Day 11: Variations on a theme

My brief foray into talk therapy helped me discover that it really is my mom's fault and to recognize certain patterns of behavior that I repeat over and over and over again, like Bill Murray in Groundhog's Day except on different days, with different people, and without personal growth from the lessons that I learned.  Doing the same wrong thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  In other words, pounding my head against a brick wall.  

My therapist explained that if you don't get unconditional love and acceptance from your mother in the first 2.5 years of life, then you will be on an endless quest for "it."  Some people seek it from lovers, from substance abuse, from promiscuity, but if you don't get it from your mom by the time you are 2.5, you can only get "it: from yourself.   As Joy*, my therapist explained, you have to learn "to fill your own cup."   Blaming my mom is easy but how to get "it" from yourself is the tough part.  Recognizing one's patterns is a bit harder because we are blinded by our own masks and even those of us who are "cursed with self-awareness"** have difficulty to seeing through them.    

My mom has always been an enigma to me; we have never really "gotten" each other.   She married my dad, who was 4 years older and many years worldier having served in Vietnam, the day after she graduated from high school.   She was the second daughter of six girls, whose biological dad died of a heart attack when she was 10.  She had a difficult, complicated relationship with her mom.  Her family was Dickensian poor and by the time she was in her early teens, my mom worked to earn her own money and bought her own clothes and other necessities.  She was fiercely independent and fearless, according to the lore passed down in her family, mostly all women, then and now, (talk about patterns, variations on a theme) with a definitive tendency toward exaggeration and drama.  My mom could sleep in the haunted, basement or attic alone, a craving for privacy in a 3-bedroom house with one bathroom for 7 women that trumped any fear of things that went bump in the night.  

My mom was also a "good girl", especially compared to her older sister who became addicted to drugs as a teenager and engaged in a history of petty crime to support her lifetime drug addiction.   Yet, my mom and her mom sparred constantly.  My grandma--may she rest in peace with her pocket book and cigarette case, here's hoping that her "ship finally came in"--suffered from pyschological issues (undiagnosed and untreated) and was controlling and abusive to my mom.***   Thus, my mom married my dad before her life had begun, arguably to escape a difficult home life.  

After 3 days of hard labor (not blessed/cursed with my child-bearing hips), she gave birth to a dark-haired, dark-eyed, curly-haired baby girl  (me) when she was still in her own infancy as an adult, as a person.  My dad worked midnights.  And my mom, newly 19, was left to raise a baby who was not an "easy baby."   Apparently, I had insomina**** and the only way to get me to sleep was to drive me around for hours.  And once they got me to sleep, they would shush adults and bid them to speak in whispers as so as not to "wake the baby."   I was also plagued with ear, nose, and throat problems (the kid-equivalent of repeated sinus infections) worsened by the fact that both my mom and dad smoked; my mom swears that she was even allowed to smoke in the hospital while birthing me.   And several baby and toddler pictures show my mom with me and my siblings, a cigarette danging out of the corner of her mouth.  

So, we have a sleep-deprived 19 year old mom who probably did not get "it" from her mom either, raising a difficult baby when she had not even finished raising herself.  She loved me, (even though she not only rubbed booze on my gums during teething but explained to me recently that she had given me a shot of whiskey on one particularly tough teething, insomina-filled night.  She explained that I did not drink the whole shot).*****  I believe that she did the best that she could, especially during those crucial first 2.5 years.  

For some bizarre reason, we expect that we are supposed to get along with our family by virtue of the fact that they are family. Despite radical personality differences, despite the fact that we certainly would never expect to get along with every person by virtue of the fact that they are human.   As I have grown older and became a mother myself, I have noticed how fundamentally different my mom and I are.  For instance, sarcasm is one of my leading characteristics, and my mom is completely oblivious to sarcasm.   I love to be out and about and to interact with people.  I am fairly sure that my mom prefers watching tennis more than anything else.  I enjoy new experiences and am open to trying new things; my mom abhors change (no wonder she did not vote for President Obama despite being unemployed and not having health insurance).  My mom hates to shop, and I often buy her clothes.  She does not drink coffee and thinks it is shocking that I pay $5.00 for a cup of coffee.   We just don't speak the same language.  We love each other; she has done a lot for me and I feel that I have done a lot for her too.   The Doodle adores her.   But if we were not biologically connected, we would be strangers.  

How to get "it"?   My mom and dad semed to have a fairy-tale marriage.  Everyone thought they were happy.  My dad was very protective and loving (jealous and controlling) of my mom, and they seemed happy and in love.   When my brother became a tween, my sister a teen, and I was about to start college, my dad told me that he and my mom were getting divorced, which at the time marked the second time that I saw him cry (the first was when his nephew died in his early 20s from a rare heart disease when I was very young).   I was a daddy's girl.  I inherited his dark eyes and his love of words, sarcasm, debate, politics, his fear of being alone.  He took me to the library as I got older and bought me books, tending and stoking my love of reading.  

After Christmas, my mom moved out.  I remember going to see "The War of the Roses" with my first real boyfriend on Christmas Day that year.******  My dad began to drink heavily and cry openly and one memorable night, he even tried to baptize us with vodka.  My hero, protector, and a man so tough and so brave that he pushed a burning plane of  his base with a crane and saved the lives of many men (when I was a kid I thought that he had pushed it off with his bare hands), broken by love.   My mom was the love of his life, and for a time, I hated her for breaking his heart, not understanding how she could do this to a man who loved her like she was a princess in an ivory tower as evidenced by his extreme jealousy (ah, the genesis of my fucked-up ideas of love).  

Years later as we walked along the Atlantic ocean in a small town outside Charleston, South Carolina, she told me that she had been desperately unhappy her entire married life.  That what I confused for loving, adoration by my God-like father was actually possessiveness and extreme jealousy that led to him taping her phone calls and questioning her fidelity if even one button was undone on a modest shirt, that led him to forbade her from working outside the home until recently even though they had, at times, desperately needed the money.  

I forgave my mom and began to see my dad as human, to understand that things are seldom as they appear to people outside a relationship, to understand that there is so much gray between those black and white areas.  

When my parents separated and divorced after nearly 20 years of marriage,  I began to seek "it" from booze (the schnaps, the brandies owing to an obsessesion with Scarlett O'Hara whose poision was brandy, the vodka, the southern comfort).  It was also when I began to seek "it" from men.  Men, who were unavailable to me in some way, emotionally, situationally, geographically.  And from troubled,  "Toxic" men, who disappeared, who shattered my self esteem, beginning yet another pattern within a pattern, seeking "it" from openly unavailable or damaged men who were oh so wrong for me, the bad man behind blue eyes.  But I thought if I saved him, he could save me.  Right? 

But we can only save ourselves, which I began to understand several years later, at least intellectually, but still have been unable to apply practically, even now in my 40th year.  Even at the end of 15 years with an emotionally, unvavailable man, who I knew was unavailable soon after we began living together and certainly knew before we got married.   But I thought that if only I changed this or changed that, be it my appearance or my expectations, that he could give me the unconditional love and support that I so desperately craved, that he would fight for me as hard as I fought for him.  I still seek this from my mom, who remains emotionally unavailable to me.  The problem with being overly accommodating, a doormat, and fighting til the death (of my soul) for people is that they get used to it and they don't fight back for me.  
And I am sure that it becomes confusing when I demand that relationship have some give and take, some mutual accommodation. 

So, in my 40th year, after some therapy, after learning to recognize my patterns, what do I do?  Do I try to get myself squared away?  No, I get nvolved in a relationship with a man who lives thousands of miles away from me, who has issues that I once again know about (somewhat), and I even worry and wonder how he will be unavailable to me, besides the obvious geographical distance. Despite my consternation, despite that little voice in my head, the angel of reason on my shoulder, I pursue my craving for "it."  Ignoring the fact that he is a perfect storm of my patterns, patterns within patterns.   We talk a lot, and he tells me during one of our first conversations after watching a video of me in a work setting, that he is really proud of me.   He calls me sweet nicknames and posts links to love songs and movie quotes on my Facebook page.  He claims to have the same issue of always being the one to fight for the relationship, he swears that he would never disappear, that he will fight for me, that he would even fight my demons for me.   How did that work out for me? Did I somehow get a different result after repeating my same mistakes?  No, I got dumped.  In an email.

But, there are valuable lessons  to be gleaned from my relationship with the Duck.  Maybe yet another impossible relationship that repeats each and every one of your patterns has to be repeated several times.   Like some variant of reincarnation, a present-day reincarnation that continues throughout this lifetime, that has to be repeated over and over until it penetrates into our current incarnation, crosses our thick cerebral cortexes. That you have to keep repeating this same, doomed, futile cycle until you hit rock bottom and have your own personal moment of clarity.  Like when Professor Falken and Matthew Broderick realize that the only way they can stop Joshua from releasing the missles and destroying the world is to teach him that the only way to win is not to play the game in the first place.*******

Fortunately, the Duck dumped me before our lives were co-mingled, before I made decisions that I knew were wrong in order to chase "it" again.  After a relatively short time, I was able to let the Duck go, to stop fighting for him.  I actually realized that the only way that to win was not to play the game.  And when I said "good bye" in a text (so not meant to be) last Saturday, I actually meant it and have not contacted him or tried to google him and have stopped plotting various revenge schemes. 

For the first time since I stopped thinking that boys were icky and cootie-ridden, I have suspended my quest to find the one, my true north.  In fact, I am adverse to "being in a relationship" on facebook or otherwise, to being friends with benefits or even to "hooking up" as the kids say today.   Thinking that the Duck was aversion therapy, a wake up call from the universe.  My faith in the existence of the one, my true north has been shaken.  And, yes I am angry and bitter at times, though mostly at myself. 

Yet, I still love men, the idea, the possibility of finding the one, the feel, the weight, and the warmth of a man, big hands, blue eyes, the moment before the first kiss, the day-to-day stuff he will handle that I hate like car repairs, insect slaying, and taking out the garbage, making him dinner or bringing him a piece of cake or greeting him at the door with a cold beer while wearing something sexy, physical, emotional, and spiritual intimacy, someone to ask how my day is, to bring me coffee on a Sunday morning, to love me like I love him, to know in my bones, in the very fiber of my being that he is the one, my home and that I am his home. 

And it's amazing how wide and deep and unexplored the world is, even my little patch of the physical world here in the D,  now that I have shifted my perspective from my love quest.   Random, interesting interactions that open up new vistas, new ways of thinking, a new lense through with which to view the world.  I have wonderful, interesting, smart, quirky friends.  I have a beautiful, 4 year old daughter, and we get each other and I am doing my damndest to make sure that she has "it" from me and that she will blossom into a confident, kind, adventurous woman.  

My name is Julie, and I vow to get myself squared away, to slay my own demons, to be the best, possible version of myself, to accept that I cannot make someone love me or fight for me--be it a lover, a friend, a parent--to accept that I only have control over my own actions, and to let go of all the things, fears, patterns, and people that do not comport with these vows.  I want to get "it" for myself.  And then maybe, someday in the bright blue yonder, the rest will follow....


*Joy is her real first name.  Seriously.  Allegedly. 

**Annie Savoy in Bull Durham.  The full quote is "the world is made for people who are not cursed with self awareness."  Susan Sarandon plays Annie, a passionate, poetry-loving sexual baseball fan who "breaks-in" ballplayers for the Durham Bulls and prepares them for "the show."   Sarandon's best role, and also where she met ex-husband Tim Robbins who played the "6 foot homeless stud" with "a million dollar arm and a five cent head."   And Kevin Costner's best role as Crash Davis, who is American male sensuality.   And my favourite baseball movie and Kevin Costner's best baseball movie (followed closely by Field of Dreams).  Also, one of the sexiest soundtracks ever, that included my introduction to Edith Piaf ("the crazy mexican singer") and Johnny Ward and the Dominos who sang "Sixty Minute Man",  Tina and Ike singing "I idolize you" which always makes me want to make love, and "Centerfield" by John Fogerty.

***But whimisical and delightful to me.  And she could make homemade buttermilk biscuits without a recipe just by feeling the buttermilk and the flour together. 

****My mom has never drank coffee but craved and consumed brew coffee grounds with all three of her pregnancies.  This explains both the cause of my insominia and liquid crack addiction.

*****This also possibly explains my love of vodka.

******I also saw Schindler's List on Christmas Day.  Cheerful, yes?

*******Wargames.  A cold-war and nuclear-holocaust-pawned-by technology-gem that should also be required viewing.  A young Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy, the general from Northern Exposure who plays a General at NORAD and who delivers one of the best lines.  Ever. "I'd piss on a goddamned sparkplug if I thought it would do any good."  Plus, the size of computers then and now is amazing.   The computer is nick-named Joshua.