My father only hit my brothers when being punished and they got even by teasing me. Calling me an ostrich was one of their names. It wasn't till I was older that I appreciated the accuracy of the image.
In 2008, Mother's Day was a very long day. I wrote a lot. It's harsh to realize that it is nearly three years that I have been living this way.
05-06-08 1:33 pm
Mother’s day is coming up and I still hang on to impossibilities. My daughter has shut me out. My son talks to me briefly, if I talk to him, if lets me. My mother never calls me to see how I am and she knows. Maybe she is the ostrich my brothers always called me, able to put her head in the sand so as not to see.
I have all these fantasies of speaking out, screaming what’s inside, being heard.
Ellen DeGeneres: she represents kindness, the possibility that kindness and real generosity matters. I want to believe she is real. But, then I always live through TV, imagining I am a part of these TV lives. As if I could be a part of anyone’s.
I always want something more than what people want to offer me. I am despicable – a leech. I suck the life out of people and they through me away. Unless it is their job to help me, even then I expect over time, even people are paid to listen grow weary.
Kindness and generosity are no match for needing people and exposing that insatiable need is deadly. People have to leave.
Ice Princess: I watched this movie the other day and I was appalled by it. A girl’s mother rejects her daughter, because she wants to follow her dreams not her mother’s. When her mother comes around in the end, it’s her daughter’s success which justifies everything. How appalling. As though, if she had failed then her mother would have been right. As if success is the true measure, not the child’s choice and passion. I was so repulsed by the mother and by our society valuing success over valuing someone for they are, for what they want, for what matters to them.
I raised my children well, I delight in who they are. An extremely underappreciated, misunderstood gift. I never had that. Am I broken because of it? Was I born broken?
I WAS broken before my brother Raimond molested me, before he sat at dinner table and threatened to hit me over the head with a buttered ear of corn, and I said he couldn’t, yet he did. And everyone laughed, said I asked for it. I expected too much. I expected not to be bullied, not in the presence of my mother and father. I expected to be protected and to be respected, and that was not offered as an option.
I was an ostrich to my family. I hid my head in the sand refused to be a part of their lives, though I desperately wanted that.
When I was in junior high, I hit my head and wrists against the brick fireplace trying to bruise myself. When I was 18 I cut my arm – desperate and yet appalled at the idea that I would be faking the real desire to die in order to get attention. An expected consequence was how pain felt less painful.
I feel this rage inside about how horrible it is to be human, to be alive. I want to die. I hurt all the time, unless I am numb. The pain hides when I laugh. But, I am tired of fighting to live. I am so tired.
Christie, it is not your fault. I should never have seen your light as a star I could hold onto and nourish myself from. That is a burden no one should have and you do not deserve that. I am blessed to be have been a part of your life, to have had an opportunity to give to you, to see you grow up. I don’t want to break you.
I don’t want to let you go, but I have to. I am an insatiable void that sucks life from what I touch. I don’t understand why I cannot be enough for me. I have to die. I want this to be true. I want this to be the best option.
Mother’s day: I dread it. My son will call, I don’t think my daughter will. I will call my mother – or I think I will.
I am so tired. I hurt so much.
I don’t want to wait and be disappointed.
Kian, I don’t know how you will be impacted. I know you don’t want me to die. I am so proud of you, you are so kind and generous. I know I am not fun to be with, and I wish I could be easier to tolerate. I am so sorry.
I am holding on by playing repetitive solitaire games, watching TV shows, imagining someone will save me – that someone will care enough, that I will matter. I can’t do harm to my children. I need to believe dying is better.
Ellen: I would love to be able to spend each day doing kind things for other people, quietly, outside any limelight, just knowing that my being alive that day was better for even one of people I touched, no matter how small the gift of living that day was. That would be a blessed way to live.
05-06-08 5:38 pm
Four hours later and I am numb, but not devastatingly sad anymore. I am so exhausted doing nothing but eating and peeing and shitting. If only my mind went, I wouldn’t know and it wouldn’t matter.
I often think about Robert and Rosalind: gifted creators, arrogant and snobs. I believe them – what they taught about freedom – but it was a lie. They lied to me about paying their cleaning help $10 an hour so they could change their agreement with me and pay me $12 an hour instead of $15, claiming it would have been more if I had been doing computer stuff. I think it was Robert’s desire and Rosalind’s lie. I will never know. When they gave me computer work and did not pay me $15. I could not understand why. But, by then, too much time had passed. I was hooked, caught in my own pattern of behavior. That missed opportunity to say “no” when they changed the deal from $15 to $12, followed by my inability to speak when I need most to. I justified that moment of weakness, even though originally I spoke the truth. Today, I believe they paid me less because they saw their “help” and “time” as payment for my work. They saw their generosity as more than enough compensation. And it didn’t matter that I didn’t know their generosity wasn’t free. I was expected to pay for it. I owed them and in their eyes, I was more than fairly compensated, because they felt what they gave me was more than fair. From their point of view, I was ungrateful. Oddly, I was more grateful than they ever knew. I thought they gave freely. How naïve of me. In the moment, I think they did give freely. But over time, the gifts became obligations, compensation, something I owed them back.
I think there were times Rosalind gave me things freely, but later those gifts were tallied as compensation. What surprised me most is that seeing that didn’t change anything for Rosalind. In fact, she was mean, rubbing it in, as though she was right and I deserved it. But I was grateful. I would never harm her.
Rosalind would like me to think that my behavior is driven by avoiding knowing that I think I am stupid … ironically, I do think that. I am very stupid about people. Some things I am very slow to learn. Stupid is not as a hidden revelation, that drives my behavior. The pattern of my behavior is blatant and it appears immutable.
I am exhausted by living. I have been lying in bed for over 6 months and I would be content if it were viable for me to live this way. Disgusted by my life, but at least I wouldn’t harm anyone.
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