My head is all over the place because first my little tiny vulnerable son went to California on a big bad airplane and I had to put away all thoughts of scariness that I cannot even write here because that will bring the thoughts back. Also, Ball & Chain is going through some process of dealing with the use of alcohol and I am the unconventional partner yet somehow still vulnerable to being blamed for something that has nothing to do with me. And my job is lovely except for Lou Grant is so unpredictable I never know when he will bark at me and it is unnerving. Plus I was a scheduling nightmare this week, overlapping all sorts of things and causing many people to be rightly irritated with me. Perhaps the use of commas would have been appropriate back there, but I am not in a comma mood. Maybe if I was a bit calmer! (Yikes.)What is my life, anyway? I have several people who love me unconditionally. Notice how I skipped right over my life and went straight for how other people feel about me. These people are related to me by blood, if you will pardon the expression, or even if you will not pardon it. Other people may care or not care for me but they are not in my fabric of who I am because it takes 500 years and a lotta bullshit for me to trust people. I notice them, adore them, I listen to them, but they must witness an unnamed number of bad weird episodes of This Fucked-Up Lady, and live through them, to be eligible for me believing that they care about me. Bad grammar embraced.
Does it help that I went to fancy schools and ended up a mere teacher? Does it help that I'm a writer who is too lazy or too busy to submit her work? Now I have demonstrated that my head is, indeed, everywhere. What to do with the information? First: I plan to clean my room. That's always a solution. Once people wake up I will call Miss Kitty on the phone. She is an excellent sister and our experiences are parallel to the extent that I sometimes feel like a twin, although I do not know if I have ever mentioned that to her. Oh and back there when I said "mere teacher," not all teachers are mere teachers, but I am because I go from job to job and because I am me, I am feeling quite mere today.
This morning's blog was going to be about linguistics, actually, and link to a New Yorker article. I wonder if I will write about that later? Instead I am going to say right here right now and even these words are delaying it but I would definitely like to have a partner like my high school boyfriend, who doted. Could someone please appreciate me? Verbally? Am I the clone of women everywhere, under-appreciated and nagging about it? Or stereotyping myself? Why am I so verbal when my partner is so non-verbal? Please do not tell me about the studies that show men talk less than women. The reason is that they are stupid, and withholding, and too busy reading the paper. My high school boyfriend just knew how to make me happy, get himself laid, and get a head.
This is who loves me, and by the way, I have been doing this exercise for years, and I am putting my children last so it doesn't seem like I rely on that love, or depend on it, even though I think I might, and I am lying to myself. Right, here they are: Mommy, Miss Kitty, Daddy, Baby Brother (whom I miss terribly), Cousin Darling, and Big Kid and Rugelah. Mabel loves me, too, and she is a blood relative and I am not required to explain how that works, so I won't. And Chrystal is not theoretically a blood relative but she might as well be. Sheesh, that's a lotta people. Who am I to complain? Be glad for what you have. Or, alternatively, how pathetic that one must list those who value one for one to feel any value at all. The people on my list are intelligent, too, so that must mean a little something about me. Also, while we're being both honest and dishonest, I do very much love Ball & Chain. He thinks I should know how much he loves me but since I don't I think he should do something about it, for crissake.
Now is the point where, in regard to narrative, one would expect me to link back to what I think my life is. Despite the intent, I do not have an answer. I can describe what I do, or who I love, or what I think, but I have no idea what my life is or the purpose. I get the mother part. A
nd then, and then. My life is a series of losses and gains, maybe a sort of football game despite the fact that I loathe the sport for its symbolism. (How ridiculous, then, to use it as a symbol.) My life is an exemplar of devotion a la my Jewish nun moments. No, my life is that of any hectic American woman living in hectic 2007. Bullshit, all of it. I have only one clue. Lately I notice that I have more habits like those of my mother at my age, and more of her physical idiosyncrasies. So I am following her imprint on the world, and to some extent, my life is like my mother's life. Biology is a little trump. And now, like my mother - every night - I am off to take a bath.
