i grew up hating myself. i thought that everything bad that happened was because of me. my mom left – me. my stepmom and dad fought and then split up. me. my dad stayed at home and delivered newspapers and collected welfare, but before i was born, he worked for himself and raked in the dough. me. i did that. i caused relationships to crumble. poverty. drug abuse and alcoholism. all by the simple fact that i was born, was too smart for my own good, was too close to my daddy and was a chubby hippy-looking girl who wore clothes from the salvation army. and then i grew up some.
i realized that i didn’t inflict those things on those people. they exercised their own demons. they chose. they abandoned. whatever you wanna call it.
but i remained a person who was positive that everyone would leave at some point or another – they always did. i was made of approval. i was worthless unless someone told me what i was worth. someone could sit in my vicinity and if they didn’t talk to me, i knew it was because they really wanted nothing to do with me.
friends, well, they were just being nice. they didn’t really like me; i was an exercise in patience and once i was removed from their view, they could talk and poke fun and regale each other with stories of my loserdom. i knew that no one would want much to do with me, except to see what they could get. don’t even get me started on guys.
let’s just say that i lost my virginity after having to talk my boyfriend into having sex because i thought it was what i was supposed to do and how i knew that he really liked/loved me.
i started trying to work on that a little while ago. i can’t say when, i don’t remember. but i will say that it’s failing.
it struck me a couple weeks ago, after i got in an msn fight with my best friend and said nasty, hurtful knife-poking things to her: i’m becoming my mother. i’ve always been her in small ways. a squinting eye, a “fff” sound that i made when i’m not super angry but still calling bullshit on someone, my hips. i was her spitting image until i became super anorexic and dropped below 85 lbs. then i looked like my dad. funny that i had to become the image of a concentration camp survivor in order to astound others with my daddy’s bone structure and eyes. zoë has those eyes.
anyways, my mom. we don’t talk. we haven’t for…7 years? the last thing i said to her was “you ruined my life, why would i want you to ruin my wedding?” (i was engaged to the sexually-coerced boyfriend. we split up a week before our wedding after almost 2 years of being engaged…well, 8 days, but.) i regret that, mostly. i meant it, i think i still would but it was harsh and…well, she had it coming and i finally let it out. she left on my 2nd birthday. she told me she’s never wanted me. she used to call me “the little asshole” – which later turned into “her little bum.” i grew up thinking that was a term of affection.
my dad once was talking to me about her and said “i never thought hitting a woman was okay until i met your mother.” apparently, she opened the flood gates, but that’s another dreary post.
point being, i can see that i’m becoming this angry, what-the-fuck-are-you-looking-at? person who will eventually build more walls than she scales because it’s just not worth being disappointed and hurt and trusting anymore. it’s easier to fuck people over before they can do it to you, to stab them in the back before you even turn around once and bare your own, to push and demand the punch in the face (even just to say, “see, you could hit me but it’s okay cuz i deserved it”), to judge and criticize and give love conditionally.
oh and to try to drown your baby. or give her lsd and put her in a dryer. or sit in the middle of a highway with her on your lap. or allow your hell’s angels boyfriend’s tarantula to bite her. or watch the gremlins with her when she’s 4 and too precocious to know that there will be 2 years of nightmares to follow. or just, you know, lose her in the Bay downtown and then take her home and give her a beer while you’re cutting up coke. (way to go, mom)
i need an intervention.
