Reunion
How can we explain Medea? How can we explain patricide? Worse than wanting to kill the Other, an easy target, is wanting to kill those most connected to Us.
In my early twenties, my Father and I fought constantly. He wanted the closeness of our past, I wanted my freedom. He would condemn me for not spending more time with him, and I would sit there and scream with my eyes, “Why are you so fucking controlling!?!”
Then I thought about his relationship with my Grandfather. As lax and absent as he was, my always stoned academic Grandfather had a mythic dominance over my Father for most of his life. Maybe ours is a family wherein one generation overpowers and tries to destroy the next one, until they reproduce and repeat the cycle. After all, is it not rituals such as this that prove our ability to survive?
Myface
I am trying out Internet dating right now. I have always had trouble with relationships. Possessing at age-three, a preternatural sense that I would one day be described as a “chore of a woman”, I began to calculate my assets alongside my liabilities. Now I am repeating this process on-line.
Do I have the perfect, yet imperfect smile? Do I present myself as natural and unpretentious, without letting myself go? And worst of all, am I too twisted and incomprehensible to be in a real relationship with any sane human being? This has always been my biggest fear. I grew up believing that I was a twisted and hideous freak. In fact, a classmate of mine inadvertently validated my own anxiety on this subject in fourth grade. We were sitting across from each other, and she picked up a piece of tape. With the coldness and confidence of the receptionist at an inner-city AIDS clinic, she said, “This is my life, smooth and perfect.” She unblinkingly stared at me, and without pause wrinkled up the tape and continued, “This is your life, a mess.” I wasn’t sure why she was saying this to me. It never occurred to me that any ten-year-old, who seethed with such intensity, might not be so together herself. At the time it seemed very meaningful that she was speaking to me and me alone.
The Search for Me and I
I now know the meaning of self-love. I grew up in my family feeling smart, charming, and attractive, and never feeling that I was enough. I was trapped in an unbearable paradox. While I did not feel worthy, I perceived myself as projecting outward luminescence that would magically make others love me. Because I felt unlovable, I thought I was therefore more deserving of affection. In my sadness, I vied for sympathy. If only, I thought, I can make someone recognize my loneliness. After all, it is those who suffer most that are most deserving of love. Wrong. We are all deserving of love.
Now I have learned the truth. How did I stumble across this truth? I can’t really say. It as if I woke up one evening and the insanity and hatred that I had been feeling for years just stopped. It just got cut off mid-stream. And then something else tooks its place. I learned: Love is not the same as brilliance, and so I stopped trying to be brilliant. Love is not the same as sweetness, and so I stopped trying to be sweet. In fact ”love” is not the same thing as love. Sometimes love is merely the absence of hatred, the point were we stop ourselves and really breathe.
Purgation
One day, I decided to forgive people. I started with my parents.
I lived fifteen or so years of my life expecting to die before my time. When I realized that this might not happen, I became paralyzed. You see, I was not sure that I want to live in the first place. I was not suicidal; a suicide wants to die. I just wasn’t certain that I wanted to be born. There is a difference. And so I lived my life unborn, unhappy, and unsure whether I wanted to live or not. Telling somebody, who does not want to live, that they should want to live is like trying to make an olympian out of a cripple. My legs simply were not there.
In the end, I forgave everybody.
The Indigo and I
As a child, I was very sensitive and intuitive. My Father would brag about me to his friends and family, telling them how at age three I could read my Mother’s thoughts. My Mother was oddly mum on the subject. I lived for myself, and did not always play by the rules. I thought I was crazy, and sometimes still do.
Now, I have read on the Internet, there is a phenomenon that might explain my personality to the world. Have you heard of Indigo Children? They are, depending on who you ask, assertive, self-determined, mystical, psychic brats, with attention deficit disorder. Indigo Children don’t play by the rules. I guess I was not crazy. I was merely an Indigo Child.
The Adults
As the Adults, we are feared and loathed by children
Why?
Because we are angry skeletons, dancing on the roof top of their experience
It is our forceful and all knowing stomp,
That tries to extinguish their light
Will they ever forgive us?
Are we worthy of forgiveness?
Only when we ourselves become children again
