[Word of caution...what started out on a playful, upbeat note, quickly turned...more tales of an adult nature.....Proceed at your own risk...really]
I came across my old Suzanne Vega Cd, picked up my paint brush, drug out all my paint supplies, and came back to the world. Sometimes I just get a bit overstressed and everything turns off...for awhile..then the lights come back on and there is this rapidly flowing stream of thoughts, words and ideas. Listening to Suzanne Vega and "Marlene on the Wall", "Small Blue Thing" (truly a marvel!! If you have never heard it, you simply MUST) and "The Queen and the Soldier" often has a profound, life affirming effect. She talksings in pictures...a very deep, visual artist who embraces her pain and can portray it in a non-threatening way, like its ordinary and just the way life is.
My first thoughts,as I listen to Suzanne, is of when my sister, Joy, was still alive (funny, its been so long since i have ever actually spoke her name) and we shared an apartment and her friend Leebos (oh gosh, that wasn't even her name...okay, Lisa, we just called her Leebos) were sitting up one night,listening to music and analyzing songs...and i ...hmmm...hesitated...Do I really want to go there? But I took the chance..and yes, the music is very moving with verbage and memory...profoundly bittersweet.
Onto another topic...Love and the twisting of the word. Whenever I think of the word "love", the visual memory of having to give my mother a kiss goodnight and tell her I love her...oh, I am quite repulsed at the thought, immediately springs to mind. The word, to me, is twisted, perverted, sickly, wanton, flagrant, bullying, a tool and a weapon, a gun at my head that threatens, a doormat, laying on the floor, please walk on me...an order...fuck...Ummm, how could such a simple little word that, hmmm, typically, denotes some sort of happiness reflect, gotten to the point that it means the exact opposite. I say "love" and I see hands wringing tightly trying to squeeze something out of nothing. And I remember thinking, in regards to my mother and her endless request for my saying the words...how vulgar and perverted This Is....a woman, a person who so desperately wanted my love yet was unable to show the same to me? I mean, I never felt love from her...shouldn't the saying of the word actually mean one feels it? How empty....It was then that I consciously became aware that words are often said that are empty and have no real meaning or feeling behind them.
She was an empty shell of a woman...damn, I don't mean anything against her...she did the best she could and I bear her no ill will whatsoever...Yeah, she failed to "protect me"...what a joke..it was a cultural thing, incest and abuse was so rampant in my family line, she was simply following suit...whatever...I have moved on from that...Ya Think?
Anyway, back when I was 17 and I had to perform this nightly ritual...I vowed...OH Big Lightbulb...that I would never, ever be so shallow as to say things without feeling and meaning them. Damn, my words come back to haunt me, yet again. Thus, since I said it, it was written in stone and i have adhered to that principal. My word is my bond.
Getting back, I think I need to find a way to untwist this word...as I hear it is really rather pleasant. Somehow find a way to disengage from this particle of the past that continues to haunt and mislead.
So when I think of her....I feel ill...its like she was so consumed with, oh gosh, there must be some fun psychological terminology out there that would best describe her other than, "The woman had some problems...some deep-seated issues..." She was so full of anxiety, I can sense the palpitations coming on from here...So chock full of fear and warning...fear that someone would find out what was happening in the house (and it was dreadful and sick and twisted and perverted, let me tell ya)...and that her beloved (Phff..I spat, please excuse) children would be taken away because they were being beaten and raped and they hadn't eaten in days and there was no heat in the house...blah, blah, blah...shit...(one of these days I sooo want to let go of this shit)....and afraid of doctors, medicine, prying teachers, microwaves, drinking the water(Ahh, for a glass of Kool aid right now), foreigners, strangers, demons, dementors, police, you name it.....Seriously, she was afraid of everything and everyone and she felt it her motherly, smootherly, and paranoid duty to espouse and share those lovely fragments of her imagination with her eldest daughter.
And I, the dutiful Sponge, absorbed and took it upon myself to Believe her and her rants because....Because I wanted her to love me and to allow that to happen...hmmm, I validated her "claims" and absorbed all of her fear lest she feel alone on that island where the palm tress were evil spirits trying to steal her soul and the conch shells were really ticking time bombs..shhh,only she can hear them and the antichrist lived in the about to erupt volcano.....This is sooo not amusing, not fucking funny at all. Shit, this is her...and it became me...little children are little sponges and being so faithful and being so Aspie and having no clear definition of boundaries, OMg, yeah, its a butt-ugly truth.
She made me promise things....promise to always take care of her...promise
I don't know...whilst I may have been tainted by her...I didn't become her...now, to roll back the hands of time and try and untangle her from me. hmmm, love,foul, empty, meaningless, there is sooo much wrong with that picture. I'll have to work on that...
Its kindof like, hmmm, having on a lifevest that is two sizes too tight and it is slowly filling with sand...hmm, funny, in one of her many wise moments, she talked, asked about which manner of death I thought would be the least painful...I know..What the Fuck kindof question is that to ask your 13 year old daughter?....yeah, she thought drowning would be least painful...well, it is far from painful...
but...if I remove this vest...fuck, her fear is the only thing tangible that she ever gave me
but...maybe its time to let it go...to take it off..damn, that thing is fastened on pretty darn tight...
for letting go of that...this painful, suffocating feeling of constantly drowning, this fear that the world is sooo extremely unsafe, dangerous, strangers will fucking snatch me and do unspeakable things...fuck..yeah, the irony....but I sidetrack..try the ol' avoidance trick...yeah, if I will...willingly remove this vest...it is all I have of her...and...and..it will be a surrender..a giving up...of the hope (ouch, theres That word) the hope, that she ever, ever will love me...oopps there slips away my fairy tale dreams...hmmm, the fucking quandry...drown in the hope, holding on to the only thing she ever gave me...I clasp my hands around the thorns on the thin sickly stem....blood pours from the wounds....and I have an extreme fight with myself...give me a minute............
I think its a common fallacy, that when someone is born that they will have parents that will love them.....thats logic talking.....I don't hate her...really, she is a good person..just incapable of ever loving me..maybe I should let that go...cause, honey, it ain't ever going to happen...
okay, so I look at the bleeding of my now empty hands...so what...they'll heal...everything heals..at some point....whatever....
how could I have ever actually reached out for anyone, if I had kept hold of that?, the stem of the rose?
And I start untying the knots....see, I had put a couple lengths of this really heavy duty rope around this life vest, lest it fall of in my sleep...or when I wasn't looking....and those knots,man, have they kindof eroded and corroded after being there so long and being dragged thru all the mud and shit of these years....so, nimble fingers, do thy work....
and the first one, the first knot, is the biggest and tightest...take a breath, .......okay, one down...I rub my hands together..they hurt from the effort...then its time for the next one, smaller than the first, but just as tight...i feel so dirty..hmm, like betrayal...like i promised to drown so you wouldn't have to go it alone..she hated being alone, doing anything alone, i think she was helpless, never even learning to drive because...because then someone would always have to help her, the only way people would be willing to be around her...she delighted(perverted) being helpless...the only way people would pay attention to her..if she were helpless...see what lessons she taught her kids
the second knot, on a different level then the first, a bit more visceral, less emotional, more of a plaything and a way she viewed things...an outer rim, on the outside, the external world.....the games she played and taught...hmmm...bullshit...its just another level of garbage....
anyway, this second knot, okay, bit more complex....because it encompassed more years, more tactics, everyday existence...all the ways she adapted to meet her needs..and, hmmm, ways I also learned....its time to change my ways...i can let this go...
and the ropes fall to the floor....and I take a deep breath...and yeah, it hurts...don't think that I have ever .and I can picture her sitting across the table from me (yeah, many reasons my sanity has been previously questioned...whatever)...
And she sits there smiling...she always smiled for everyone, the greatest clown face, exterior mask that she always wore for everyone, outside of the house....(its a ploy...don't believe it...means nothing)...
And, still wearing my vest, my present, She says "Are you sure you want to do that?" in reference to me getting ready to remove it...and i say "Yes"...I look her in the eye...yup, it is empty in there and I feel no guilt, remorse, not even pity....and I ask her to leave...now...I've got work to do.
....with only a few seconds of thought...I remove the heavy, calloused, weeping, poky vest, and I give it back to her..."this is yours...you can have it back now...."
She leaves...and I let her
