Wednesday, January 13, 2010

fucking and punching

When you don't hear from me for spells at a time it's not for lack of content. I stifle the urge to set e-type as often as Hank Moody, lead character/warshed up novelist of Californication, gets an offer to inspect a dewy young vagine at point blank range. I do not write for lack of material. I do not write for self-preservation, for everything I say is not what anyone else would ever say and those are the things that get used against you in a The Manny-said-I-said type of situation, no matter the context.

During my apparently thumb-twiddling silence, you all have been lobbing perfectly legitimate questions at me. The first of which I should have addressed ages ago, but alas I did not. What ever became of BMF, is what folks want to know. The short answer is that he made the fatal mistake of falling in love with me, something I simply will not tolerate any longer. My career in high-altitude masonry started going down around the time my marriage was going up in flames. I kicked everybody out of my castle and built a wall taller and thicker and more impervious than anything Henry VIII could have envisaged. But it is narrow, and well-like in its wallness. Nobody is invited or welcome in. It's safer that way. The only way to peek behind my wall is for me to levitate out of it fueled on nothing more than the fumes of my very own grandiosity.

I pop out for a little while, land on the slippery terra firma you civilized people of the world call home, open my mouth out of which apparent bile falls, and don my pointy hat and broom once again to descend back into my well until it's time to resurface again.

The thing about misfitery is that you have to be ok with being a misfit among your own to go on. I am an odd type of misfit. A white collar Jewish girl trapped in an anarchist's brainhole. I got a good public school primary education, followed by excellent schooling all the way through my master's degree, married a right gent with mad earning potential, got a fine big house with all the trappings of happiness, started a business that got bigger than I could handle. Then I lost the most meaningful beacon of hope and love I ever knew, followed by my true love, my children, all that money, my home, and my compass.

Now I'm bobbing along a familiar sea of aloneness, no life jacket, no fear of sharks. For as much as I wish I weren't a misfit, I am. I don't change, I won't change, and I can't change. The Manny finally told me he didn't want me anymore because I said I wouldn't change. And then I began wondering once again if I had become someone different than who he met and loved. Could I have possibly changed that much? This idea weighed heavy on my mind until I found this letter of referral on behalf to the graduate school I ultimately attended, weeks before I met and after which I married The Manny of my dreams.

As my parents et siblings will attest, as would Granny, the Consuelo who raised me, and anybody else who ever dared to know me well would attest themselves. Amen. Don't. Won't. Can't. I live with the fact that I suck just exactly as much as I don't. Thusly, I am not almost anyone's cup of tea. Totally.

Scrams pointed out to me that every time I get shoved down, I come back swinging harder. That's not necessarily the best thing when you're already abandoned anchovy flavored tea. When I feel personally put down, for some reason I unconsciously but doggedly try to lift others up -- probably so I can hear myself talk with some pep. So what I'm working on right now is trying to curb the urge to encourage others to be more like me; to find solutions, surmount ridiculous odds, dream big then live it -- even if it's slow getting there, take your lumps and learn as much as you can from them, find a way around the system, and keep your eye out for what's next. I come off like a grandiose motivational speaker/life coach. And what others call grandiose, I call self confidence. But if I I didn't have a tanker of it on reserve, The Manny would probably have me locked up in a tidy little sanitarium somewhere by now.

Scrams calls it The Drama of the Gifted Child.

The Drama of the Gifted Child (Das Drama des begabten Kindes, 1979)

In her first book (also published under the titles Prisoners of Childhood and The Drama of Being a Child) Alice Miller defines and elaborates the personality manifestations of childhood trauma. She seeks the truth about her own childhood experiences and in so doing defines the model that has become widely accepted[citation needed] in psychotherapeutic circles, such as the Tavistock Institute. She addresses the two reactions to the loss of love in childhood, depression and grandiosity; the inner prison, the vicious circle of contempt, repressed memories, the etiology of depression, and how childhood trauma manifests itself in the adult.

And what others call Gifted Child, I call no shit self confidence. If nobody else believes in you in the way that you believe in yourself and you happen to have a bottomless well (wink, wink) of self confidence, there are bound to be some dramatic accusations of grandiosity. Because every time I feel like I'm the victim of an emotionally violent life fucking, I come back punching with some pretty big ideas. Scrams also likes to remind me that I've spent enough money in therapy to maintain my strengths and acknowledge my weaknesses. That's a good thing when you're the clean up crew on an anchovy tea flood.

Agggghhhhh.

And then I read these.




Ahahahahahahha.

In other news, the house is in foreclosure even though The Manny claims not to have seen the foreclosure notices chained to the door. Oy goddamn vey.

I need to move. Foo's school is overcroweded, so they are tightening the boundary restrictions. There are exactly two places for rent that could accommodate us, but not comfortably. The search continues.

I was approached about a business venture. I've spent the last week doing research and crunching numbers. The zeroes are mindnumbing. But possibly not incentive enough. More to come.

And lastly, Foo started singing along to a song in the car because it reminds her of Daddy.


Funny that. It does me, too. (june 09)



My little brainhole is formulating a plan while making no decisions. Whatever I do next needs to support me and the children as much as I can for the next 60 years. It's a deep well. But I got myself into it, I'll get myself out of it.

talk soon,
xodana

2 comments:

Patricia said...

That is one awesome reference letter! Yep, you haven't changed - he did.

I may be a repressed you - I have the self confidence but not the mojo to really risk a lot so I tend to go the slower to my dreams route...

Hugs,
Patricia

Karin said...

I agree with Patricia...you're not the one who changed, he did. If you refused to comply by his new fucked up rules, that's his problem not yours.

Keep on being strong, you're doing an awesome job!