Social Cluelessness (and other things I needed to get out)

I don’t know how to interact with people.

This isn’t entirely a new discovery, but it’s something that I’m learning more and more. I’ve always had people whose company I really enjoy and with whom I would like to be friends. I want to be around them. Just to hang out.

But most of the time, they don’t seem to want to be around me. Or they want to help “take care of me,” be there for me when I need something, but they don’t want to just hang out.

Somehow, this has led to a tendency to interact with people on the basis of needing something. I don’t like asking people for things. In fact, I downright hate it. Yet I feel so often like people just don’t want to be around me unless there’s something wrong, something I need, or unless there’s something they need that I can help them with.

I wish I had some major break-through to say on this topic. And this one–I’m not even saying that this has anything to do with my parents, except maybe that I’ve used my issues from growing up as a way of having people talk to me. (I didn’t invent things, mind you. Rehashed some elements more often than I should have, sure, but I didn’t invent them.)

But I don’t. My only break-through is a realization that I seriously have no idea how to interact with people. I want to be there for other people. I want people there for me. But that isn’t all there is, that can’t be all there is. I love laughing with people too, but somehow I end up too intense and even getting together and laughing together starts to feel like a burden, a strain on time. I even like getting together and just doing our own thing in the same room, just to be around each other.

I know that kind of friendship takes a long time to build for most people. But it doesn’t take me a long time to feel that close to others, and it’s so frustrating to me that it takes that long to build that friendship locally.

I do have friends. And a wonderful husband, who is most definitely my best friend on earth. But other than my husband, I don’t have many local friends. Most of them are spread across the country and (in some cases) around the world. I have one amazing close friend, one who mentored me throughout middle school and high school, and has been an amazing friend always. I don’t know how or why she’s put up with me, why I don’t become a major drain on her as well. But she is such an amazing blessing from God and I can never possibly repay all she’s done for me.

But she lives a little over half an hour away and often travels for work, so we can only get together every once in a while.

I have recently developed another friend, one who lives almost as far away as that friend. So far, things are fine, but having recently lost a good friend of many years to my own inability to interact correctly–and I don’t say there wasn’t fault on both sides, but I do know that the most major issues could easily both have been my fault*–I’m terrified of losing this new friend as well. I second-guess everything I say, I don’t know how often to ask to get together, or how often is too often. My intensity and social cluelessness has, in the past, driven people away from ever being a close friend, but I’ve never lost a close friend like that. Drifted away, sure, but never been cut off like that. And I know that, in this most recent case, I lost her as much for the things I did without realizing it, as for the things I didn’t do because I kept second-guessing myself.

And the worst part? I tried asking her how to do things differently, and I’ve tried asking other people how I could do things differently, and they’ve always said basically the same things that make me second-guess myself.

I just don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to be who other people need me to be. And that is all I have to say for today.

 

*The two issues that I know could easily both be my fault: she felt like I was draining her, I felt like she was draining me. I know they can definitely both be my fault because I don’t know how to interact with people. I made her feel drained because I didn’t know how to interact with her. She made me feel drained because I didn’t know how to interact with her. When she’d struggled with something in the past, I didn’t know how to know that those struggles were done. That was my fault for not making her feel like she could just talk to me about these things. This friendship was drifting apart anyway because we just don’t have enough in common anymore. A friendship may start with just a few things in common, but it can’t be maintained with only a few things in common. And since I’m obviously not good for her, I have no problem with letting her go, though I still miss her and it still hurts. But I wish it hadn’t ended with the anger that it ended with. She told me in a very loving way that she felt drained by me. I tried to say in a loving way that I felt drained by her, and was even ready to admit that that could all be my own fault and nothing to do with her, but apparently I didn’t say it right because she got very angry and started telling me things that I’ve done wrong to her, things I never knew had upset her. I’ve hurt her in so many ways and I don’t know how to fix it. It’s been many weeks, but I haven’t yet gotten past this or figured out how to repair things, not to the point of friendship, but just to get past the hurt and anger. I’m yet again in that place of not knowing how to interact–I should be the “bigger person” and go to her, but I have no idea how to, or if I’ll just make things worse.

And that ended up being a whole sub-blog post to the regular one up there, but I don’t feel like I can separate these, and since my ultimate goal isn’t readership anyway, but to just have my own outlet for dealing with things, well, I’ll keep it the way it is.

Contradictions

Sorry I’ve been absent for so long. I’ve had about 30 potential posts run through my brain, but always when I was doing something that didn’t even allow time to stop and jot the idea down. And I’ve had several things to work through mentally. So after all that, I don’t really have much to share–at least, much that I should share–except this major point of frustration that I’ve hit:

1. If you are financially stable when you get married, but the main breadwinner loses a job shortly after you get married, even if you spend a whole year searching for a job and living on savings that you DID have built up, apparently you weren’t financially stable enough to get married in the first place and should have waited until you could support yourself. I can only surmise that this means no one should get married until they’re able to live on savings for the rest of their life.

2. If you don’t work, you’re lazy. Even if you’re searching for a job and can’t find one. Even if you’re applying outside your field of expertise. It doesn’t matter. You don’t have a job so you’re lazy.

3. Don’t keep things bottled up inside. You must get it out. If you just stuff it down, that’s unhealthy. But don’t tell anyone. Or say it out loud where anyone could possibly overhear. Or write it down because someone might read it. Or record it because someone might see/hear it.

4. Keep a clean house. Because you’re a terrible person if you don’t. But stop worrying about cleaning and spend time with your children. Because you’re a terrible person if you don’t.

5. Similar to 4, make sure you put a lot into your job and try to get ahead. For your family. To support them. Because you’re a terrible person if you don’t. But don’t spend all your time working, your family needs you. So stop working and spend time with them. But work and make money to support them. But to make the money necessary to support them, you’re working too hard. Stop working and spend time with your family. But don’t forget to work.

6. If you don’t have money to spend on a gratuity gift (or, if you prefer, an obligatory gift) for someone, you’re financially irresponsible. This one really throws me for a loop. You’re taking care of your money and being frugal, but because you don’t have the money for something that really isn’t essential to life but is just expected based on the mores of our society, you’re financially irresponsible. For NOT spending money, you’re financially irresponsible. Mind boggling to say the least! (Kind of like the fact that if you thank someone profusely, it’s still not thanks enough until you send an obligatory thank-you card. Because apparently gratitude is only real if it’s on paper and written in a pre-formatted and stilted style. But that’s a separate irritant of mine.)

Are you catching the general drift of my frustrations? Everyone has opinions, and that’s fine. But sometimes it’s like every single person has an opinion on exactly how I’m not living my life right. And according to those opinions, apparently, a successful life is impossible.

And ironically, the thing that people push the most seems to be whatever they struggle with the most. “Stop cleaning and spend time with your kids, moms!” says someone who cleans a ton. “Stop texting and look up, you’re missing the moments!” says someone who spends too much time on her phone. “No, you already spend plenty of time with your kids, take some time to yourself!” says the one who needs a break.

I’m tired of it. No one is perfect. I’m still learning and growing. You’re still learning and growing. We’re all still works in progress. We can help each other and encourage each other and share the wisdom we’ve acquired with each other, but how about we give each other a little bit of a break? Life is a delicate balancing act. When someone is tipping one way, how about we stop shoving so hard that they fall off the other side instead? How about we just support each other sometimes? I mean, yeah, part of that balance is that we might need a little shove here and there. But not a barrage of shoves back and forth. We’re not tennis balls.

That’s all I wanted to say today. Not about hoarding, not about my childhood, not about my personal struggles right now. Just about the barrage of accusations that surround us, and surround us even more so since this lovely thing called the Internet came about. Let’s just remember that part of helping each other balance is to give each other a break sometimes. Speak in love, because you don’t know how many verbal (or written) shoves the person you’re talking to has received lately.

Amendments

It has been brought to my attention that my post Personal Cleaning Responsibility may not have exactly expressed what I intended to express. I want to make this clear:

There was a lot of cleaning to still do in the house. But we were not told the exact day we needed to be out (YES partly through our own fault of not checking earlier to verify it) until a few weeks earlier, and we had been told by our friend we lived with that he wouldn’t be leaving until Tuesday, in a way that made it sound like we could keep coming and doing different things in the meantime. We had worked hard and tried hard to get things done, but we just hadn’t finished everything. We didn’t know that there was a time crunch involving more to be done that weekend, rather than just having it done by Tuesday. Our plan was to spend as much of Saturday as possible, then all day Sunday after church until it was done. We literally found out Friday night that they needed more done that weekend and were moving some things in. So like I said, yes, it’s at least partly our fault that we didn’t know about some of this stuff, but I wasn’t frustrated about being told there was more cleaning to do, but about having someone check with us to make sure we were going to be doing it, and really, about that being the first time we WERE told that there was so much that had to be done that very weekend. Which I think was also partly because we were talking to the person involved who tends to be super easy-going, and the other one doesn’t know us as well and may not have felt comfortable mentioning it to us. And possibly didn’t even know that we didn’t know that. So basically, I’m just saying it wasn’t really anyone’s fault, especially not anyone else’s fault, it was just frustrating.

And the other thing is, I may not always come across this way, but when things happen I’m usually more angry at myself than at other people. This blog is my way of working out my frustrations, so yes, it probably sounds like I’m blaming everyone and everything else. But I’m seriously just really mad at myself because I can’t seem to rise above all of this. I’m getting there by baby steps, but I’m not there yet and I feel like I should be. And people tell me I should be–I’m an adult, part of an adult is just taking responsibility and doing what I need to do, just because my parents didn’t doesn’t mean I can’t. But it’s a LOT to learn all at once, and I’m not there yet. Then I’m mad at myself for not being there yet. And yes, sometimes at other people for not understanding why I’m not there yet, but I’m not REALLY mad at the other people. Most of the time, at least. And in this recent situation, I wasn’t mad at the other people. I was frustrated at the situation and mad at myself for not being a better person. So I try again. I’m doing better in this new place we’re in–fresh start–but not perfectly. But we’re at a sort of weigh-station right now, off again in just a few weeks, and then it’ll be a fresh start yet again. So this is where I’m trying to focus on doing well for a short time, so that it can become more ingrained and hopefully I’ll do better at the next place.

I am improving. And I am fully aware that a lot of things are my own fault too. Even if I don’t always come across that way in this, my venting place.

And that is all I wanted to say.

Waxing Eloquent on Child Hunger

Yup, changing topics today. Because I recently found out about ConAgra Food’s Child Hunger Ends Here campaign.

As a child who was hungry a lot–or just eating the same thing over and over–this strikes a serious nerve with me. Especially when I entered a code and started exploring the rest of the website. It lists how many children face child hunger in my state, then it lists how many codes have been entered in my state. Some simple math told me that with the amount of codes entered in my state, there are enough codes entered to give one meal to less than 9% of the children facing hunger in Maine.

ConAgra Food brands that may have codes on them (taken from the Child Hunger Ends Here website) are:
Healthy Choice
Peter Pan
Orville Redenbacher
Marie Callender’s
Chef Boyardee
Hunt’s
Snack Pack
Manwich
Kid Cuisine
Crunch ‘n Munch
Rosarita
Van Camp’s
Wolf Brand Chili
Blue Bonnet
Egg Beaters
Pam
RediWhip
Ultragrain
Banquet

In the event that some of you (hopefully many of you–I hate when other people have been in bad situations) don’t know what childhood hunger in the United States looks like, let me tell you a bit about what it looked like for me. We had many times growing up that we had bags of popcorn for a meal, buttered or plain pasta several days in a row, etc. And the Ramen! Since I left my parents’ house for college, I have alternated times of craving Ramen and times of being nauseated by Ramen–and, actually, sometimes both, when I would crave it but be nauseated before I was done eating it–because I ate it SO much growing up.

We would get creative, too. Pasta with various spices and some olive oil mixed in. Sounds good, right? It’d be great with a salad and maybe some chicken. But no, I’m talking an entire meal of seasoned starch. And boxed mashed potatoes can be prepared without butter or milk if necessary, and still seasoned to be at least palatable. If there was a can of corn somewhere, hallelujah! That was a delicious meal! And would you like to know what Hamburger Helper tastes like without any meat? Let’s just say, I wouldn’t recommend it. The flavor comes out significantly stronger and slightly different. But hey, it was something to eat.

Yes, we had a food pantry–at least one–near us. Eventually, when we were down to eating sugar out of the bag (no, we never had to do that, though I think my brother did it voluntarily, but it’s about where we were) my mother would say, “I guess I’m gonna have to break down and go to the food pantry.” Actually, I remember hearing her say this for at least a week or more before she finally would do it. When she finally went, there was finally food in the house. I went with her a few times. She would fill out a form saying our income and how many people were in our house. And then people would give us bags of food. Generic cans of sauce, apple sauce, and vegetables. Bags of sliced bread and jars of peanut butter. We knew how to spice the sauce and apple sauce (since none of it had spices) but the peanut butter was something else. It was like eating oil in a peanut texture. I think that’s how peanut butter-and-sugar sandwiches were born in our house, actually.

No, my life wasn’t like this the entire time I was growing up. We went through cycles. My parents didn’t budget the money, so one month we’d squeak by, another month we’d splurge on tons of groceries but may or may not get all the rent paid, and another it seemed like we had nothing for anything. We got reduced lunch at school, and sometimes didn’t even have the 35 cents for lunch money. I don’t really know what happened with the money to make the months so variable. But I do know that when we had lots of food in the house, we didn’t know how to “budget” the food either, and would eat about 3 weeks’ worth in a week or so. Then we had nothing again.

So all I’m saying with all of that is this: it’s not a perfect system. I’m not sure what a perfect system would be. In our case, we wouldn’t have been without food if my parents budgeted properly. (And believe me, people tried to help them do that.) We also wouldn’t have been without food if my mother had been willing to go to the food pantry more regularly. And to be honest, we were very rarely completely without food. But there were times I was willing to miss a meal rather than eat plain pasta or boxed mashed potatoes again. And there were most definitely times when we could have had food if we were willing to bake a cake. Literally. Marie-Antoinette jokes notwithstanding.

But right now, I’m not able to offer any perfect solution. This is not a political post about how to fix this. This is just a post of awareness, to let you know that ConAgra Food is doing something to try to fix this by partnering with Feeding America. In fact, The Pampered Chef has partnered with Feeding America in their own way, so you could do more through them too. Because no, this won’t actually end childhood hunger as long as there are parents who won’t do what they need to do and go get the food available for them to get. But if you buy a ConAgra brand and enter one code to give one child one meal, that’s something.

Additional note: please take an interest in people. I don’t know who I would be or where I would be today without the many people who took an interest, and even though they couldn’t take me from my parents’ house (though several did make phone calls to try to get some intervention), they at least took me out to meals, bought me food, and just showed me that they cared. There are children without much to eat but with very loving and nurturing parents who sacrifice to make sure the children have something. But there are way too many children whose parents do not nurture them, perhaps even neglect them entirely, and this is why they have no food. They’re all over the place, in cities and small towns. If you encounter one, if you have an opportunity to provide some small amount of the missing nurture, please do. It can change two lives–yours and theirs.

Personal Cleaning Responsibility

As of when I’m typing this, we still don’t have internet. Supposedly it was going to be on yesterday, but after a big long ordeal . . . well, suffice to say, it still isn’t.

But I’m personally more concerned about something else. See, we just moved. And someone else is going to the old place to clean today. Why is someone else going to the old place to clean? Your guess is at least as good as mine. There’s one more person living there until Tuesday. Some renovations are happening after that, so it’s not like it’s going to stay clean. And though we have some prior obligations during the day today, we’re going back this evening and tomorrow after church to get the rest of our stuff and clean.

I know most people would say, “Awesome! I don’t have to do all the cleaning!” But that is not my first or primary reaction. My reaction is more like . . . I cried when I found out they were going to be there cleaning today.

To be honest, we did as much Thursday and yesterday as we could. We had help Thursday, but I still have a young child and there’s only so much we can do with him while moving. Though he “helps” sometimes, it’s only so helpful and he still needs to be constantly watched.

And, as I said, we have some prior obligations today during the day and can’t be there until this evening. Probably at the expense of the better part of a birthday party that happens to be in the same area as the other obligations, and which I was really looking forward to attending. But duty first—we have to get the rest of our stuff out of there and get things cleaned. And I can not can not can NOT leave the rest of the cleaning to other people!

Why? Because the greatest shame of my life—more than when a friend told me she wouldn’t come over to my house anymore because it was so awful; more than when my mother would say things like, “It’s just impossible to keep the house clean with kids around”; more than when my father would say things like, “These kids complain about not being able to find anything to eat in the house, then I look and find things to make something fit for the [famous restaurant of some sort]”—more than any of that, the greatest shame of my life was when I realized that someone else had to clean up The Big House. The worst house we ever left.

And once I realized that, I realized someone had to clean up after us every time we moved out of anywhere. Whether we left behind a lot or very little, the place was always still a mess. Food splatters everywhere. Spaghetti still stuck to the ceiling from “is it done?” tests. Floors that we didn’t even sweep, vacuum, or mop on our way out. Sinks, mirrors, and windows that hadn’t known a cleaner since we’d been there. Sometimes some things that were broken—not necessarily even our fault, but that we hadn’t told the landlord about because then he would see the house. Not to mention the cat pee that was often left in carpets, and it’s hard to describe just what a toilet, tub, and bathroom floor that are never cleaned can look like when used by many people and several cats for a year or more.

To be honest, it’s not that we absolutely never cleaned in the time we were in each place. It’s just that it was mostly up to us kids, and frankly, we had no idea that the toilet should be cleaned at least monthly or more often. (Probably weekly for the amount of people we had in each house.) We had no idea that kitty litter should be emptied with a scoop every few days, rather than just waiting until the whole litter box was well beyond use and then dumping it all into the trash and refilling. We had no clue that we should be using a wand to vacuum the edges of the carpet, not vacuuming the middle and calling it good. We didn’t know how to pick up the little extra things that float around and get shoved into corners. If there was a clear path to walk through, wow, that room was clean!

I digress. My point was this: we left house after house after apartment after apartment after house with way too much cleaning left to do. I don’t know if my parents ever got a security deposit back. To be honest, I’m not sure they know they can get it back. (Well, they’re not stupid, they consciously know this. But I think they kind of assume it just never really happens and they blame it on unfair landlords or something.) So when I moved out on my own, I swore that would never happen. I will clean every place I move out of. I may still be learning how to keep a clean house while I’m there, but I know how to go back through and make sure it’s clean after I move out. No one will have to clean up after me.

But there’s something I still don’t have down: how to pack efficiently and get everything moved all in one day. I’m just not organized like that. I’m not efficient like that. I don’t know how to DO that. Which means I can’t just move everything out and then clean my way out of the house. (Especially not when our former housemate is still living there until Tuesday.) So I cleaned the whole bathroom. I wiped down the front of the cupboards in the kitchen, cleaned the stove, and mopped. Still need to move the fridge because there’s a ton of crud between the counter and the fridge—visible, but not accessible until the fridge is moved. I mopped the laundry room, but our bedroom isn’t empty yet to be mopped. The windows and mirrors have been cleaned, except the ones in my bedroom. The living room, dining room, and our bedroom have the most stuff still left in them. It’s just a matter of getting everything out and doing that last bit of cleaning. And even though they’ll get dirty again, I will still vacuum the carpets. Once all our stuff is off of them, they will be vacuumed. They will.

But people are going to clean today. What are they going to clean? I have no idea. Maybe I’ll find out they already moved the fridge and cleaned up the crud in there that I didn’t clean yet. Maybe I’ll find they straightened out the liners in the kitchen cupboards and drawers and cleaned those before I had a chance to. Maybe I’ll find they piled all our stuff in one place and mopped the bedroom for me. Maybe I’ll find they cleaned the bottom of the full-length mirrors that my son smudged up with his fingers.

To be honest, I’ve done most of the biggest cleaning. Other than the kitchen sink, cupboards, drawers, and space between the stove and fridge, there really isn’t that much to do. But I still hate the idea of someone else having to do it.

There’s so much organizing to do in our new place, and I want to get more of it done before the landlord comes in an hour or so to fix something that wasn’t quite ready when we moved in. Yet all I can think about is that today, someone else is going to be cleaning up after me.

Note: I wrote this several days ago, during the move and before we had internet again. Some of the details have changed a little–for instance, I apologized profusely for not being there to help finish all the cleaning, and was assured that it was okay. Some things frustrated me more, some things assuaged my frustrations. But basically, by now the whole house has been cleaned one way or another and I’ve more-or-less moved on with life. But I still figured I’d share this since it’s what I was thinking/how I was feeling at the time.

Blame

This is going to be a quick post, but I’m going to be internetless for a little while starting tomorrow. Not sure how long – anywhere from a couple days to a month. And I wanted to check in with you all really fast first.

So . . . I have discovered that everything is my fault.

Okay, clarification: I’m very good at finding a way to feel like everything is my fault. I’ve told people this before and they seemed to think that either I was kidding or I was just fishing for attention. But I’m serious. Whenever I get mad at someone for anything, I ultimately end up mad at myself for not being a better person. I inevitably believe myself to be more at fault than the other person.

And what does this have to do with anything at all? I have no idea. But it’s really bugging me tonight because a lot’s going on and everything that happens, I keep finding a way to blame myself. I’m sure it’s related to my growing-up years. Or something.

Honestly, I don’t really feel like thinking about it right now. Just felt like sharing in general, to (in some small way) get some frustration out.

That is all for now. I’ll be back . . . when I’m back.

My Mother, the Robot

I will get to talking about my father. I promise, I will. It’s just . . . right now I still can’t even think of something to write about. I can’t seem to nail down a memory. And the way to do that is probably to actually start writing something.

But not today. Today, I’m going to talk about my mother.

See, my father is a hoarder. My father has severe anger issues. My father is exceptional at putting on a show in public and at blaming everyone and everything else for what happens. For years I’ve wondered if he really blames himself or if he is genuinely convinced that nothing is his own fault.

But my mother . . . I don’t know what my mother is. She seems like she has nothing of her own, no personality, no nothing. Everything is programmed into her.

You know how some babies are extremely active before they’re born, or extremely laid back from birth, or in other ways just very distinct in their personalities even in utero? And babies that aren’t usually begin to assert a distinct personality by a few months old? My own son used to cry until he was moved to a different location, even just at a month or two. He required alone time–time in his crib when he can just scream for a while, even though he doesn’t nap–almost daily since he was five or six months old. He has a very distinct personality.

Well, I don’t know that this is true, but I picture my mother as a baby. I picture her not smiling automatically, but learning when to smile based on what other people do. Not like most babies do–smiling on their own, but eventually learning social cues for smiling and laughing. No, I picture her doing it only when other people did. I picture her learning–well, everything, her entire personality, from those around her.

She went to college for a career that never seemed to fit her quite right, but wasn’t quite wrong for her either, like it was just what made sense with her life rather than something she was truly called to. She even got her master’s, not only in that career, but in a technology-based facet of that career. My mother is not technologically inclined. At all. She got her master’s, but she got it because she reproduced exactly everything that was taught in the class. Because that’s what she does. Her brain has a 1:1 input-output. She doesn’t make connections, she doesn’t draw her own conclusions except precisely has she’s been taught to do. Sometimes it’s like she has no mind of her own.

And that doesn’t sound exactly fair either. Because that makes it sound like she’s a doormat, just going along with whatever she’s told. And that’s not true. But her decisions are based entirely on how she’s been programmed. I know cynical people who have claimed that that’s all anyone does, but trust me, it’s not. People have their own personalities, their own inclinations, their own gut instincts, that are maybe learned by experienced but that are altered by who they are. That’s why my siblings and I all have different reactions to and perspectives of everything that happened as we were growing up. I’m more focused on the blame, anger, and yelling. I remember that more. One sibling is more focused on the hoarding thing as the primary problem, where as (despite the name of this blog) I tend to see that more as a symptom among a myriad of others.

[Because I knowt hat sibling is reading this, I will specify: I know she knows that it's not the only problem. It's just where her focus tends to be more. Just like I know it is a problem, yet it's not where my focus tends to be first, or where my hurtful memories dwell.]

So yes, people learn from their environments, they change and grow, or don’t grow, in part due to their environments. But that’s the key: in part. They have themselves that they put into it.

I don’t know what my mother’s “self” could possibly be. I’m not entirely convinced she has a “self.” It’s like she’s just what other people have put into her and has nothing of her own. I just don’t know how else to describe her.

So! What does this mean? It means that my mother a hoarder. My mother has anger (and other emotional) issues. My mother is good at putting on a show in public and at blaming everyone and everything else for what happens.

I’m just not convinced that any of this is of her.

Does this mean she’s less at fault for all of their problems? Not in the slightest. She married him. She allowed herself to become this. I have a very hard time believing that anyone really has nothing of themselves, no matter how much my mother may seem like it. Somewhere in there, there MUST be a person who is her own. And by letting everyone else program her instead, she is at least as much at fault.

Unless my mother really is a robot.

Letter to my Parents

Whoa! Two posts in one day? Shall we call this making up for lost time?

Actually, part of why I kept not posting was because the previous post, Reality–cost/benefit analysis part 2, was saved under a draft and I had to finish that before I moved on, since, well, it’s part 2. But I was dreading doing it because the original way I was going to do it was too complicated. (Why do I do that to myself? No idea.) So instead I kept avoiding it, or just not having time for it, and by the time I did it . . . well, I shortened it significantly and it took about 5 minutes. Yup.

Anyway! Meanwhile, my counselor has assigned me to explore some of the more painful memories of things regarding my father (and I’ll probably explore things about my mother too – sometimes they’re hard to separate) to try to work through the pain and just leave things in the past where they belong. So I’m going to do that . . . later. I’m just not quite up for it yet.

Instead, I’m going to do what I promised someone several months ago, and post a letter I wrote last summer to my parents. (A not-to-be-sent letter, mind you.) I’ve gone through it and changed names to be a little more generic, and maybe a few other details. And rather than calling them by the pet names I’ve always called them, I changed every direct address to “Mother” and “Father.” Even though that’s not what I actually call them. Other than that, it’s just as I wrote it originally.

Dear Mother and Father,

You’ve known me for nearly 25 years – over 25 years if you count in utero. You tell me many things about myself. But I wonder two things. First, I wonder if you realize how little you really know me. And second, I wonder how much you really know about yourselves. And those two thoughts are linked to create a third one: do you realize how much what you may not know about yourselves (or may not admit about yourselves) affects what you may not know about me?

I feel a little hypocritical talking about how little you know me and all, because quite honestly, I have very little desire to be closer to you. Father, I miss our late-night conversations, but I would have a hard time feeling close to you again after many things from the past, and even from the present. Most of which you probably don’t even realize or remember happened. Or maybe you do, deep inside, but I sincerely doubt you ever admit it to yourself. Please realize, this is not about forgiveness, it’s about trust. Mother, you I think I could trust more easily if only we could get past certain things, but I have a hard time believing that will happen. Not that it can’t, mind you. But it’s a personality thing—I’ve never really connected with you, and that on a personal level. A personal connection doesn’t develop just because problems are fixed.

And I guess that’s the first thing that you don’t know about me. You’ve always been so busy seeing me as the “good girl” that you never took time to really know my personality. Oh, sure, Father can analyze me: talks a lot, disorganized, artistic, a bit of a scatterbrain, yup, looks like a sanguine! But I’m not just a piece of biology to study and classify. I’m a person. And that involves a lot more than just categorizing me as a sanguine. There’s a lot more to me than that. In fact, of the 4 personality types, I’m almost an even split of three of them.

Whatever. Personality types aren’t really what I want to talk about, but they do pertain to what I’m trying to say here. But first you have to understand that I’m going to use the animal name version, not the one that Father always taught us, just because I know that version better. Choleric=Lion, Sanguine + Phlegmatic=Otter, Melancholy÷2=Golden Retriever and Beaver.

Now that that’s explained: I’m an otter/golden retriever/beaver mix. What you don’t realize, in your insistence on labeling me “Sanguine” all the time, is that I’m incredibly sensitive. Oh, you know I’m sensitive to some extent, at least. But you don’t know that what made you call me your “jewel” child, what made you think I was oh-so-perfect, was that I was so sensitive that I was afraid to hurt you. And I still am. I’m struggling just to write any of this because, even knowing that you’ll never read it (God forbid that a Harriet the Spy scenario should take place) I still hate feeling like I’m saying things that will hurt you. But the fact is, I’ve been hurt. And it’s a lot harder to get over a hurt that built up over a lifetime—one that I didn’t even realize was there until I was in high school—than it is to get over a hurt that happened all at once, or even over several years later in life.

Mother, you put so much pressure on me. Maybe because I was sensitive, you treated me like your own personal counselor, even when I was little—3 or 4. And I’ve seen you do the same thing to my nephew and it kills me. Why do you get SO upset about things and cry SO easily? Let me give you a hint: it’s not “just the way you are.” You need counseling, but not the sort a child can provide to her mother or, worse, to his grandmother. But you won’t admit it. Just let go of your pride and admit it! Because being 4 and feeling like I have to stay and let Mother cry and can’t go do what I want, when she’s ostensibly “comforting me” about something that I’m not upset about . . . or watching a 3-year-old hug his grandmother and try to make her feel better when, again, she’s ostensibly “comforting him” about something that he wasn’t that upset about while she’s bawling . . . that’s not right, Mother. Being 14 or 15 or however old I was and being told that I’m the “jewel” during a whole time of your pouring your heart out about things my older sisters were doing . . . again, it’s not right. Why do you think that you never knew that I was involved in Wicca? (And Father, I know you’re going to say, “I knew.” And you may be able to trace back and piece things together and even figure out when it was before I tell you. But you didn’t know, at least not for sure, and I don’t really feel like putting up with your feigned-superiority-in-order-to-feel-better-about-myself complex right now, so please don’t even go there.) You never knew, I never told you, because I didn’t want you to be hurt. I didn’t want to see you cry. I felt responsible for protecting you. I, your daughter, felt responsible for protecting you, my mother. It never occurred to me that you, the parent, should protect me. And what did you protect me from? Not much. I never felt like I could go to you with anything but the most basic problems. I never told you when I started my period, I never wanted your help shopping for a bra, I never felt like I could ask you questions about things, not because of the afore-mentioned lack of connection—at least not solely—but because I felt like I was supposed to protect you and support you and make you feel better. A counselor doesn’t go to the counselee for council, and I could never go to you.

Father, you were different. You I could talk to. Not about personal things—neither of you ever knew about my personal life, at least not any more than what I would be willing to tell the average person I happened to be sitting next to in public and happened to strike up a conversation with. But I could at least talk to you about intellectual things—science, history, theology, philosophy. But those were treasured moments. A child wants Father’s approval more than Mother’s. I don’t know why, but it’s true. There’s just something about the father figure. But almost every moment, I was afraid that the fuse would run out and you would blow. I tried so hard, and then gave up trying. Not once, dozens of times. This time it would be different, this time the house would be clean. Always better in the future, but always failing. Why? Well, certainly part of it was my own lack of willingness to do anything. I don’t like cleaning. Still don’t. But a major part of it was the blame. When I could spend the entire day cleaning and doing as much as I could, and instead of being thanked for my work, I had to listen to yelling about how little had been done, what was the point?

You always loved to say, “A place for everything and everything in everything else’s place.” But it was never true. Never in my life did we have a place for everything. Why? Because you insisted on having as much junk as possible. I mean, seriously, we weren’t allowed to throw away meat trays. We weren’t allowed to throw away empty pill bottles. And what’s worse, I still have a hard time with that!

Mother? She’s not a hoarder. She’s a yeller, but I’m not sure she was to begin with. And she’s a blamer, but again, I’m not sure she was to begin with. Maybe some, but not as much. But you? You get angry at everyone for everything. Who are you really angry at? Oh, I could psychobabble you all day, I could analyze and research and whatever. But the fact is, choices are still choices. Regardless of whether you’re really angry at yourself or God or your father for dying before you were born or your stepfather for being abusive or your mother for marrying him or the world in general . . . none of that matters. The fact is, you choose again and again to express that anger at your family, more than anyone else. Whether you really think you’re blameless in everything, or whether you really blame yourself for everything, you choose to express your blame at your family. Or circumstances beyond your control. Or wherever you can to make sure you’re not outwardly blaming yourself. And that anger, and that blaming, it hurts everyone. It hurts you, it hurts us. And I really think Mother’s hoarding tendencies (which are nothing compared with yours) and her yelling and her blaming are largely due to your telling her she couldn’t throw anything away, your yelling at her, your blaming her.

Mother, this doesn’t absolve you. Whether you would yell and blame anyway or whether it’s from Father, you’re not absolved from the responsibility of it any more than I am from the responsibility of taking care of my own home and of getting over things from the past. Just as neither of you are absolved from the responsibility of properly managing funds. Father, you blame Mother for reasons such as the following: “The church gave us a grocery store gift card for $50, and it’s been a long time since we’ve had a really nice meal so I splurged.” Direct quote from her to me. Understandable why this would be upsetting. After all, managing that money (and any other money) more wisely would mean food in the house more regularly. (Planning regular meals rather than “let’s just buy whatever and eat it as we feel like it” could help tremendously with that too.) Mother, I’ve never heard you distinctly blame Father for the financial difficulties—I think it was largely from you that we, and Kat in particular, got the idea that there was no money simply because there were too many kids—but Father, most people blame you. People from your church (do you know how many people you haven’t fooled with your masks?), friends and parents of friends who know the family better than you realize, and I’m pretty sure all of my siblings do too. You’re the one who complains about having no space, then goes and buys more junk at the thrift store. You’re the one who insists on buying stupid little trinkets every Christmas that will just break later that day and serve no logical purpose. You’re the one who must have cable because, sob sob, poor you, you’re stuck at home and not able to go anywhere. And of course, it’s not like you’re capable of doing anything but watch TV all the time. That is, not unless it’s something you actually want to do.

I mentioned the masks. I hadn’t gotten to those yet. This letter is obviously very scattered and probably will never become better organized. Why bother? It’s for me, not for you. Anyway, the masks: people at church know who you are. People in the schools know who you are. Some of them knew even before I did. I was still trying to protect you when [a particular angel of a teacher] was trying to protect me. I was just realizing how much of a mask you wore and understanding why my sisters left the church—because they saw the masks earlier—when [a particular amizing lady at church] was trying to protect me. Why do you think you can make friends so easily, but not retain them so easily? Father, you especially. How many close friends do you really have? What happened to [one]? What happened to [another]? Where’d they go? They saw your mask, tried to help you, eventually got fed up with you enough to point-blank tell you that you needed to change, you got mad, and as far as you’re concerned, they left you. Well, I would too if I were in a circumstance like that. Yeah, [one]’s comment about “getting rid of that traveling pharmacy and getting a job,” that was unnecessary. I mean, the doctors put you on those meds. It’s not like you’re just a hypochondriac popping pills for no reason. Or like you’ve ever been put on placebos or anything. But what prompted it? He saw that you wear a mask in public and become someone else completely in private. The Bible calls that hypocrisy, and it’s not just an arbitrary term. Hypocrites were actors who wore literal masks. The only differences between you and them are that your mask is metaphorical and the public is your audience. And when people see that so much of your life is made of self-scripted lies, why should they trust you that any part of it is real?

Things run through my head. Father yelling at us for how selfish we were to complain about not having anything to eat in the house when he was stuck there all day and at least we got school lunches. Mother yelling, “If one person could put one thing away in this house just once, I’d be thrilled!” Untrue. You wouldn’t notice. That’s like saying you’d be thrilled if someone put two pieces of hay parallel in an entire haystack. Besides that, it was a can opener. Was it really worth getting that angry about not being able to find a can opener? Especially when there was about a one in five chance that you’re the one who hadn’t put it back.

Anyway. These, the other things I’ve mentioned, these are the go-to examples I hold in the forefront of my memory, the things that my brain automatically reverts to when I think of what it was like growing up with you. But the thing I mentioned with my nephew, having you get mad at my brother for taking care of his own house and family over going to help you with something, getting frustrated because no one is helping you with something you haven’t even asked for help with, yelling at my nephew instead of trying to actually help him when he’s way overwhelmed and confused, and most of all, the continued state of your house and finances . . . all of these just show that it’s not our fault. And they’re things that I don’t want my current or future children to be around. I don’t want them getting yelled at. Someone told me her family is similar and that after a visit with her family, her daughter asked, “Why does Grammy hate Aunt so-and-so?” because of the constant yelling. I don’t want that same question from my own children. I don’t want him in an unsanitary environment. And I certainly never want to hear you utter the words, “I don’t care what your mother says, I’m punishing you for thus-and-such anyway!” Especially when it’s a matter of not getting into things in your house that shouldn’t even be there—broken ornaments, I believe it was. I don’t want my son to feel like he has to comfort his grandmother, I don’t want him to feel like a mess that he didn’t make is his fault, I don’t want any of that for him. It’s so hard because, as I told my husband this past weekend, you’re the only family I come from. I don’t have a choice. I can “adopt” all the brothers and sisters and parents that I want to, I can love and enjoy my in-laws, and I can love and enjoy building my own family. But you’re still my parents, and I still love you. I can’t change either fact, and don’t actually want to. But it makes it so hard when I have to deal with wanting my son to know his grandparents and yet feeling like I can’t leave him alone with them. And like I have to limit his exposure even when I am there, because I don’t want him around all that negativity. I have no intention of trying to protect him from everything—how could I ever send him out into the world that way? And parents are supposed to teach kids and prepare them so they can face the world. They’re supposed to raise them so they can let them go. I don’t feel like you’ve let me go, but putting that aside, my point is that I want to train my son and any future siblings he may have to be able to face the world. Doing that does not involve keeping them from knowing that there are hard things. But does it mean that when he’s just an infant, a toddler, a preschooler, that I have to expose him to all the yelling and blaming that I dealt with? Even in short increments . . . it’s not like drinking a little poison, then a little more, to build up a tolerance. Anger is a poison for which no tolerance can be built. A callous, perhaps, but I do not find that a suitable alternative. And when dealing with a small child and his tender years, will I have to answer why their grandmother and grandfather don’t really hate each other, or explain that their grandmother wasn’t yelling because it was his fault but because she just does that sometimes, or explaining that when their grandfather shouted at their cousin, it wasn’t really their cousin’s fault and he’s not really a bad boy?

It’s just too much. It’s stressful enough feeling like I’m physically attached to you all and not allowed to go far or, worse, be out of contact for long. My in-laws miss us, but they let us have our own family. Not only are we constantly drawn back to you and not allowed to have our own family, but we’re drawn back to your yelling and your blaming. And now we have a child to consider too. This isn’t just me anymore, isn’t just my hurts anymore. And never was, really. I have siblings. Weren’t we worth enough to change? If the kids weren’t worth enough, are the grandkids? Or is your pride still more important than seeking the help that you two need—individually and together—and recognizing the ways in which you need to change?

Like I said, I have no desire to be friends, to be closer to you. Not that that means much, since you probably never realized that I didn’t consider us friends. But I do still love you and I always will.

In that love,
Your Daughter

Reality – cost/benefit analysis part 2

Wow. I am SO sorry this has taken me so long! I actually had a draft started the next day, but . . . well, let’s just say the past–wow, has it already been almost a month?–has kind of gotten away from me. I had to put my focus on some other things for a while. Still definitely working on that whole “balance” thing I talk so much about.

So! In the last post, I described my ideal house. Well, not the structure–trust me, I could describe that extensively too–but how I would like to keep my house. So today I’m going to do the actual cost/benefit analysis of keeping it that way. I intended to write this based on specific points from my ideal house, I discovered that it all really boils down to the same costs and benefits.

So! Here we go:

Having a house that is not immaculate, but balanced in its cleanliness and comfort.

cost–Balance is extremely difficult to achieve, so this would cost me some peace of mind while trying to achieve it. I’m not sure “peace of mind” is exactly accurate for what I’m trying to say, but it’s the best I can come up with right now. It would also cost me the extra effort to keep the house clean enough to stay that way. And it involves facing my fear of not swinging too far the other way and my fear of failure.

benefit–The benefit of this would be having everyone comfortable when they come over; not feeling awkward when people just drop by; not racing to clean at the last minute when someone calls to ask if they can come over later that day . . . or even the next day; teaching my children to keep a clean house, as well as the benefits of balance; and developing a general routine that, over time, will mean that I have greater peace of mind rather than less.

So there we go: a long-waited for post that really isn’t very much at all. Don’t worry, more should be coming more regularly because . . . I have specific writing assignments from my counselor.

Idealism – cost/benefit analysis part 1

I recently talked about how my counselor asked me to discuss why I fear becoming better than I am. I still don’t entirely know what I fear, and I need to continue to explore that. One of the biggest issues I run into is that I easily start looking at it from an analytical outside perspective.  I can name all sorts of “logical” and “probable” reasons, but when I stop stepping back and analyzing, when I just think about what actually drives me, the analytical psychobabble no longer sounds reasonable.

But my counselor also asked me to do something else. She asked me to think about what I consider ideal, how I want my house to be kept, and then make a cost/benefit analysis exploring the costs and benefits of succeeding at keeping my house the way I want it.

So today I’ll explore the ideal house, and tomorrow I’ll write my actual cost/benefit analysis. So here it is:

My ideal house, believe it or not, would NOT be immaculate. As I’ve said several times before, I strive for balance. I’m terrible at balance, I have no idea how to actually achieve balance, I don’t even always know what is too far one way or the other much less what to do about it. But I do strive for balance.

So no, my ideal house would not be immaculate. It would be a place where you can be comfortable walking in and just plopping. A place welcoming to everyone. Not a place where no extra item can ever be collected. Not a place where things are wasted because recycling (in-home recycling, I mean) could eventually lead to hoarding. Not a place of fear. I don’t want to fear becoming my parents, nor do I want to fear becoming a neurotic minimalist who will freak out to realize she has two items in her house that haven’t been used in at least a month and therefore must be completely useless.

My ideal house would have clean dishes and clean floors and clean laundry that’s folded and put away where it belongs. It would have no more than one load of dishes or laundry backed up, but that doesn’t mean that every dish needs to be washed the second it’s dirty, or that every article of dirty clothing should be put right into the washer so that it can be washed.

My ideal house would not be a stressful place of must-keep-everything-clean-at-all-times. There can be children’s toys on the floor, but they should be picked up before bed. There can be messes made while cooking, but they should be cleaned up when the cooking is done. Or when the eating is done. Or at least by the next day, but only for special occasions.

My ideal house would be sanitary. But it would not be a show house. It would be lived-in. It would be a place people could come and not worry about the dishes they’re eating off of, or even they’re sitting in. But they also wouldn’t worry about the food that dripped on the table while they were eating, or about a throw getting rumpled when they sat on the couch.

A worry-free, stress-free place–that would be my ideal house.