Om and I were talking last night about how relationships with your relatives develop as you get older, and then I found this journal entry from that strange period not so long ago where I was 30 years old and living with my parents in Palo Alto, which is not so much about relationship development as it is about having more words at 30 to describe feelings that bothered me just the same as at 15:
Big fight with Dad this week. He can be so cruel. He was yelling at Mom for wearing what he thought was a really ugly outfit. He said some really mean things to her. I said, "Dad, stop it!" He said, "This is MY marriage, and I can do what I want! Don't interfere with my marriage!" I said, "But she's MY mom, stop yelling at her!" Then he said, "Get out of my marriage! Look what happened to YOUR marriage! Who are you to say anything?"
Even writing it right now makes me really angry and sad. I don't know how it happened that my parents' approval can mean so much to me and their judgment can make me feel so bad. I had forgotten that I spent a lot of energy as a younger person trying to distance myself from my parents' desires, not only because I disagreed with what they wanted for me but also because I hated feeling their disapproval. In the last eleven years, I did a good job staying away and doing what I wanted, so to be thrust back into an environment where their wishes, strange habits, and stubbornness dominate leaves me exposed to emotional risks that I had very carefully guarded against. It's still not really clear to me what it means that I am living at home, but the patterns and feelings are starting to emerge more clearly.
After he made that comment, I stalked out of the room, then returned with my middle finger extended and said, "Fuck you," and then slammed the door to my room and locked it. Good God. I haven't made a move like that in many, many years. I'm thirty. Good God. And then I cried.
I spent Sunday at work, partly because there were documents to be reviewed and mysteries about 28 U.S.C. Section 1782 to be solved, but partly because I did not want to be at home. Mom and Dad weren't even there - they'd intended to go see the Blue Angels flying over San Francisco for Fleet Week. But I just could not be in that house.
I have the option as a thirty year old to leave. I have a workplace close to home but private to me, unreachable to them. I can sit in my Aeron and face my ergonomic workstation and work at things I don't really care about, two and a half miles from where I spent my childhood. Should I hide like this, at thirty?
The emotions took a long time to subside. S. called later in the evening and we tiffed about something really stupid. I can't even remember what it was. And we were getting into that part of the fight where we were making motions to be conciliatory but still fighting, the "I'm sorry, but..." portion of the festivities, and I asked her, "Please just be nice to me." And she paused, then said, "Yes, but..." and I interrupted to say, "Please, please, I had such a hard day, please be nice to me." And then she stopped talking for a long time, and I just cried. It wasn't about S. at all; I was just still upset about Dad. To her credit, after the long pause, she relented, and encouraged me to visualize her petting my head.
Just last week, while scraping food into the garbage can, I wondered when Dad and I were going to fightagain. I opened the trash with my knee, and dumped not-yet-rotting food onto half-rotted food that was in turn layered onto now-indecipherable decomposing organic matter. We fight in a horrible way once every 12-18 months. In 2004 or 2005, about burnt toast scraped into the garbage can. In 2007 about who knows what, ending with my declaration that I never needed to speak to him again. In 2008 about a dog barking. In 2009 in Taiwan, he looked upset one afternoon. I sat down on the bed next to him and put my hand on his shoulder. "What's wrong?" I asked. "Some people have daughters who perform in front of other people," he said. "What do you mean?" I said. "Some people's daughters dance around in front of other people." It dawned on me that he was talking about the time I invited him to see my rock band perform in Chicago. I had been so desperate to please them that night - to schedule the show while they would be visiting, to arrange the day so that they would come, to get them into a cab headed for the venue, to rustle up as many friends as possible, to perform as charismatically as I could - because I had wanted them to see that I could make it alone, that I could find people who liked me, that I had talents, that I was strong and capable and confident and unique.
So there was Dad's takedown. Something I had wanted so badly - just their fucking approval - had turned into his distant, offhanded insult. "Some people's daughters dance around in front of other people."
It makes my heart heavy even to write this now.
Dad sensed that he had committed a big error by being so cruel to me about my divorce. I mean, who does that? Make somebody feel shitty about a divorce? Is that something that I need help feeling shitty about? I guess he wanted to apologize. When I came home, there were post-its up along the fence to the front door, then post-its all over the hallway to my room, and post-its all over the door of my room, and then post-its all over my desk, my bed, my computer, my water bottle. Each was slightly different, but most had a variation of "Love, Mom and Dad" and "M & D" (with two interlocking hearts), or "Mom" in one heart and "Dad" in another heart. I pulled the post-its off my possessions but left the ones in the hallway and fence up. It is day three or four now of the silent treatment; not so much any intentional shunning, but just a feeling that I am so hurt that I cannot bring myself to talk to him.
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