[Note: this blog really is a stream of consciousness and does not follow any logical argument. In fact, I'm leaving it, because it would drive my dad nuts.]
I want to get past this hard stuff and into reflecting fondly on some of the more joyous moments of my childhood, even those which included my parents. After having written this, I know that I thought there were good moments, too. Dancing on my father's feet to Duke Ellington (his choice of music -- jazz from the late 1930s only, or classical, that was it), listening to my father's voice characterizations from books (his choice there, too, although he could have me in stitches at times, too), the nights he carried my mom around the kitchen as she tried to clear the table and do dishes and laughed herself (and me) until we were crying, it was so funny. Of course all these were characterized by his likes, by his preferences. Even so, I know there was a part of my father that clearly wanted my approval, as well, but just didn't understand the dynamics of the roles he'd preset for us. We had many funny moments, but they were defined by him.
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Nonetheless, these are the memories I would prefer to have and hold. But when I do hold them, I remember them as conditional because they can never be separated out as pure moments of shared joy. Too much control, not enough shared equally between us. Such moments will always be tainted by varying levels of conditionality. And the moments of being unafraid were always in the shadow of the moments of being afraid. Because the moment to be afraid was always coming, ever present. As I have said, through no choice of my own, shame was (and sometimes still is) my closest associate. And that is tragic, for any child. For any human. And creates a lifetime of struggling to overcome.
I will work on this, talk to professionals, read, read and read some more, write, think a lot, process and process. That's what all this is about. I see a therapist who I adore and who has been encouraging me to take baby steps toward making this blog public and available to everyone. But to start slow as I am. Each time I post one of these entries, I find myself shaking and wobbly. So, tiny steps.
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At 16, I went on Outward Bound (a whole other story worthy of its own entry). One of the boys there was incredibly sweet and supportive. He told me "inch by inch and it's a cinch, but yard by yard is very hard." Yeah. That.
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I find as I am writing I am getting my own Self back, devoid of the voices from my past (mostly, I hope). I know they formed me in part and I cannot escape from that as long as I live. There's no such thing as a brain-eraser... yet. But my parents and their entire process no longer rule my actions, my feelings, my opinion of myself. None of them have any power over me any longer, because I get to decide for myself who is and who isn't in my life.
My father's voice in my head has faded over time, and my voice has evolved from from it, and then rebelled against it. Back and forth and back and forth, like a pendulum. Life used to be a constant effort to not shame myself, to not feel shame and guilt and pain over and over again, to not take the "small stuff" and turn it into my personal failures and shortcomings. To not wait for the next moment I will "be in trouble" from whoever happens to be in my life.
Again, my 21st birthday was like the first day of personal hell for me. Here I was supposed to be an adult with all the commensurate expectations and responsibilities placed upon me, and I felt nowhere near adulthood. I felt completely unprepared either emotionally or logistically to handle the big world by myself. I felt my birth was a time of mourning, that I had no worth or value in the world other than my parents' definition of it. At that age (and for many many years after that) I heard nothing but my father's voice in every interaction, everywhere I went, coloring each and every experience in my mind. My voice was gone. It was lost. It had never been.
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The child inside me was screaming for justice, to tell the truth. It seemed to be brought on by a change I made. It began to affect all other aspects of my life and my ability to function, as though inside, my small girl was throwing (as my son calls it) a "rage fit." It started when I recently began meditating, using a simple mantra. The mantra reminds me that I love myself exactly as I am and that I am worthy of everything I want. I've been doing 2 minutes every single day.
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The more I did this meditation, the closer I seemed to come to a break, as if the never-healed child inside me heard that mantra and woke up and started crying hysterically. At first, I really didn't understand what was happening, or why I as suddenly having so much trouble just functioning among my friends, online, in real life. I was afraid to go anywhere or be with those I trusted most (outside my family). My family is like my little sanctuary and for some blessed reason, I can function with them even in the worst circumstances. As realization began to kick in, I decided to get help. Unlike my parents, who would panic under such circumstances, I choose to hold the little Miriam and comfort her without judgment, with unconditional love and acceptance. Knowing that just being she (and I) is enough. And that is where this writing comes from.
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The goal is being able to look back without feeling caught. It doesn't always feel attainable. It's incredibly easy to fall back into detesting myself, thinking, wow, Miriam is a weird name, an adult's name, how could she deserve to be held like a child? It can be hard to keep holding her!
It's a weird place to be in. Caught between two such opposing worlds.
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Eventually, maybe I can also share even more of the moments of joy, but I can't forget that they were always tendered by what defined my father's or my mother's joy. For if I do, I lose track of what I am and the boundaries again blur between myself and my parents.
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There was one instance in which my mother totally gave of herself to me. It was when my dad was out of town, because I honestly don't think he'd have permitted it. One summer morning, I woke up and my mom had made pancakes. While at breakfast, she asked me if I'd like to find a friend and she would drive us down to the beach and boardwalk to play in Santa Cruz. I was literally stunned into silence at first. And then she asked again, and I was so elated and thrilled. This was the exception, though, not the rule, and it was because dad didn't know about it. Perhaps she was just as scared as I was in that regard. That day and that day alone, was the first and last time she ever rode on a ride at a park with me, and shared it with me openly. She laughed like a young girl and ate ice cream and cotton candy with us. It was an amazing day and it stands out.
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There should have been and could have been so many more. But it's just one memory. It should be thousands of memories of shared joy. But most of the time my mother was tripping over herself to please my father, the king of his own personal ivory tower, with us as his subjects.
To my father, sharing joy was reading (among other heavies) Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Jane Austin, Homer, Chaucer, Pope, Milton, Aristotle, Sophocles, Euripides, and mostly, Shakespeare.
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I was really able to enjoy Shakespeare with him, once I understood the language. I have an uncanny knack for speaking Shakespearean pros and the poetry. To my father, it was complex language with brilliant hidden meanings. To me, Shakespeare was like music. I knew how to sing his music. Which is part of what motivated my short theatrical career. But Shakespeare was an interesting dichotomy for me. And it's impressive now, how like my father his favorite Shakespearean tragedy was.
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| Source: Royal Shakespeare Company Lear in all his majesty with his three daughters |
My father's favorite Shakespearean quote to repeat over and over to me was from King Lear: "Oh, how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child." And like King Lear, another narcissist, it mattered not the unconditional love Cordelia carried for her father, even if in only one part of her heart, as she tells him, what mattered is the ego and image of the father. My father's tragedy was in telling me I needed to lie to him to make him happy and approve of me. The irony here is a little hard to articulate.
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The other line he used on me quite often from that play was "her voice was ever soft, gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman." Lear says this while Cordelia lies dead in his arms. How insecure that one made me! I worked hard to make sure my voice was as low as I could get it, for apparently, according to the only person in the world who mattered, it was an excellent in a woman. These were some of the standards by which my father seemed to judge so much.
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For those unfamiliar with King Lear, there is so much sorrow and pain within it. It is probably the saddest of the tragedies. The play is set up when an aging King Lear decides he will divide his kingdom up into three equal parts, one for each of his three daughters. The two older daughters, Goneril and Regan, lie to their father, and tell him exactly what he wants to hear, that they love him beyond anything else. When it's the youngest daughter, Cordelia's, turn, she tells him that she loves him as a daughter loves a father and no more. And that surely if she loved him with all of her heart, she would have no room for loving a husband in the future. Lear falls into a rage and divides the kingdom up between his two older daughters and banishes Cordelia. This proves disastrous, as the two older sisters mount a war against Lear himself, and both Cordelia and Lear (and his two other daughters, in fact just about everybody) are finally killed. Nice model, there, to hold up for your kid.
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| Source: http://www.usatoday.com "her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman." |
What makes the irony of this even clearer is that my father referred to the error as being that of Cordelia's for speaking the truth, not of Lear's, or his older daughters. In other words, the daughter should always placate the ego of the father. When I (and many others) look at that scene, we do not see the mistake of a daughter. We see the rampant and grossly overblown ego of an old man, who manages to destroy his entire family over said ego. This rings a lot of bells, and points at the truth of my father's enormously overblown sense of self-importance.
Lear, dad, really? This is the model you most admire? A tragedy in which everyone ends up dying because of an old man's ego?
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| Source: http://www.mckellen.com/ |
Another of his favorite quotes was also from Lear, and apropos here, here as well:
"O reason not the need! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life is as cheap as beast's."
~ William Shakespeare, King Lear
Meaning, in other words, life is cheap, there are important people, and all the other people are unimportant and disposable (aka, worthless, beasts, base). That sounds about right. Turns out, though, dear father, that I am an extra person as you would choose to define a life. You have no right to attempt to define my life, or the lives of others, and you never did. You are in no position to judge any of those people you summarily dismiss. None of those lives belonged to you and they never have. Not even mine.
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For he lacked entirely the ability to feel or experience empathy towards anyone else. Even with animals in our family. He treated them with amazing disrespect, and absolutely lacked any understanding of how to relate to them. Our animals hated my father and, for the most part, he hated them. They were ownerships. I don't think it ever occurred to my father to look into the eyes of another animal and see them as a living breathing being. They were sometimes funny and mostly inconvenient property which could be used as amusing toys at times.
Oh look, more stories. One more shorty:
My father's response to "I have a headache" was "Here, I'll punch you in the stomach so you feel better." I would ask, annoyed, "How will that make me feel better?" My father would respond as though he was finding himself very very funny indeed, "You'll forget about your headache because your stomach will hurt." Perhaps it might have been funny, but also it was dismissive, minimizing and violent. And repetitive. That was his automated response if I mentioned pain anywhere. The man didn't have an microgram of empathy in his pinky finger nail.
Just like his beloved King Lear. He asks you to feel profound empathy on his behalf. But has none for you in return.
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| Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/King_Lear_allotting_his_Kingdom_to_his_three_daughters,_by_Julia_Margaret_Cameron.jpg |
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