For over a year I was away. What happened? What changed? What was I doing?
The answer, really, is very little.
After finding university study impossible with Caspar so small, childcare so problematic, the travel so exhausting, and time for the necessary research virtually non-existent, I enrolled for online classes. I thought I’d do literature again, as a kind of indulgence, as something easier. The late arrival of my materials and the problems of the university’s off-campus software, as well as disappointment in the course structure were enough to make me give up (again) after a week.
Much of the coursework for Lit was based on creative writing, on the basis that being able to write fiction is somehow a measure of your ability to understand it. Which is patently false and just… Flakey. The ability to write insightful and academically rigorous literary criticism has nothing to do with the craft of writing fiction at all. Obviously the two are complementary, but they are not the same discipline, and neither is dependent on the other. The fact that I have already done 2 years of study in professional writing and the fact that I have already done years of undergraduate study and all this is painful repetition anyway added to my frustration, but the premise is flawed regardless. It made me think of my friend’s sister, who, after studying music for a while, stopped the practical and continued solely with music theory, because that was what fascinated her. You don’t need to be able to play in order to listen well.
But I was already at low ebb anyway. Christmas had been stressful and, at breaking point, I had a huge argument with my mother. I’ve briefly mentioned my sister’s difficulties with dealing with my depression before. My mother’s are… different. But both result in what is experienced as rejection and worse, with my mother, what is perceived as dishonesty. Without allocating blame (because she must handle things in the way that works for her psychology), it seemed we were back to the old framework where the need for peace outweighed the need for speaking internal “truth”, back to that broken dynamic which holds families with abusive pasts together. On the surface anyway. Everything nice and and neat and tidy for public consumption, with no seething emotion or pain given space to leak out.
Any discussions of the ways this created obstacles for me, of the ways this was damaging, or the ways this piled pain on top of pain were greeted with increasing defensiveness. My mother would not use that word, would reject that word entirely, but the result is the same. Shut down. Rejection. Get over it.
I need to get things too large for containment out of my head. My mother likes silence and soldiering on. Our definitions of strength are not the same. And I could not cope with hers so I returned to the only thing I knew how to do in that crippling prison: Escape. As a teenager, I left home. As an adult, after screaming, I shut the door in her face.
The result of this was the same as it had been when I shattered the “happy” family in high school. Anger. Very ugly anger. Made all the worse by the ways in which it connected to old hurts. Made all the worse by her grandson, shut away from her by the door I put between us.
So… this was my Dark Night. The Orphan again. This time, there was no walking alone in the streets all night ~ that isn’t possible with a small child sleeping under dinosaur doona covers and waking in the morning needing to be fed ~ but there was some solitude and a path.
I planted vegetables. I watched them grow. And I am better.
Relationships are slowly mended, both resilient and fragile. Perhaps desirous of apologies neither will ever give, because the “truth” is different for each of us. But slowly mended.
I turned the computer on again. I’ll plant strange seeds here and see what they become.
I am better.
In November, when decisions of expulsion will be made, I will write to the university and explain… I am better.
So here I am. Older and new. Tentatively walking in life again.
I’m sorry to hear you’ve been through such an ordeal, unfortunately those we love and look to for support and guidance are the ones who hurt us the most.
Glad to see you’re on the improve xxx
Glad you’re better.
How excellent that you have made yourself better. ‘Some solitude and a path’ sounds good to me, and planting vegetables and watching them grow sounds very healing.
And this is a beautiful piece of writing.
I’m glad I’m better too! Perhaps it could have been done more quickly, or less painfully, some other way. But that is the way I did it so… It’s done.
Jayne, I think too, that it is as much about who has the power to hurt us. The trust we give will always be disappointed sometimes, because the people in our lives have their own needs and vulnerabilities. If it was my mother writing this post, she would be expressing all the pain and hurt of that closed door too.
And thank you, Rosemary.