Oh I feel allright honey. I have a pain under my ribcage that wont go away but you know what? I think I m going to be more afraid when it stops hurting. for now the pain is my friend, sitting right here beside me.
mother it will be ok. you know that right? everything will be ok?
i know.
mom did you ever hear of a poet named anne sexton? she was popular back in your day i think?
oh yes. killed herself. she was a nymphomaniac according to killy kelly.
did you ever read her poetry mom?
no dear.
did you ever feel like killing yourself mom?
hundreds of times. you know your father. felt like killing him a few times, too.(laughter)
remember when you got divorced that time and then a week later you turned up pregnant? how old were you then?
I remember the night i miscarried and almost died in the operating room. too much blood lost. i was anemic. i wonder how life would have been different if i had that baby?
was it dads?
no.
mom can we be completely honest with each other for the remaining…
i have always been honest with you dear. it was your father who taught you how to lie.
oh come on mom. you told me plenty of lies. you lied about the baby.
I lied to the doctor but not you.
but you didnt tell me the truth.
what truth?
that the baby wasnt dads you never told me until right now.
and so now you know the truth?
yes mom.
i have always been honest with you dear. honestly?
we all know the truth about everything instantly.
well before we are capable of the words in our minds.
words are the smallest specks of dirt.
a hair in your mouth.
little monsters with lives of their own.
lives that will outlive yours if you are not careful.
if you dont know that by now then you dont know very much about honesty yourself mister.
and thats your fathers fault.
(laughter, coughing)
Yeah….
which way to turn? You hold onto whatever you have left and make the best sense of it that you can. Kinda fucked from day one. I know.
This has always fit for me:
Jethro Tull
BTW, my favorite Tull song was “A new day yesterday,”
but its an old day now….
mainly because of the guitar riff.
otherwise not much of a Tull fan actually. I liked them musically with the flute and all but Jethro’s singing became too heavily mannered for my taste.
He started overdoing it. One of my own issues too BTW.
That euphemism never struck me before, too heavily mannered.
But it’s just about perfect for so much of our staged social intercourse. Though I hate applying it to ‘Tull’, I’ve had to review and to reconsider many such things.
Thanks for the prose and the insight 🙂
i used to read the rolling stone record reviews religiously when i was a kid.
Its ok super. im going to be alright. ive been preparing for days like these all my life. what else is life really about anyway?
I never had the courage to prepare for days like that. Then when one of those days did finally come, though much sooner than I ever thought, it blew me clear into another universe. Like floating on the edge of a black hole and watching all matter, or all that mattered, being sucked in, while I struggled, not even knowing that I was, to not get sucked in myself. I made my ammends to a cold body. Hoping there were still impulses floating somewhere in the room that could accept my atonement, let alone hear me.
I believe this is so, Super, and that our bodies are but one small portion of who we are. I figure when my time comes, the only thing those who care care about me will notice is that I don’t interrupt them anymore!
I am sure I will forget all the important things I want to say and will say them to the headstone too.
its like you say. we are all fuckups. thats why i have a hard time even staying that mad at bush. i clearly see my own incompetence reflected in his.
Maybe life is about being fully present, for whatever it brings, in every moment we get. Figuring out how to hold the good things things close and how let them go. Learning how to surf the ocean of human emotions without drowning, and living to surf another day.
You seem to be a fully present guy, Donkeytale.
i am really not. much more living in my own dream world. you had pegged better the first time to be honest. but i appreciate your words. they do ring true to me and thats whats most important.
Well,for me anyway, learning to be “fully present” is a very long journey with no final destination in sight yet! Interesting, tho, and one meets so many truly good people along the way…
like i said earlier: you speak with unforked tongue.
I hope I can say that without being accused of making fun of indigenous peoples? 🙂
That is a very high compliment.
Thank you, Donkey.
“I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”
Joseph Campbell
Campbell was brilliant not least because his voice reminded me of Snagglepuss–the cartoon lion from my youth.
“Exit staaaage left!”
I wonder how much of our last moments on earth will be taken up with memories of old TV shows?
when you look full on at the real ones.
The true difference between “us” and “them”?
We at least try to look.
Imagine the dialogues between Butch and HIS mother.
And then weep for the man.
AG
{{{{{Donkeytale and Donkette}}}}}
You are so courageous to tell us these things, Donkeytale. I’m thinking about little kids who have things happen and do not understand. They do see the emotion in their parents – that’s the truth they see, though it may not be there in their parents’ words.
Every child wants their parents to be good parents, and when they are very young, will think that what their parents do must be what good parents do — unless they have bad children, or have bad things happen to those parents. Every dying person who has the time looks back, and wants memories to be good, or wants bad things to be someone else’s fault, or from outside themselves, or beyond their control.
And the child — mostly the child, just loves, anyway, whatever happened, whether angry, or puzzled, or thrown off a cliff by life. Loves anyway. Somebody or something.
I’m not saying this very well, Donkeytale. You are not Donkette’s tale, she is yours, now. And you are so fine, I think beyond what you can see right now.
i have also seen you speak with unforked tongue.
You are right. its all about the kids.
it doesnt take that much courage tho. Except the courage to steal from the true greats….such as Prince Gautama and the Son of Man….
Parents. At times I’ve tried to mentally cut off my past but it just can’t be. My parents’ actions decades ago still figure all too prominently now. Certain abuses are hard to leave behind, making me eternally vigilant to not perpetrate the same on my child.
Thanks for sharing, donkeytale.
It’s a choice, isn’t it boran2 ?
We can decide to be the abuser inorder to push away the horror of being abused, or we can choose to remember, always, how it feels to be little and powerless. Some of the most dedicated fighters for human rights came from abusive childhoods; they empathise on a gut level with the poor and oppressed.
Always be suspicious of the rabid victim-blamers; there’s a good chance they are abuse survivors who are carrying on the tradition.
You’ve just described my Mother. A victim blamer, who was a victim herself. She also carried on the family tradition of abuse with me and my brothers. One of my brothers also carried it forward, but I didn’t. Why is that? Why am I different than my Mother and my brother?
I don’t know, super.
In my case, I had a grandmother I stayed with during the summers. (When my mother was insane, my father didn’t dare have me home with her, alone, in the daytime; she would have killed me.)
Nana provided a different model of the world, which showed me that that there were more choices available than either cowering victim or hard hearted abuser.
School helped, too. I LOVED school. It was so easy to avoid trouble and win approval because the rules made sense.
And I can’t dismiss the role of psychotherapy.
Remembering, reliving, and surviving those memories by working through them, experiencing them as a child but processing them as an adult, was nearly as difficult as the abuse itself, but going into that terrifying darkness and coming out on the other side gave me the freedom to see suffering and misery in the world. That may not seem like much of a gift, until you contrast it to the mean-spiritedness born of repressed pain and denial.
This is still really hard to talk about, super.
Thank you for sharing that with me Susan.
As a kid it seemed as if all I could see in the world was suffering. At a very young age, maybe 10, or 11, I started thinking about being a father, and how much I wanted to be one. Sounds kinda strange doesn’t it? Maybe it was my way of escaping from my own reality by creating a different future for myself, where kids are listened to, and their opinions count for something. That was what I needed most. To be validated as worthwhile. being the kind of parent that I was deprived of myself has been the greatest source of healing for me Susan. But it’s had no effect on my Mother. She alternately sees me as perfect because she still insists that i’m like her, and on the other hand, deeply flawed for straying so far from the flock. But my kids are living breathing evidence that I survived it. And not only survived, but produced a generation of my family that is loving, and gentle. I think deep down she resents me for this. Because deep down, she resents herself, and she can’t stand to see the evidence of it.
I love that little boy who changed his world by redefining parenting. What a wonderful, creative way of coping.
You are also dealing with your mother.
That must be very hard. Parents can trigger old feelings and responses with just a few words. It takes a lot of patience and self discipline to stay in your adult self.
I have had nothing to do with mine for over 35 years. She may be dead by now. I don’t know. When I was recovering, I tried to talk with her. I know mental illness played a large part in her relationship to me, and I tried to tell her I understood. She severed all contact at that point.
That was a shame, because we could have helped each other. I’m glad you sre still working at it, even when your mother gives you mixed signals. I suspect you are a good daddy even to her….
I’m sorry that your Mom severed contact with you Susan. It’s a hard thing to imagine a Mother doing. But the same thing happened to me just this year, so I do understand that part of the hurt. I’m just a little too effin independent. Always have been. And believe me, she’s too damned omnipotent (in her own mind) to seek parenting from me. In the long run I think I must have known that this would happen one day. So be it. Life is too short, and mean people suck.
I suspect I know, Super. Actually, the truth is that most kids who are abused do not grow up to be abusers themself. They really don’t. But some do.
T
There is a complex set of things that have to be lined up for abuse to occur. Maybe that’s worth a diary sometime (I have a couple of diaries about kids’ problems cooling for another time; one does involve abuse).
But the opposite of those risky things were’nt there for you: your temperament. Great sensitivity to other people’s emotions (you DEFINITELY have that good characteristic!!). Or even one relationship with an adult who was not crazy when you were a kid, that carried you across some important transition; or less social isolation; or (almost certainly) some absolute decision as a teen/young adult/parent not to use abusive strategies with your kids or other people.
For most kids, if any one of those good characteristics is present, then you aren’t going to become an abuser on to the next generation. Not true of every kid, of course. But true of most.
YThank you so much.
I wish I could isolate one set of circumstances, or one stellar person that had that effect on me, but honestly I don’t recall any. I’m far from perfect, and I do have a temper. One serious flaw that I’ve aquired from all of this is a feeling of persecution that’s difficult to shake. I’m still angry about things, I understand that. But I wish it weren’t so. So it’s best that I no longer have contact with her, because until she can at least acknowledge that she isn’t perfect, then there’s no mending possible. Better to put it behind me, and do what I can for the future of my own family. At least the kids anyway.
I’m looking forward to those diaries :o)
If it’s any comfort, super, I used to believe that nobody had ever helped or tried to help me when I was a child. I carried that feeling inside me for years.
When I was able to remember and work through a significant portion of the abuse, that unlocked memories of many, many good things from my childhood that had been repressed along with the painful memories.
As terrible as reliving those events has been (and it’s an ongoing, lifelong process), it has freed me from the smothering feelings of persecution that contributed to dangerous depression and years of despair.