“A Scarily High Tolerance for Abuse”

That is something my therapist said to me at a session shortly before the new year. Fortunatly, she was referring to the fact that I seemed to be losing it.

In one of those perfect storms that happen so frequently in life, 3 unrelated incidents have converged and brought the observation to mind.

A mention of a woman in what would seem to be a physically comfortable but mentally unbearable relationship reminded me of my bad boyfriend history. I’ve been in two really lousy relationships, one abusive on every level, the other born of staggering incompatibility glossed over by intense physical attraction. In both situations, my self-image, historically a bit shaky (”I rock! I’m worthless! I’m worthless because I rock!”), was at a slip-it-under-the-door level. Blame it on genetics – from what I’ve learned, sub-threshold bipolar lurks in the DNA, though full-blown bi-polar seems to be an overcommitment for all but a brave few – or on any number of things. Who cares? When you believe that you have to humbly take that shit, you unfortunately might as well put a giant sign on yourself that says, “Abuse me! Really! I won’t hardly fight back.” It’s unfathomable to people looking at certain situations why anyone in that position wouldn’t just pack up and leave, but … they don’t.

Solid support got me out both times, but damn, it must have been frustrating to watch. In both cases, I wouldn’t listen, believing that I loved the controller. What I really felt was a bizarre tangle of emotions that would give some analyst a very large and lengthy headache should she be foolish enough to try to decode it. But I did break free, both times, painfully but (cliche alert) ultimately stronger. The fact that the first relationship could have left me actually dead is not lost on me. I’m grateful to be alive.

And while the experience has given me an empathy with people in the same situation, it has also given me some despair. Nothing I or anyone else can say or do will get anyone out of a bad relationship except for the person who’s in it. She has to just say, fuck you, enough, and she has to believe it enough, if only for the few minutes it takes to walk out the door.

But that realization – that it’s not my problem – is the second part of storm, and it’s probably the most revelatory. Things around the house and the office that at one time would have driven me nuts and kept me awake…just…don’t any more. I still will lose sleep over what I consider a direct attack, but I used to perceive those, as well as indirect ones, around every corner. Geez, I took almost everything personally.

One of my favorite poems is this one by Stephen Crane:

A man said to the universe:
“Sir I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”

But I didn’t really believe it, clearly, at least not as it applied to me. Now I do. Suddenly, I am able to live (at least more than half the time) my mother’s dictum, “We wouldn’t worry so much about what other people think about us if we realized how little they do.” I always sagely nodded when she said it, but somehow, in the last month, it got into my bones.

Which is why the last storm element – an angry communication so nicely written that I had to let it sink in before I realized how angry it was – is inspiring in me a healthy dose of anger in return. Time was, oh say about a month or so ago, that I would have immediately felt an obligation to fix things. I don’t now. Basically, what seems to be the main point of contention is simply untrue. In the past, I wouldn’t have rested until I straightened things out and made sure my perception was known. Somehow, I understand this time that, if the person didn’t get that perception until now, nothing I say will make any difference. If people want to insist on believing things about me that aren’t true…it’s their loss. I’m a great friend, but if you don’t agree, that’s your decision. I have nothing to do with it.

After all, my rush to mend, my willingness to always say I was wrong, my instinct to smooth things over, was really a kind of arrogance, to make myself the center of attention, to get points for being so tolerant, so humble, so forgiving. Screw that. There is so much I neither can nor should fix. There are things that are intolerable, and to tolerate them is to be a jerk. And forgiveness is great unless it’s really just a way to take more abuse, which I think mine has often been. I’m working on that part.

I like this me. It’s so much easier to live with. It’s at once lighter and more grounded.

Here’s hoping it sticks.

So….what have you been up to?

well….

I’ve been inspired, then lost the traction, and keep trying to get it back. And will, at some point. Maybe this weekend.
I read a bunch of books, at the cost of writing a bunch of posts.
I got really close to somebody really terrific. Good friends are rare and, well, good.
I realized what I don’t want to do with my life.
I started to realize that gravity is what it is. Neither more nor less.
I decided I really wanted my back back.
I cracked a filling.
I laughed a lot because I was happy.
I cried a little because I was scared.
I found out how much I loved someone.
The kids had birthdays. We did the same thing for both. It worked great once.
When toxic things came my way, I felt mad and not guilty.
I prayed more and believed I’d get results.
I got results.
I felt, and continue to feel, really really grateful for all the stuff in my life. Even the bad stuff.

Of course, I’ve been up to a lot more. Those aren’t really highlights. You can’t hardly cover those, especially if you don’t capture them as they come. But that’s ok.
Tomorrow is a sweet word.

remember me

There. I wrote something.

I will be back soon. Terribly blocked/tired/conflicted/etc. but things are going to be better now. See you soon.

2 More

Well, hell. Lately, I write mostly about death.

However, before launching into yet another mournfest, I must declare my gratitude that the fears in my last post have been vanquished. Sis 3’s operation results are completely clean, and this disease is not taking her. Even greater than this news is her incredible joyful spirit. She continues to inspire me, and I am crazy about her.

Today I found out that my first husband’s father and brother are, as of Thanksgiving of last year, both dead. My former mother-in-law calls me about every 9 months or so. She is a lovely woman and has always treated me with great kindness. She remains my sole contact with Karl’s family, who I otherwise am interested in primarily as people I used to know.

As the news sinks in, I’m mildly but not hugely surprised by all the emotions that it’s kicking up. For about a year of our lives, Karl’s father, brother, and the father’s second wife were the people I saw most regularly besides Karl’s doctor and my aerobics students.

Karl got sick while we were living in New York. From there, we headed to Boston where his older sister, who’d married well, had found us an apartment so I could take care of Karl and he could see the best doctors she could find (AIDS, unfortunately, was still such a new disease in 1986 that the best didn’t know a whole lot more than the not-best). Anyone who’s spent time in Boston can attest that the climate isn’t exactly health-friendly. Karl also hated the Red Sox. Given 6 months or less to live, he decided he wanted to move to Florida to reconcile if possible with his father after what was, at the time, 36 years of a rocky and unloving relationship.

I detested Karl’s father as soon as I met him. He was labelled “charming” by people who, I think, were trying to give themselves an excuse for being suckered by his boorish manipulation at one point or another. He was a petty, cruel man who never passed up an opportunity to get in a dig at Karl, and who I think always harbored the idea that Karl, dark, slender, and the spitting image of his black-eyed Portuguese mother, was not the son of his stocky Aryan loins. (We always had to leave for plane trips early in those days of Qaddafi, as Karl looked, in his own words, like a terrorist and we could count on him getting held up by security about half the time.) Karl had run away from home in Connecticut to New York when he was 16, headed to Portugal to dodge the draft (his maternal grandfather was there) when he was 17, and had never had a relationship with his father that had any positive aspect that I could see.

It is true that between K’s mother, father, and sister, an adequate if frugal allowance was provided for us, and his sister handled all the medical bills. For that, I’m grateful. I understand that it was hard on them financially, and I know their son was dying and that that sucked. A lot of things sucked for all of us.

I think Karl hoped for a while for his father’s respect, but I don’t think he expected to get it. He looked me in the eye about 9 months before he died and said, very matter-of-factly, “Kid, I hate my father.” He seemed resigned to it. He’d tried. I remember one particularly horrible fight where the father said, “Your whole problem with this AIDS thing is that you didn’t go off like my brother and become a war hero,” and Karl spat back, “Yeah, your fucking vegetable brother.” It went downhill from there.

That was the fight that tipped me from dislike to hatred. From then on, I had as little contact with the old man as possible.
Apparently, the brother died just 2 days after the father, and perhaps literally, according to the autopsy report (filtered to me through the mom) of a broken heart. Johnny was one of those men who, unlike Karl, desperately wanted his father’s love. He moved to Florida the same time that we did, worked for the old man, who seemed to dote on him, but prior to his death, had no love or sign of it to give to the kid. An addict like his brother (and unbeknownst to us at the time, me), Johnny fairly often harassed me to give him some of Karl’s drugs, got petulant and nasty when I wouldn’t, and generally was insanely confusing. He acted his age, which pissed me off because I could never act mine.

Johnny did have a sweet side, which was much more in evidence once Karl and I cut loose of West Palm Beach – he’d given up all hope of any type of reconciliation after a year – and headed to Key West. J came down to see us a few times, and once saw me through an insane amount of alcohol and the subsequent killer hangover with the non-judgment that only a fellow addict has in that situation. One year minus 3 days younger than me (and thus 11 years minus 4 days younger than Karl), he wanted a family that behaved something like families are supposed to, at least on TV and in movies. He never got one.

The last time I saw either the father or brother was when we all met in Miami after Karl died. Key West didn’t have a crematorium, so K’s body had to be sent to Miami. We all met in a hotel room. I was in one of the most bizarre emotional places I would ever be in. It is a terrible thing to feel tremendous relief after someone dies, but anyone who’s nursed someone through a long and gruelling illness can understand it, I think. My mother was there, and had been with Karl and me when he died, at home in Key West. I felt terrible that his mother last saw Karl in basically a cardboard box, which is how the mortician sent the body to Miami. I didn’t know that you had to order a pine box, and they didn’t say anything to anyone, apparently. That was how his parents and siblings last saw him; a cardboard box. His mother, sister and brother didn’t deserve that.

But his father did.

I don’t love the fact that still, to this day, the thought of that little bastard can make me feel so dark and stormy. Clearly, I hate his petty cruelty because it brings out my own. I am not glad that he’s dead. It’s been too long, 20 years, in fact. I would have been glad if it had happened sooner. That’s ugly of me. It’s probably uglier still that I feel no guilt over it, just a self-righteous anger that still feels good.

Anyway, it beats the uneasy sadness that I feel about his brother.

I had hoped, in the last couple of years, after hearing from his mom (of course) how, after yet another stint at rehab, J was getting his feet under him, that I’d see him again, or at least talk to him. Now that that’s impossible….I don’t know how I feel. Mostly detached. I wonder what happened to both of them after they died.

The thought of John and Karl being reunited is not so comforting as I would hope but rather seems just odd, especially with the old man bumping around somewhere nearby. I truly hope John found peace, but I have no such kind wishes for the old man. That’s a gross feeling, and hopefully I’ll work my through it and have a little more grace at some point. Ugh.

I remember John wrote me a letter, clearly anguished, not long before Karl died, where he asked me to ask Karl to say he was sorry to some kid he knew who had died, a death to which J was somehow connected, but I’m not sure how. I read the letter to Karl, but I think he was pretty drugged at that point, perpetually. I don’t remember him having much of a response.

One thing I know: The Good Death is a myth. I feel peace about Karl because he had a Good Life. Tons of bad decisions, not enough time, but for 5 years we had each other and we didn’t waste it. And of course, before he met me, he Lived; as he would have said, he didn’t fuck around. HE LIVED. When there were things to enjoy, he ran headlong into them. When it was finally time for him to die, he ran into the light.

I don’t think that’s how it worked for either his father or brother. I hope, in the years that I lost touch, that his brother experienced crazy, unspeakable joy and love at some point, like I did with Karl, and like I’ve been blessed to have with so many people in my life, from the spouse and the kids to my parents and sibs and some friends.

In time, maybe I can even wish that for the old man.

But I’ll never know now if it happened.

Big Women

I’m not sure how I stumbled on the form of the play, but I loved it as soon as I found it. As a shy, gawky, unathletic kid in a family of jocks, I loved escaping into books more than anything else, and the Saratoga library was easily my favorite place. In a small brick building crammed with tall, dark wooden bookshelves, I felt safe and transported to someplace where I wouldn’t be teased for my weirdness, both physical and social.

I quickly exhausted the section of children’s plays; it was small anyway, and most of the plays were, even to my 7-year-old brain, on the stupid side. One anthology that I checked out over and over had a stage version of A Little Princess that went by the name of Sara Crewe. I would read all the parts initially, but always ended up with myself as Sara, noble and strong in the face of adversity. But there were only so many times I could read that, and no one to read it with. And then, one day while reading Little Women, it hit me; I can still remember feeling a little breathless at the discovery. Four sisters: the oldest caught up in parties and being the oldest, the second a coltish tomboy, the third a shy beauty who played the piano, and the fourth the artistic one accused of being spoiled. Other than Jo matching my second sister a bit uncannily, the other 3 were a bit of a stretch. But to my fevered young mind, it was a perfect fit. I diligently began transcribing the novel into script form on a yellow legal pad, getting to chapter 3 before giving up because honestly, my brother was not going to make a satisfactory Laurie.

But I still went back to Little Women time and again until I was about 12, switching off between Jo and Amy, the best parts. I tried to draw for a while to make the connection a little less tenuous, but it soon became patently clear that Jo was the favorite and got the most lines.

Over time, though, the parallels been the four sisters have echoed occasionally in my head. Like Amy, I got the trip to Europe and an altogether easier life thanks to my parents being older and in better shape financially as I grew. Like Jo, my second sister is a great mother, still a bit of tomboy, and basically gets things done. The oldest sister/Meg connection has never been particularly strong, but mainly because Meg was always shafted by Louisa May Alcott in the personality department, not something that can be said of my oldest sister. But Beth, like Sis 3, stays a homebody, with no big ambitions other than being around people she loves.

For the last 2 years, there has been another, unfortunate coincidence: Sis 3 has struggled with miserable health. Early this week, news of a potentially fatal development came; the outlook has since brightened somewhat, but nothing is certain yet. I have long accepted that, as the youngest, I am likely to bury most if not all my siblings, which really sucks, but, well, that’s just logic. And since spouse 1’s death, I have been extremely grateful that each passing year has gone by without some ugly spectre being raised. But now, I can’t say that any more. I can see and feel my age more all the time. This week, I realized that aging is not just feeling creaky and sluggish in the morning and watching various body parts go south. It’s realizing that, when the people you love most are older than you, they’re going to leave you at some point, and it may not be far in the future.

For now, as said, things are looking a little better than they were a while ago. All this is happening at a time when I can actually afford to visit California more than I ever could have in the past. But I would be lying if I didn’t wish, fervently, that I lived down the street from her. I wish that anyway. For now, as we say, we’ll always have Slumdog, which we saw together on my last trip out there and which I dragged the spouse to today. I wanted him to see it because I love the movie and I love him. But it also makes me feel extremely close to Sis 3.

We’ll muddle through, L, one way or another. I promise.
xo

Stone Cold

Seth Rogan is on the Oscars doing his pot thing. Pot humor bores the shit out of me 90% of the time. Stoned people are much funnier to themselves than to anyone else, and basically they just seem like idiots, which I guess is the point. Of course, laughing uproariously at stuff that’s mildly amusing is less obnoxious than passionate lectures about perception, doors opening onto it, cliches as philosophy, declarations that are profound to the declarer but just make the listener feel embarassed and sad for the speaker and …. well, you get the idea.

But over the weekend, I saw pot and its consumption treated in a movie with true charm, mainly because the movie itself was so charming. Duck Season, which I found courtesy of the so-often odious Manohla Dargis, is a very small (not much more than 70 minutes), very sweet movie. It’s about 2 kids who spend a weekend in a parent-free Mexico City apartment with a couple of friends, and pot consumption occurs about midway through. The entire movie is about innocence, which somehow is maintained throughout. Rather than watching a bunch of overweight shlubby guys laugh at stupid shit (Judd Apatow, your life is calling), you see 4 people who don’t quite know what hit them. There are no incoherent justifications for how great weed is, just genuine joy in the sound of water dripping out of a faucet and in the worthy pastime of giggling.

The pot scenes pass by in a blip; they’re just part of a weekend where the kids and their companions rather aimlessly go from anticipating the time of their lives to realizing that life isn’t a series of revelations as much as a walk from one place to another where, much of the time, you just kind of zone out rather than really live. At the same time, the irrepresible nature of kids continually pops up again, joyful and hopeful despite the odds.

I do hope the Eldest watches it. I think it will make her smile.

Perk Up

Lately, it is only fair to admit that the Eldest is driving me a bit nuts. The spouse and I raised the kid to be outspoken, to sound off because her opinion matters. I don’t regret doing that, but I truly hope that she is simply ending the tail end of an obnoxious, sophomoric phase in which, basically, “everything sucks.”

Milk, not a great movie but a decent one, is “just a dopey biopic.” Now I admit, the movie isn’t as stirring as the great documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk, and Sean Penn seems to be confusing his Harveys, sounding more like Fierstein than Milk. It’s tough to play a charismatic, very funny guy, and Penn is actually kind of likeable for Penn, but at the end of the day, he’s still Sean Penn, and likeable isn’t really in the guy’s vocabulary. That said, Milk does touch a lot of buttons for someone who lived through a time when being gay inspired public jeers at best, and when you could be beaten to death just walking home at night. It also can’t help but bring to mind the looming horror of AIDS on the horizon; even though the people in the movie have no idea that it’s there…it is.

At the same time, there is something great about a person’s ability to inspire other people and to just plain get shit done. Sure, Harvey Milk became a spokesperson/icon similar to MLK. Both acknowledged that there were hundreds of people in the trenches that history will never remember. But being inspired is a rare thing, and it’s easier if you have a face to pin that to. And why not?

But to the kid, none of it matters. Dear Lord, I do sound like a crank. “In my day….,” etc. I know I was as solipsistic as she was, and I wasn’t nearly that smart. I had natural intelligence, but I didn’t push myself very hard; if it wasn’t in a play when I was 17, I didn’t want to know anything about it. So it’s hypocritical of me to blame the kid for not bothering to read a damn thing about the world, to have such a narrow viewing aperture.

But then again, I hope I wasn’t this big of a downer. A dance company from Israel was here today, one of the month’s ushering gigs. She and I can go for free to pretty much any cultural event that comes through the university, but when I asked her, she said, “I don’t want to have anything to do with anything from Israel.”

Now look. The government of Israel has done horrible things lately, as do all governments on a regular basis. But obviously one can’t know every dancer’s political views. I certainly don’t want the current or past U.S. government’s views to be projected onto me. Only about half the dancers are from Israel, and the work isn’t overtly and even subtly political; if anything, there’s an anti-corporate bias to it. In one memorable piece, a whole series of suited people thrash and flail in chairs until eventually all have ripped away their jackets, hats and shoes to stand, free, in tank tops and boxer shorts – except for one guy who stays buttoned up and repeatedly collapses on the floor. Meanwhile, these were the best dancers I’ve seen this year, and in a long, long time. The commitment, artistry, and athleticism of the movement hasn’t been matched by any of the other visiting companies, not because there haven’t been some really good companies, but just because this one was so good.

The Eldest’s “won’t see it” list goes on and on. She doesn’t want to see any movies because “they all suck.” Getting her to take advantage of a free seat to Yo-Yo Ma, her one-time idol, has been about as easy as pulling her teeth, and I still don’t know if she’ll do it. Overall, she just doesn’t seem to like much of anything lately. I can get that, but what I’m more worried about is that she seems to be disgusted, even contemptuous at the very idea of artistic inspiration.

As said, I hope it’s a phase, and I’m trying not to be too much of a jerk about it, as I imagine I was just as insufferable, probably a lot worse. But yoink….I’ll be glad when the kid gets excited about something again.

Same Great Taste

I’ve decided to start a blog solely dedicated to branding and the kind of stuff I do at work. For my stream of consciousness review of ALL the Super Bowl ads, go to http://brandingbroad.wordpress.com. I wrote many, many words today, and they are not polished, but I did accomplish my goal: to watch all the Super Bowl commercials and Not Get Drunk. Huzzah!

In other news, hope to be back soon with non-work related stuff, because that is much more fun to write.

Whoops

Didn’t mean to, but just managed to delete a bunch of very kind comments. Sorry to all. Please to forgive.

Between Lebanon and Persia…

Watched a couple of movies yesterday to hasten the cue along: Towelhead and Persepolis. The first I had meant to see on what I figured would be a very short run in Michigan (I think it was at the big theater for all of a week), and missed. The second I had been meaning to see last year, pretty certain it would win the Oscar for best animated feature but Ratatouille won instead.

As far as Towelhead goes, I can’t remember a “mainstream” American movie with an Arab-American protagonist. It’s pretty obvious that it was directed and written by the guy who wrote American Beauty; music, editing, general theme of desiring something young and forbidden is similar. The movie’s ok, but not good enough to overcome some ickiness, including Aaron Eckhart’s creepy relationship with the young girl (she’s beautiful but not much of an actress) and a scene where her father pulls a used tampon out of the toilet, which probably raises some kind of new squeamish bar. But really, we’ve seen all this before, except for the fact that we’re dealing with an overbearing Lebanese father (as opposed to an overbearing Indian or Greek or Slavic or whatever father).

Persepolis is terrific, an animated autobiography about growing up in Tehran at the time of the Shah’s ousting. When I went to college in the same time period (1978-80), for some reason Weber State in Utah (I was there my first two years) seemed to have a huge number of young Persian women – there were about 5 in my dorm, and there were only about 40 women in the dorm total. I never got to know any, to my regret. One, Mojdeh – she went by Mary as a sop to western laziness – was extremely beautiful. She never wore a hijab (the others in my dorm did) and seemed more aloof from the regular abuse that the other Iranians dealt with daily. I was a mess at this period in my life, but I’m still not sure why I didn’t ever strike up a conversation. I’ve always been fascinated by other countries, particularly those of the middle east. From the time I was a little kid I was drawn to Arab and Persian cultures with their gorgeous abstractions, rich colors, and general sexiness. But it was fashionable to rag on people from this part of the world. So while I had been raised to not indulge in outward baiting (thank you Mom and Dad), I wasn’t going to rock the boat with an open friendship with one of “those people.”

Another woman, Farzineh, did wear a hijab – I of course had no idea it was even called that until I made friends with Muslims in Michigan, for which there’s ample opportunity. One night, a friend whispered to me, “What do you think would happen if she took that thing off? She’d probably have a baby.” I laughed. Later that night, Farzineh pounded on my door with rage in her face. “What did your friend whisper to you? I know you were talking about me!!” I played dumb, then finally said, “Look, he said he wondered what would happen if you took your veil off.” (Yes, I called it a veil.) “And I laughed, because I’ve never seen you without it. That’s all.”

Later I did see her in the bathroom hijab-less. She was completely transformed, not a beauty but pretty and with beautiful hair. The low hijab that doesn’t show any hair, like a nun’s wimple, only flatters a few very specific face types. Longer faces tend to look awful in it; I had to play a nun once, and can testify. I told her how pretty she looked, partly because I was startled but also, I’m sure, out of guilt; I may have been a young jerk, but I really hadn’t wanted to hurt her. From then on, we always greeted each other with smiles, but I never did get to know her.

Persepolis does a brilliant job of taking away that layer of exotica and painting a great portrait of childhood and adolescense in turmoil. I’m sorry I never got to see Tehran back in the day. It must have been something, and the movie hints at that lost time. But what the movie shows in full force is show that raw emotion – parents’ love for children, childrens’ belief that somehow things will be ok, and true free-falling terror of being a teenager – is universal. Not an earth-shattering thesis, but one so true that, when stated well, can be stated again and again.