately wanting to fit in when I was fifteen I began wishing I was black. I started hating myself for being white."
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I laid down and got under the covers, and then continued, "I hadn't thought about it that way before, but perhaps that is a large part of what made me act out to get attention. Two of my three memories from kindergarten are of times when I was being particularly outlandish. One of them is of putting mustard on cookies and apples and various other things and hearing the other kids exclaim 'Eewww!'. The other memory... I think I've told you about this before."
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"Probably," Paladin agreed. "But go on."
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"I was sitting on the blue carpet in a circle with the other students. The teachers were across from me, presenting something on a huge piece of paper on a huge notebook on an easel. I worked my pants down so that my butt was hanging out behind me, but so that the teachers couldn't see. I remember feeling worried that the teachers would see, but simultaneously hoping the boy next to me would notice. I poked his knee to get his attention and whispered, 'Look.' He glanced sideways and then put his eyes back on the teachers. I wasn't satisfied with this and whispered at him to 'Look' again. He whispered something back like, 'I saw.' I was disappointed that he wasn't more impressed or excited or scandalized or something."
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I sighed. "What caused me to be this way? Why was I so desperate for attention? What was I hoping to accomplish?"
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"You've said your parents put a lot of pressure on you to be above average," Paladin commented.
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"Yeah, that's true."
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"I'm not sure how it directly relates, but your parents rewarded you for going above and beyond. You knew at that age that you were praised for doing things that were different, things that were not exactly normal. You were being encouraged to be unique, to be a prodigy."
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"Yes," I agreed. "My dad was always telling me, 'You are a leader.' He was so insistent about it. He said it over and over throughout my childhood. Without any basis. It isn't like I exhibited signs of being a leader and then he said it was because I was a leader. He just asserted that I was a leader and I believed him. Before I even knew what it meant to be a leader, I believed him. Why?"
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"Because he said so. At that age, that is the basis for truth."
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I sighed again. "That's true." I felt my throat closing up and my nose began to run. Under circumstances where I hadn't been sick recently, my nose would only start running after the tears, but in this case, my sinuses began to loosen before the tears.
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"So you acted out, knowing that something unusual was expected of you. You knew you had to do something special to get your father's attention at home, so perhaps you felt you had to do special things at school to get attention."
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I nodded in agreement. When I had been at Thistledown's house I had said, "The kids and teachers didn't respond the way my parents did and that confused me. I often felt like my parents were the only sane ones and everyone else was stupid and crazy. I felt that way very strongly my entire childhood, with very few exceptions."
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I sat up on the futon and reached for the tissues. The blue and green leaves on the box looked gray in the low lighting. A gentle purple light shone from the diffuser, filled with water in a pitiful attempt to help humidify the dry air. Subtle blue light shone from my mouse and laptop in the places where my attempts to cover up all the little lights were falling off. Light from street lamps made the East-facing windows give off a little light.
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"When I was around fourteen I wrote a diary entry called, I thought I was a leader, but it turns out I am a follower. I was with Wolf at the time I wrote it. I think I was in eleventh grade at the time. I was ashamed. I was realizing that I was just following the masses. I realized I was not my own person as much as I wanted to be. I realized I was just following the crowd in so many ways. I hated myself for that. It was partly because of that diary entry, I think, that I started to let go. I started to try to fit in more and more over the next couple of years. While I was with Dragon I lost myself. I just tried to conform for my last two years of high school. Not in every single way, but in the majority of ways. And even in my attempts to conform, I still stood out as unique."
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I began crying in earnest. Paladin moved his covers aside and joined me on my futon. He put his arms around me and I worried for a moment that he might be making himself too cold.
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"I don't know why I'm getting so emotional," I said.
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"It's okay to be a follower or a leader. There is nothing wrong with either," Paladin said, holding me and rubbing his nose against my shoulder.
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I smiled sadly, running my hands over his arms about my waist. "I know that," I said softly, tears running down my face. "It's okay to be a leader or a follower. But it is not okay to disappoint my father."
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"Ah," he said. He just held me as I cried for a while. I blew my nose a few times and aimed the used tissues for my compost bag, which was currently an old potato bag.
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"You haven't disappointed your father though. He is very proud of you," Paladin remarked.
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"I know. I think maybe I am just crying because I finally realize why I was so desperate for attention. So many years I've wondered, and now I finally know."
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"Ah." He squeezed me and kissed my hair.
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"There something between my father and I. Something I feel I must repair, but I don't know how." I blew my nose again. "I guess I'll have a lot of time for that soon." I was referring to the up-coming trip that Paladin, my dad and I were all going on together.
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"That's true," Paladin agreed.
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In my mind I morbidly wondered how I would feel if my father were to die in the next week, how awful I would feel for taking the future for granted. I shuddered at the thought and did not relay my imaginings to Paladin.
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The following morning I woke up alone in the living room, which had become my bedroom. I had moved my computer downstairs. I originally did this while I was sick because it was warmer in the living room, but then I realized the air quality in the attic actually irritated my throat while my throat was sore. This led me to believe that regardless of all the improvements we've made to the house, the attic's air quality is toxic to me.
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I had strange dreams... Of course, that's a silly statement, because all dreams are strange in comparison to our waking lives.
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I dreamed there were these seven women with blue skin (presumably painted on as part of a ritual), who had some sort of magic powers. They were arranging themselves along seven pedestals, each one a little higher than the last. They also arranged themselves in poses, with each one a little higher than the last. On the lowest end the woman was folded over her crossed legs very artfully, and on the opposite end the woman was standing with her arms upraised.
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I was very concerned about their behavior. I said, “See how they arrange themselves?”
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I was speaking to a man who was on my side of some sort of battle. “These are our sirens, yet they are arranging themselves in a matching pattern to those on the opposing side. They are conspiring with the enemy.”
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The man was skeptical. I was very concerned. I went up to the women and began kicking them out of position. None of them spoke or fought me. They just slowly moved back toward their positions after being pushed out of place. They didn't speak to one another either, or look at anyone.
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In another dream I was trying to have sex with Paladin. He became hard and I pushed myself onto him. I was wet and very aroused. Then I worried to myself, “Oh no, I must be ovulating ... and we don't have a condom.” So I pulled off of him and tried to push him into my other hole. He went soft after getting only a little ways in. I cried with unfulfilled desire, but he could do nothing for me.
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The first dream seems like something out a science-fiction novel. The second seems like yet another expression of my sexual frustration. It's sad that I have to experience the limitations and disappointments of sex in my waking reality even while I'm asleep.
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After taking the time to write down my dreams I refilled the water in the diffuser, grabbed a raspberry-chia kombucha out of the refrigerator and went about seeking the old journal entry I had mentioned to Paladin the previous night.
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And I found it.
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What incredible memory. I was indeed fourteen. It was written September 8th, 2003. I titled it, "I Always Thought I Was A Leader, Not A Follower."
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At the time of writing the post, I believe the significance of my own title went past me. I didn't connect my inner turmoil to my father always insisting, "You are a leader." My mother would agree with him whenever she heard him say it, but she didn't insist on it as he did. I wonder what my father intended to impress upon me by continually saying that throughout my childhood. Was he trying to make me more confident?
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I wrote the journal entry from my mom's computer directly into my online blog. I had my own computer at the time, but running the "AOL" program was very slow on it. This was back in the time of dial-up Internet I believe, so everything was slow.
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"I was just at Wolf's house. And I was so happy," I wrote. But something had gone wrong during the visit. I didn't explain exactly what. I suspect this was when he told he was dating some girl. I later found out that the girl was just an over-the-phone girl who he had never even met in person. But when he first told me he had a girlfriend, I recall being devastated.
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I was in his small room. He had a large wooden dresser with a small TV on top. This was long-before flat-screen televisions, and it was as wide and long as it was tall. He had his Game Cube console hooked up to it and a few DVDs on his dresser. His mattress looked like a futon mattress and it laid directly on the floor without a sheet. It was very discolored and stained, similar to the carpet beneath. He had a closet which was heaped with random boxes and clothes. There was no other furniture in the room, just clothes in small piles about the room.
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I often sat on his "bed" cross-legged. He'd sit across from me and we would talk. For a year of my life I often crept out of my bed at night and walked to his house in the dark and spent hours in that room. Yes, we had sex, but more importantly, we talked for hours and hours. I'd arrived between midnight and one in the morning, and I'd leave between four and five in the morning. The sex was only a half an hour out of three or four hours spent together.
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"It's too late for either of them," I wrote. "I screwed having a normal relationship with Hyena up about six months ago, and I stupidly broke up with Wolf for no reason about two months ago . . . And now he's got a new girlfriend at last, and I'm not sure I can take it."
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I didn't read much at all as a child or teenager, but I started writing a lot when I was ten. I often used strange turns of phrase that I feel diminish the emotions I was having at the time. It is strange looking back and reading my old writings. I can remember the feelings I felt, and the feelings and the writings don't perfectly mesh, because now, of course, I have such a stronger grip on the English language.
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When I said, "I'm not sure I can take it," I meant that I would curl up in a ball in my bed and cry with agony turning inside me. I would sit for long hours, staring off into space, feeling alone and rejected. My simple words don't begin to convey how terrible I felt.
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"I know nothing about this chick of Wolf's," I wrote. In other words, Wolf didn't tell me anything about his new girlfriend. He just told me he had one. I probably questioned him at great length, and he probably gave me cryptic answers.
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"Damn it. Why can't I just settle on one guy? If I just liked one guy none of this would happen," I wrote. Even at the age of fourteen I was struggling with monogamy.
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"Way back when I broke up with Squirrel for some dude and regretted it badly." I make it sound there as if I left Squirrel for someone else, but my memory tells me that I never had much of a relationship with Squirrel to begin with. I never slept with him. Years later, during my relationship with Porcupine, I talked to Squirrel much online and we became closer as friends than we had ever been as "girlfriend and boyfriend" when I was thirteen.
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"Then I dumped the loser I dumped Squirrel for and shortly after went with Hyena. I went with Hyena at first hoping to get Squirrel off of my mind, or to make Squirrel jealous. Neither happened."
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Squirrel recognized that his relationship with me was just a way for us to touch each other's bodies. I don't think he ever mistook it for love. I did. I mistook my infatuation with Hyena as a love, but Hyena knew it was not so. He even said so.
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"Hyena broke up with me six months later because I wouldn't stop flirting with Squirrel," I wrote. I don't think that is true at all. Later Hyena told me that he had been sleeping with other women the whole time, and that he left me for my own good. He often called me "naive" while we were together (which was for six months), and I was naive. I didn't realize he was a drug-dealer. I was a thirteen-year-old girl raised by parents old enough to be my grandparents, and he was a sixteen-year-old thug, half white and half Puerto Rican, with an absent father and a drug-addict mother.
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Hyena came from a different world than mine. And Hyena knew it. I didn't at the time.
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"I went out with Wolf hoping that I could get Hyena off my mind, because by then I was so in love with Hyena
that he blew all past guys out of my mind, but there was no having him back," I wrote.
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That was true, even in retrospect, except for the being in love with Hyena part. I was more obsessed with Hyena than I ever had been with previous boys. I allowed Wolf's advances because I was terribly lonely and confused after Hyena broke up with me. I felt desperate to have the attention of a new person of the opposite gender.
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"I began to like Wolf and we started really getting to know each other," I wrote. In fact, I got to know Wolf like I never knew anyone else before. He told me of his troubled childhood in great detail. He cried in my arms many times. I comforted him when he woke from nightmares in his dreams. But at this time, I didn't know Wolf quite so well as I would later.
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"In the mean time Aardwolf confessed his love for me, and I was so swept away in the moment I broke up with Wolf for Aardwolf. I went with Aardwolf for about a week before deciding I had been foolish and wanted Wolf back. I'm still madly in love with Hyena though, regardless," I wrote.
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Aardwolf I gave his very first kiss. In the week we "dated" he took me to the movies. My mother said to me during that week, "I really like Aardwolf, and I approve of him... But he really needs to lose weight."
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Aardwolf was tall, very dark black, and about 200 pounds overweight already at the age of seventeen or eighteen. I liked that he was more mature than other guys around me, but I was put off by his girth. I couldn't actually see myself sleeping with him, and I never did. Although at one point I told him I'd be willing to sleep with him for $250. Looking back, that was insanely low. I wouldn't do it now for less than $5,000. But of course, to a thirteen-year-old or fourteen-year-old girl, $250 seems like a lot of money.
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"Well, Aardwolf is back to being my friend. And Hyena and I have been great," I wrote.
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What did I mean by that, I wonder? I suspect that means I had recently made the long walk to Hyena's house and slept with him. There was a short period of my life that I recall where I was in a relationship with no-one and I alternated going to Hyena's place and Wolf's place. I quickly came to prefer Wolf's company, as he was kinder, and besides, it was half the walk. I didn't have much stamina, so the fact that I was willing to sneak out and go on such long walks was rather amazing in and of itself.
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After a while I started to ask them to come to my place and stand under my window so that I could come out and walk with them to their places. One night they both showed up at the same time and stood under my window. I walked with both of them to Wolf's place and a rather unexciting threesome ensued. I found it to be more effort than anything, and I didn't really enjoy it.
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I quickly learned that both Wolf and Hyena acted worse when around other another, trying to one-up each other in how trashy they could treat me.
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"And I was cool with Wolf until today when he said not to lean on him because I'm not his girl, and now he has a new one," I wrote. "I shouldn't let it hurt me. I really shouldn't. But it's hurting so much. So, so much. I resisted crying and then just left when I couldn't take it without choking."
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And so presumably, that was indeed the day when he told me for the first time about this new girlfriend of his.
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"What could I say? What do you do when you love two guys and both have a girlfriend and both no longer have a use for you? I feel so stupid. And I can't even be swept up in the moment again and try this with Aardwold because now he's cool with being my friend and when I think about it, that's how I like it."
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I don't think I had really fallen in love with Wolf yet at this time, especially considering that my mind would bounce back to Aardwolf, who I only had a glimmer of attraction to. This is coming from a girl who is madly desperate for attention and affection, but still innocent to what it really means to deeply love someone.
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"I know any sane person reading this would say: 'What's wrong with being alone?' I can't be alone. I can be single as long as I have a guy to lean on and to love, but if I don't have that . . . Then I feel so worthless. I need somebody I can at least pretend is in love with me," I wrote.
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This feeling persisted all throughout my teen years. In a way, I still feel this way. I depend on Paladin's love to feel worthy. It is hard to feel internal peace without external sources of support. Despite all my so-called wisdom, I still bow to the all-consuming need for validation.
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"Yet if I can not have that much... I am just an old toy left behind. A dirty rag that's been used up and thrown out. Nothing," I wrote. In those words I actually put some poetry to how I was really feeling.
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"I act like what I care about is school and money, and Barbies, and writing, and art... But that is all just the stuff that matters when I can't be with someone I love. It used to be Wolf was my backup when I couldn't have Hyena. Yet today I hung out with Wolf when I had the option of being with Hyena . . . That was a big choice to me. I did that thinking I still had a fair chance with Wolf. Instead, I was crushed, and now I am alone."
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So I was at the point of choosing Wolf over Hyena. Yet I felt that I was too late. I learned a lot from that experience; like the truth of losing both rabbits if you chase them both. There is truth in that, but I've also seen truth in polyamory. I didn't know about polyamory then, of course. But the whole situation was remarkably transparent, considering. I think I even recall Hyena saying to me, when he broke up with me, that I should run off and be with Wolf.
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"I learn, act, and breathe hoping to impress Hyena," I wrote. "Sometimes I do things to please my parents, sometimes I consider what Wolf or Aardwolf would like. Sometimes I consider what Frog would like. But, oh, about seventy percent of the time, I do what I think Hyena might like."
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These statements show that I've moved past the child who lives to please her parents, at least consciously. Subconsciously, of course, my parents' wishes had become part of me. I didn't need their external voices telling me what they approved of anymore, because I had internalized them. Their opinions had become an integral part of who I was.
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"Sometimes I get selfish and do something when I'm mad that I know no one will like . . . But . . . Wait . . . ? When do I do what I would like? I've forgotten what I like! The only thing I do to please myself is eat!"
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And here I expressed my first inklings of my eating disorder. No wonder I attached to food so much when it was the only thing I did independently of other people's wishes.
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"Oh my god . . . I'm a follower and not a leader!"
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And there was the realization that I named the post for. It dawned on me that I was making all of my decisions to please the boys I was chasing after. I listened to whatever music they listened to. I wore what they told me to. I went where they told me to. I shaped my schedule and actions around Hyena and Wolf. In the year prior I had caved entirely to Mole, the boy I lost my virginity to when I was twelve.
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I quickly realized I had never loved Mole, but then felt that I did love Hyena, perhaps because I had an on-going sexual relationship with Hyena for six months.
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In a bout of self-hatred I compared myself to Unicorn, who was Wolf's best friend as a child. They played video games together and Unicorn was often at Wolf's house. Unicorn was someone I hated purely because he competed with me for Wolf's attentions, and possibly also because Unicorn was not polite to me. I later realized he was mean to me because he didn't understand why I was sleeping with Hyena and Wolf and not with him.
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"I've lost my sense of self over a guy," I wrote. This is another case of my writing at the time not living up to the stunned feeling I felt when I wrote this. It was more than "losing my sense". It was more like losing my entire identity. Instead of choosing what I liked, I was just going with whatever they liked. This shook me to the core. It made me have to question who I was, where I wanted to go with my life, and everything I thought I knew about myself. It shook my entire grasp of reality.
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I got to the point where I couldn't write anymore and just hung my head in front of the monitor. I think I began to cry then, as I often did while I was writing journal posts.
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I concluded the post with, "I'm nothing anymore. I'm a follower. And I didn't even know it."
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Later I showed the post to Wolf. It made him angry. I didn't understand why at the time. I thought I was sharing a piece of my soul with him, but all he saw was how much I claimed to love Hyena, and how Wolf was just "backup." To me it seemed obvious that I cared for Wolf much more than I was letting on, because after all, wasn't I showing Wolf what I wrote? Wasn't I trying to share my innermost self with him?
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Now it all has new significance to me. At the time I was quite certain this was all about my loss of self to Hyena and Wolf. Looking back I can see that unconsciously a large part of what upset me was that I could feel my father's disappointment. I felt like a failure in his eyes. At that time, before I had really known deep love, my heart's main concern was still the pride of my parents. I wasn't consciously aware of that at all, but in retrospect it seems pretty obvious to me.
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Strange how our conscious awareness can be so limited and focused. Simultaneously our subconscious manages to encompass everything we feel and think about all the little things, little things we didn't even know mattered to us until they come out in dreams, or in strangled words while crying in a lover's arms, or while hypnotized or writing a long journal entry. Then the truth comes out, and in all of its brilliance it can be too much for the conscious self to really recognize.
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Later, in further introspection, I realized that my standard of unconditional love was quite unreasonable.