I have just finished reading "Mothers Who Can't Love" and have started reading the book "Mean Mothers", It sparked a memory so vivid that I can't shake it or get to sleep. My mother used to say, among other things "I love you because I have to but I don't like you". My God, how powerful a statement that sent to me. I wasn't likable. I tried hard to be likable. I was the clown, the peacemaker, the confidant, I was codependent at the age of five, I was a tiny adult, forced to grow up too fast and leave my childhood and childlike world behind. No wonder I am in therapy.
Where I digressed this morning was running away from home at twenty two. I got through my undergraduate degree in 3.5 years and worked nine months in a minimum wage job to pay for graduate school. When I came to MSU for graduate work I turned my back on my family to preserve what little sanity I had left. Sometimes the only answer to the situation is to abandon all hope and get on with your life. I cut myself off, not only from my mother, but from many people I loved, like my grandmother Dorothy and the Aunties. Some times I would sneak into Southfield for a visit and not tell my parents, and unless you were Dorothy or the Aunties, no one knew about these visits, which were usually preceded by a phone call full of guilt provoking words. Once my mother died in 1996 my father, from whom I was estranged, became my buddy. And it wasn't until he died ten years later that my family came out of the woodwork to tell me, not just that they were sorry about my dad, but that they had basically abandoned me to an unfit mother and an intolerable situation . Too little. Too late. But the sting of leaving family behind also gave some in the extended family that I didn't give a rat's ass about anyone in the family. This is especially true of the Rat Bastard cousin who physically abused me when I was five. They see my departure as abandonment and not something I did to save myself.
I don't think sleep will come tonight. I should have never started reading that book after a late supper. What to do, what to do. A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants. Sometime you just have to pull down your pants and slide on the ice. What other platitudes can I come up with? Oh, fux.
The one proud moment I had today was telling Patricia I wasn't going to get her Popsicles and she had better make other arrangements. I am certain to get an angry call later this week. Also, for the sake of some peace of mind I cancelled my mandolin lessons for the month just to get my shit together. I am trying to take care of myself without the constant self loathing that I am prone to.
Gonif is asleep in my chair, belly full of turkey. I guess it may be time to put me to rest.
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