Megsie

My mother is human. Sometimes (and, as I age, with more frequency) this disconcerting thought occurs to me. It began, I think, when I was small and I first caught a glimpse of a tear in her eye and I crawled into her lap to comfort her, but really to have her comfort me. Her omnipotence was, for a moment, shed in a single tear; her divinity torn like the veil in the temple of Jerusalem that hid the Holiest of Holies from us, and I saw uncovered before me her humanity. It frightened me. I crawled into her lap and laid my head on her heart. Her arms enfolded me, stitching back together the torn veil and becoming again, wholly mother.

I deified her. She inhabited my spiritual world as more perfect, more kind, more holy than the Holiest of Holies. The gods men invented were far less lovely, less pure than her. She called herself human, yet I did not see it. The righteous, angry God she worshipped was more human than she. Still, as I grew older her humanity continued to surface with alarming frequency. Alarming to a growing child whose few illusions about the goodness of God and father were rapidly slipping into contempt. Children must believe some lovely lie or they cease, forever, to be children.

When I was old enough to be cynical, I took perverse delight in showing her just how little deceived I was by the beliefs that shaped me. The hurt in her eyes revealed her human shape, and oh, how it hurt me. How I longed to take my careless words back, and pretend, just a little while longer, that I believed: in her, in God, in my slipping illusions.

On the night that she held my hand in the emergency room while my body wrestled with death, she knew, I knew, that she could not save me. I was too cruel, then, to think of anything other than how very much, at that moment, I despised her grasping, frightened humanness. It was too much like my own.

When she left her husband (a man whose human shape I never doubted, except perhaps when I was very small), she curled up close to me on the couch, laid her head on my heart, like the Madonna and Child inverted, and sobbed. How very human was she. How very frightened was I.

Atheism is a cold, cold term, but what other can I apply to the shedding of my very last deity, my mother? When I lost my faith in God, I found faith in myself. When I rejected my father’s philosophies, I found my voice. But what good could come of witnessing the veil that shielded me from my mother’s humanness torn irreparably? I know it now, though: no longer need she willfully subordinate self to mother her children or to pacify her wrathful husband or to create out of herself the perfect holy idol that men so love to extol on Sunday morning and trample on throughout the week. No longer need she hide her fear, or think her thoughts foolish, or clip the wings of her own dreams.

She is human. Let her be. I must let her be.

Someone asked me yesterday how I’ve been. The succinct answer is “I’m boring and bored” and perhaps I should stick with that; but four words does not a blog entry make, so you shall be regaled with the extended edition (four word blogs shall perhaps be forthcoming, followed, of course, by four-letter blogs). I’m boring and bored, as aforementioned. I haven’t been doing much. I look for jobs for a few hours every day, until I am too frustrated to continue. Most of the rest of my time is occupied lying in bed, trying to sleep, and thinking. Or playing Freecell and thinking. Or taking solitary walks and thinking. Thinking, thinking, thinking.

Thinking about my life and how this is not where I want to be right now. Not locationally, but vocationally. Thinking about words, like how I just made an internal rhyme in the last sentence and I’m not sure if either of those words should take the adverbial form, but I like it, and I’m not going to change it. Thinking about things that scare me, like unemployment, and family problems, and a body that feels like it’s falling apart. Thinking about things that make me angry, like my last job, or things that people did to me years ago that I really should forget, or Republicans, or people who drive too slowly, or crows’ incessant cawing, or my own apathy.

Thinking, thinking, thinking until my thoughts swirl and glom together.

Thinking that, with all this mental energy expended, I should have solved the mystery of the universe. Or, at least I should be able to solve my own fucking problems.

Thinking about conversations I have had, will have, or want to have.

Like yesterday, when my boyfriend discovered that I had been smoking again, even though he hates it. Even though a lot of people hate it. Even though I hate myself for it. I was only smoking because I was drinking. Well, because I was going to be drinking, and then because I was drinking, and then because I damn well wanted to. I wanted him to be angry, because then we could fight, and some of these thoughts could come tumbling out in words and they wouldn’t be in my head anymore; and all this animal aggression that kept my ancestors alive but is making me crazy would be released. I thought of what I would say and what he would say, and how I would respond, and mapped out the whole argument. I was excited. I haven’t had a good fight in ages. But we didn’t fight. We had a civilised discussion like adults.

How crushing; how dull.

My life is a Virginia Woolf novel. A phrase I found inscribed in green gel ink under the table of contents of my used copy of To the Lighthouse sums up my present feelings suitably: “Pointless, all pages”. Thank you, disgruntled anonymous reader.

Harsh, But True: A compendium of rants from this week.

1. The femme fatale character arc, from sexual power to eventual destruction, may be blatant misogyny, but there is some truth to it. Sluts, however beautiful and promising, eventually stagnate on their own idiocy, but not before ensnaring idiots of the penile variety in order to beget more idiots. This is only a pity (and the stuff of novels) when the slut ensnares a man of nobler birth than herself.

2. An error, however minor, on my part will result in hours of agony, probably tears, and much self-censure. If it appears that I am taking a mistake lightly, it is because I am trying to convince myself that it is not rational to throw oneself in front of a bus because of a minor filing mistake.

3. When reading an adventure novel with zombies featured prominently, I should not find myself dozing off from the author’s mechanical writing style. Don’t enumerate emotion at me, let me experience it.

4. I can’t choose my co-workers, but I can choose my friends and I’m making a conscious effort to purge relationships I probably should have abandoned long ago. This is not necessarily a negative reflection on the people who I have chosen to no longer associate with, but more so a reflection of my choice to move in a different direction in my life. Unfailing loyalty is not the virtue I always held it to be; in many instances it is a crutch.

5. I very much dislike people who are positive all the time. Life is not always kittens and rainbows. Even when it is, very often the kittens pee on the couch and scratch you while you are sleeping. The point is, it’s okay to bitch.

6. There are few things more irritating than new converts. (Or highschool lovers, for that matter). This goes with the previous point. I understand that you are happy, and I’m happy that you are happy, but if I have to HEAR about your happiness one more time, I will rain down a world of hurt on your wee mind until you’re curled up sobbing in a corner. It goes something like this: AIDS! Haiti! Chile! Unemployment! Ingrown toenails! Disease! Child molesters! People who drive too slowly on the freeway! People who tailgate people who drive too slowly on the freeway! Cockroaches! Scratched DVDs! Dirty laundry! Hair in the bathtub drain! American Idol! Killer whales! Rapists! These things didn’t just go away because you think you’re in love with life, Jesus, the girl next door, Buddha, Yoda, or whoever; you’re just high on endorphins and idiocy. Your body is decaying, your sins are not forgiven, your girlfriend is faking it and world peace is not a viable answer to anything. Shut the fuck up. Learn to buck up. You’re absolutely worthless until you value yourself apart from anyone else’s opinions of you.

est finis.