11/05/03

my siblings and i all seem to be in some sort of silent agreement about this photo. it's like we all think of it as capturing some essence that we associate with our mother. i think we'd all probably agree as well that we don't really like the hairdo. normally, her hair was a dark brown, and the styles we were used to were less 'fussy'. i think part of it is that this is the best quality photo of her we have, and we feel some sort of pride. i think most people tend to exaggerate the positives in their parents when they don't hate them, it helps them to feel more special themselves. i think we all think of this photo as showing her potential. if she had dreams of a more elegant life, it's like we can see that with her basic looks and personality, in the right circumstances it might have been possible for her to have it.

i didn't really know her. i can try to piece together the little bits i can recall and make guesses, but i don't think that i will ever know her. whatever our personal differences, there is part of me that finds it tragic that she died unknown and unfulfilled. i wish there was something i could do about that. did anyone know her?

the people in the past i've talked to haven't helped me to have all that much insight. i don't think i was assertive enough, or that i knew the right questions to ask. and sometimes communication is just awkward, and if i had persevered, maybe i would have ended up with more information. i guess my father still had issues, resentments and unresolved feelings years later and remained inarticulate about her. i think my mother's sudden death is part of what shocked me out of the natural passivity and secretiveness that most humans seem to exist in, made me make more of an effort than the average person to say the awkward thing, to put vague feelings into words, to say what i'd say if i thought i or someone else would die tomorrow.

i suppose i could be biased, because she was my mother, but i think she had an unusual quality, something that made her seem different from other people. all of my father's subsequent girlfriends were decent people, interesting in their own particular ways, but i never saw any of them the same way. i think that my mother had a kind of grace, a kind of feminine insight or awareness that none of the others had, a way of seeing the magic in life, the potential, and a more strongly developed sense of fairness and the need for human decency and to strive for the highest within oneself. to me, it always seemed that the way things turned out with my mother made my father scared to ever try for as much in a relationship again, with someone he was truly attracted to, on as many levels as possible. it was like he had tried for too much, and got burnt. but it could also be that he always let women approach him, rather than be the actual pursuer, and so he had no real control over his relationships. it could be that he just wanted to try something different. it could be that my mother was exceptional, and that it just wasn't easy to find someone with a similar combination of personal qualities, that she was irreplaceable.

i suppose that some people could look at the portrait, and say that she was just a common woman having a good day, or that she had a good photographer. i don't think that's all there is to it. when i knew her, she was always thin, and her bone structure was more pronounced than it is in this photo. she didn't wear makeup on a daily basis, only once in a while, for special occasions. the features were so clearcut. i don't think i really saw her, though, in those days. she was just my mother. but when i remember her face now, comparing it with the faces i've known through the years, the structure, and the way she used it to express herself, i think there was something extraordinary about it. i think i could have photographed her in interesting ways and that she would have made a much better model than me, that it would be much easier to work with her features.

anyway, compared to me, a mongrel child, she was very beautiful. when i look at this photo of my mother, i just know there's no way i could have ever been in this category. and maybe the pain related to that is somehow part of why we were at odds.

if she could somehow see how my life has turned out, i don't think she'd feel very happy about all the pain i've gone through, i don't think she'd think i deserve it. i think she'd be proud of the others, but that my situation would hurt her. my life seems interesting to me, in a way, more interesting than it could have been if i'd been able to have a normal life. there's a lot of pain, but i accept that this is who i am.

i wonder, though, if part of why i've found it impossible to get jobs or stay in relationships relates to her own ambitions and frustrations. if i can't accept what comes to me, if no job ever has felt right, no relationship has ever felt right, if this is because in a sense i've been like her and tried not to be, trapped by roles that society sort of dictates, trying to shake it all off and find out who i am underneath all that? and it's only when you're able to do that that you have a chance of finding the things that feel right? or is it about unrealistic expectations? families who have so much pride that they exaggerate too much, and can't see members for who they are and expect too much of them?

why did she go to teacher's college? i find it hard to believe that she really wanted to be a teacher. was it a practical thing to do considering her aptitudes because she wasn't assertive or focused enough to say what she really wanted to do? i think she probably made a better teacher than most, but i somehow doubt that it was what she wanted.

my mother was pregnant, with me, on her wedding day. she was 20. was she scared? was her post partum depression related to the physical proof, a baby, that her path in life was now chosen when she still wanted so much more, when she felt too young to give up on her dreams?

on my parents' wedding day, my mother's 16-year-old sister told my father that he had married the wrong sister. they had an affair at some point, or maybe it was just sex. i'm wondering if it was related to his need to feel important, special, validated. that elusive person who would recognize him for what he was and give him what he deserved at last. whoever gives him the most attention always seems to have a special place for him, for as long as the attention lasts, but some people just can't give enough, or the kind of attention he wants. maybe i'm like that too, maybe we all are. as for her sister, it seems likely to me that she'd have issues about the unfairness of things, about how my mother was the favourite in the family because of her looks. i could be wrong, but that was always my impression, that my mother was the favourite child in her family because she was the prettier one. ah, we're all so fucked up. we're all needing so much, it's all such a confusing mess. i think i probably look more like my mother's sister than like my mother.

i don't know what went wrong in the marriage, but it seems to me that my mother became very isolated when they built a house together in the country, and that it wasn't really the life she wanted. as for my father, i think he probably just wasn't really ready for kids, and the responsibilities involved. i think i can sort of imagine my mother wanting to save up for her children's educations and whatnot, but my father thinking that sort of thing wasn't important, and that the kids themselves should be responsible for that sort of thing. he never wanted to plan for the future, he wanted to spend money how he wanted to spend it, and i can see that leaving my mother with a feeling of insecurity. but when they divorced, it was like he *needed* to have horses and whatnot for his own sanity, but it was like what she might need for hers was not important. he's a man, he's more important, he makes money, he should be able to spend it. he paid his child support. but we lived in a much less extravagant kind of way than he did. how frightening it must be to be the female in this situation, the one with less earning capacity, the one constantly thinking about the children and aware of their needs.

she sewed clothes, and ornaments for special occasions. she did various arts and crafts projects. sometimes holiday themes. she made costumes for halloween and whatnot. she had trouble with birthday cakes. she'd buy cake mixes, but when she baked them, they'd always crumble. and the icing would look like it was holding them together like coloured glue. i took over baking cakes, and it was like i had a knack for it. we all sort of complained about her cooking, but she was good at some things. her oatmeal raisin cookies were the best ones i've ever remembered having. i liked having her lasagna. she made crepes suzette once, and while it wasn't exactly what kids prefer, i think she did a decent job. i think mainly she cooked fairly bland but healthy and lowfat meals. what i mean is, some of my father's girlfriends and other women we knew were good cooks, but in order to be so, they had to use a lot more fat in their cooking. that's what i recognize now. it was like she wanted her children to grow up healthy and slim. she let us have treats. for instance, we were allowed to have two cookies each when we got home for school, and on friday nights we had treats, and on saturdays mornings we were allowed to eat sweet cereal and watch cartoons. she didn't want us to watch too much television. i don't remember watching all that much.

she made jams and pickles. we went with her to pick the fruits and vegetables, etc. she froze a lot of stuff, too. she wasn't afraid to ask to get us invited places with swimming pools or other places that might be fun for kids. she took us to the beach. she was somewhat social, visiting friends and relatives and dragging us along, and maybe somewhat fearless when it cames to doing things for her kids. she budgeted to take us out to dinner, to movies, on road trips to florida. she took us to hockey, dance, swimming lessons, etc. she took me to the library regularly. she insisted we spend time playing outside.

she wore jeans. she looked young. when i was 10 or 11, i can remember that a tough girl at school, one who often picked on me, made some comment about my mother after she had seen her one day. she didn't say anything derogatory. she referred to her as my teenage sister. i told my mother, and i know it made her feel good. i started putting cream around my eyes when i was 12 or 13, already trying to minimize the signs of aging, get a head start.

there were always things like that happening. people could not believe that someone who looked like her could have 4 children of our ages. when she tried on jeans, the shopgirls seemed somewhat envious, or amazed. maybe i've always felt a lot of pressure as a result.

the couples counsellor she and my father went to ended up asking her out. she and her lover had what i'd call 'heat'. i never witnessed that sort of thing between my father and any of his girlfriends, although i vaguely remember it being present between my parents. what i can't remember clearly about their relationship probably has to do with part of what i look for in a mate, and what i can't find. that heat. although i had it with peter.

while my father could complain about how irrational she was, how sickly thin she was, etc, it still seemed to me that she was more sexually interesting to him, more exciting, than any of his subsequent mates.

i remember that she liked the movie 'breakfast at tiffany's'. maybe she admired audrey hepburn. maybe it was the idea of style, a glamourous life, a life of freedom. here are a few quotes from the movie i pinched from a website, in case it had something to do with underlying themes or issues:

"I don't want to own anything until I find a place where me and things go together. I'm not sure where that is, but I know what it's like. It's like Tiffany's." --Holly. "I'm not Holly. I'm not Lulamae either. I don't know who I am. I'm like Cat here. We're a couple of no-name slobs. We belong to nobody and nobody belongs to us. We don't even belong to each other." --Holly. "You know what's wrong with you, Miss whoever-you-are? You're chicken. You've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, 'Okay. Life's a fact. People do fall in love. People do belong to each other.' Because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness. You call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing, and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well Baby, you're already in that cage -- you built it yourself. And it's not bounded on the west by Tulip, Texas or on the east by Somaliland. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself." in truman capote's book, the unnamed narrator (paul in the movie version) does not win holly's heart, she leaves, and aside from a few postcards and some things he hears through the grapevine, he never hears from her again.

those are the things i relate to. i think i've always thought that she wanted an exciting life, a more elegant, glamourous life. i think that's part of why i didn't want marriage or children. i wanted to see what else there was in life.

what holds us back? often a movie, a song, a book, or something else has some deep impact, or triggers something, and it becomes clear to us who we really are, what direction we want to move in, but somehow we are paralyzed and don't act on this information, we wait passively for signs, or for encouragement, and years go by and suddenly we're old but still feeling stuck at the same age we experienced the revelation, with the same dreams and a life we can't get out of. or maybe we analyze and try to go for what we want, but move in circles, never getting any closer for reasons we just can't quite figure out. we keep expecting it to just happen, because we're special, we have a special destiny, and eventually when it doesn't just happen, we realize we didn't have a special destiny after all.

tiffany's doesn't appeal to me, jewelry, high fashion or that sort of thing, but i understand the wish for beautiful clothes and places and occasions to wear them. my sister and i used to talk about 'busset dresses'. we meant dresses that were bustier dresses, strapless, but it was our code for a kind of wish we both shared for some kind of glamourous occasions, the chance to push feminity to the max, although i think we both experienced this wish differently.

i'm still waiting for special occasions. reasons to make an effort with hair and makeup. places to go, lovely or interesting things to wear. and things would be natural, and conversations would flow freely once it all came together, and i'd be able to access all the knowledge that i've been accumulating..

in family therapy, i told the therapists that i thought my mother wanted to die. no one called me on this. they all seemed to accept it.

i saw her not long before she died. i couldn't handle staying all that long. it had happened the previous summer as well. it may have had something to do with how out of control i felt with my life, and how bad i felt about not being able to control my weight. feeling like a failure, finding it difficult to face her. so depressed, trying so hard to hide it. she wasn't sleeping with her lover. she told me she wanted to leave, but that he said he'd kill her and/or her kids if she left. i can't remember when exactly she told me that. i didn't know what to do with this information. i told my father, i didn't know who else to tell, and he reacted so immaturely, not understanding her predicament, not showing any concern for her as a person, just full of this macho male bullshit related to his kids, not her. didn't he care about her at all any more?

she and her lover seemed to constantly listen to elvis and neil diamond when i lived with them, and i remember feeling frustration about having to listen to 'that crap' again and again. her lover had a guitar, and he sang mostly neil diamond songs, from what i remember. she took dance lessons as a child, and piano lessons. we had a piano that moved around with us from place to place, my mother's piano, and she played somewhat regularly. mostly pop songs. the song i remember most was 'the air that i breathe' by the hollies. it always makes me feel a little sad or nostalgic to hear it. i don't hate elvis or neil diamond now. sometimes they sort of remind me of her.

she died when she was 37, i'm 37 now. maybe i put all this embarrassing crap on my website because i'm desperately trying to avoid what happened to her. my ideas about myself through the years may have been ridiculous, and i'm trying to face that, and face up to what i've wanted and where it all comes from. she was stuck living in isolation, in relationships that weren't right for her, because she was powerless. she had 4 kids to support. she had to think of them, she had to do the best she could. except if she could have help, maybe it wouldn't have all gone in hopeless circles. she had life in her, she had talents. she had things to give. it was like someone was supposed to notice, someone was supposed to understand, and help her, but no one ever did, and i'm trying to help myself, or to express myself as well as possible, to make it clear that nothing can help *me*. even if it's just for myself, to be as sure as i can be.

i remember once she took us to see the movie superman at the cinema. she told me that she had a crush on christopher reeve, who played superman. she was all schoolgirlish. her attraction made me think. what was the attraction about? wanting life to be simple, wanting good and evil to be clearly distinguishable, and a hero to rescue her? when i heard about his accident and paralysis, i thought of her, and i was curious, and when i saw the way he faced those things publicly, i wondered if there was something in his character that she had been drawn to, that she had sensed was the right sort of thing for her. and of course i do understand that he was an actor because he was a type that made a good projection screen, he was chosen for the roles he was chosen for probably because he made a good projection screen for common women's fantasies.

we didn't have much money. i had one pair of jeans that i wore all the time (my mother eventually made an effort to change this so that i had about 4 wearable pairs of pants). i had also a pair of cords, but they were very loose on me, and a boy at school had commented that i should wear tighter pants because i looked better in them, and so i only wore the ones that flattered me. to go to a school dance, we were told we had to wear a dress, a skirt or dress pants. jeans and cords were not allowed. while i was at school one day, my mother sewed up a pair of dress pants for me. she did a very good job, and in fact they probably looked as good as any from the store, and actually probably fit me better. she had also bought a sweater/top combination that i had admired in a store. it was more expensive than i thought we could afford. i guess she wanted to surprise me. i really feel embarrassed about my reaction now. i wasn't used to dress pants, and all i could think about was that they weren't black (they were off-white), they weren't 'cool', that somehow i'd be teased or an object of ridicule. i guess my mind wasn't very open. i did wear them, but i probably didn't act very grateful. it must have hurt her a lot, and i feel very bad about that.

i hated the way they fought. i wish i could remember more specifics about it. maybe i'd understand better now. i hate that my father made it seem ok to criticize her. i knew she was angry with him, and that she wanted us to take her side, but i don't seem to remember her stooping to the levels he did. i feel so disgusted when i remember seeing his lawyer, being asked whether she hit me with an open or closed hand. the lawyer giving a demonstration, because at 11, maybe i wasn't sure. i felt revulsion at the time. my father had no idea what raising kids entailed, and she knew it. it must have been so frustrating. he probably mainly wanted to get back at her, but part of it was probably about needing to have the kids on his side. i think he had the idea that kids just raised themselves. which isn't actually all that strange maybe, since his father died when he was 15 and he probably had to do a lot on his own.

at a certain point, she developed acne rosacea. my father constantly went on about how disgusting it was. i felt sorry for her. she couldn't help it. how could my father be so immature? i guess i just hate that i was exposed to that, to the idea that it was ok to criticize my mother unfairly. i can remember that for a while i was very resentful of her, thought of her as a bad mother, complained of her. i know that sort of thing is somewhat normal in teenage girls or preteens, but i think i would feel less revulsion about it all now if i wasn't aware of his influence, his example. i didn't ever ridicule things like the acne problem, just bitched about my own issues with her. it did hurt me that she said i was a sour one who ruined everything, and when i moved in with my father, it was like i tried especially hard not to be that way, to make him and his girlfriend not regret that i had come to live with them.

she smelled of coffee and cigarettes. i found it difficult to kiss her, i found the smell overpowering. i think the smells of both parents helped discourage me from smoking or drinking coffee. and i also somehow had the idea that i didn't want alcohol or drugs, that i wanted a pure, healthy body, and that i didn't want to be weak, i didn't want these crutches. but maybe these things helped her to control her weight. she and her lover sometimes drank. i think it was mostly red wine. my father also said that at one point she was taking tranquilizers. none of the four of us ever took up smoking, which may be slightly unusual, because i think children of smokers often become smokers themselves.

we had these siberian huskies at one point. they were beautiful dogs, but they were not meant to be pets. my mother's lover wanted them as sled dogs, i think, for races. a couple of them kept escaping from their chains. one day, i learned that they had killed a neighbour's cat. i knew the daughters. they went to the same school as me. i felt so horrible for them that our dogs had killed one of their pets. i made some comment to my mother, asking why since they'd escaped before and had chased cats we hadn't put in a better effort to keeping them chained up. and she was very upset, saying that i was taking the neighbours' side, and then she made me sit on a chair all night when everyone else went to bed. i think i understand now that it was about more than that, that it was probably about me not understanding her efforts and caring, and how helpless she felt to make me see it, how i just didn't see her.

she did hit me a few times. i can remember the helpless rage i saw. i think i can understand it now, that i didn't comprehend her efforts, that i didn't comprehend how hard she tried and how unfair it was for me to choose my father.. i've felt that kind of rage. and when she hit me, it was shocking and it hurt, but i feel like it's not something to focus on, it's not something to point at and say she was abusive. i think that would be completely unfair. and i also suspect that afterward she probably felt that she'd made things worse between her and me, and that i'd think i had more of a reason to not take her side, and i really sympathize with that a lot. her reactions seem human and understandable to me.

she seemed to like to draw pictures of horses. she and my father met at a place where he used to take out trail rides. when he was young, he also used to do rodeo trick riding. when they were married, he tried to keep horses, but i don't remember my mother having much interest. i think some women wanted to please my father, and accepted a country lifestyle when it really wasn't what they wanted. when my parents built their own house together out in the country, i think she was very isolated. she sold avon and amway for a while, and she did supply teaching sometimes, but she was probably depressed. i don't blame her for finding a lover, someone who seemed to find her sexy and beautiful, in spite of the fact that she had four kids, someone who could make her feel special, make her life seem more interesting. make her feel that there were still opportunities for her in life.

the funeral was bizarre, in my opinion. there were so many people there, people we had no contact with usually. it was a huge funeral. there was a religious service in a big church. it seemed to me that the church was full. i don't remember what was said. it felt to me like none of it had much to do with her, with who she was. who of these people could she turn to with her problems?

i suppose that i will always be seen by some as the horrid cold mongrel daughter who could not shed a tear for her mother. i didn't know what i felt. i was the only one old enough to go into intensive care. i was told i could speak to her, that she might hear me in her coma. i couldn't think of anything to say, and i just stood there dumbly. i didn't know what i felt. i was pregnant. i wouldn't have to tell her. i was trying to hold myself together. i wasn't allowed to cry over the mess i'd got myself into. it never occurred to me to go through with the pregnancy. it was never an option.

we had no real guidance. our father gave us money to buy clothes, and i bought a navy blue dress, a very simple one, but it was cut much better than anything else i had ever owned. i didn't know how funerals worked. no one was talking to us much, my father didn't say much. and i wore that dress the first night, not realizing that we were just going to the funeral parlour to view the body and meet with everybody. i wore the dress with a simple strand of pearls. it's what i should have worn to the funeral, but i didn't know how it worked, and to the funeral i ended up wearing a burgundy dress, wondering if in gossip it would end up 'red'. the second night, we went back to the funeral parlour, and i wore my pink prom dress, which was completely inappropriate. it was very lowcut, to the extent that it was pretty much just joined at the waist, and the fabric just folded over to cover my body. so it um gaped. and when i was there, an old friend of my mother's went on and on guessing about how i must feel, and telling me things about her, and there was this feeling of panic, no i don't feel that way at all, no she wasn't like that, i don't see her that way, and i broke down, i ran from the room in a panic, and finally started to cry. a girl i'd known since i was 3 ran after me, down the street, and as i walked with her i calmed down. i realized that i didn't know how to explain to anyone what i was feeling. there was just no way to do it. i felt so alone.

since the day of the funeral, i have never visited her grave. i don't even know where it is.

it must have been terrible to watch me choose my father. to do your best, and know you care and that the other parent does not care in the way you do, and yet you have no control over who your child prefers. and i did find my father funny, and life felt freer with him, and i'd still choose to live with him, but if i could really choose, i'd choose different parents, a different body and face, or i'd just not want it at all. i just don't see how things could have worked out in any circumstances. i don't belong in the video age. i'm not photogenic enough. i think a large part of what has always scared me about having children is that powerlessness. knowing that my children would probably hate me or not like me, and that there would be nothing i could do. i think i understood or absorbed how she felt. it seems unfair to me, and yet even knowing this, i still don't feel close to her. i still don't think we were the same kind. but i feel bad for her, and maybe if she had lived there would have been some way to work things out.

she didn't seem to have many books that i related to. the ones i think i was most curious about were things like the three faces of eve, sybil and jonathan livingston seagull. i think my brother, my mother's favourite child, was named after that last book. [note: i've just checked this, and found the book was published a few years after he was born.] as for the other books i remember, she had those popular historical romance type novels. her lover recommended that i read dale carnegie's 'how to win friends and influence people', but i didn't read it. as an intellectual curiosity, i probably should have read it, but i think i resented the tone. as if he was saying i was such a rotten person only didn't realize how i was coming across, whereas he'd read the book and people generally considered him well. looking back, there's this feeling of unfairness. i didn't like him, it's true, and i had problems making friends, and i do understand that part of what the book is probably about is overcoming natural passivity and shyness by understanding what makes people feel good, but i think he was taking a dig at me that was unfair and possibly even hypocritical. i think i had a right not to trust him. i didn't like his violence. i didn't like him beating his dog with a 2 x 4 (no, not for killing a cat, just for making noise), i didn't like him drop- kicking my cat down the cellar stairs. at night, i remember my mother saying 'no', and sounding afraid, and like he was hurting her, and i lay there feeling impotent, not knowing what to do. i think my initial feeling may have been biased, because when i first saw him he was kissing my mother in my grandparents' house at a time when i don't know if she was officially separated, and the passionateness of it probably frightened me. at the time, i remember thinking that maybe i was being unfair, but i couldn't seem to help it. i just didn't like him. looking back now, i don't know. i think he really cared about her. at least more than anyone else. and that maybe that was good for her in a way. to be desired, wanted, needed. at the funeral, for the first time, i was nicer to him than i'd ever been. i tried very hard to show him compassion. i had the feeling that not too many people there were all that considerate of him, and maybe it was a sort of underdog type of consolation that i wanted to give. but at that time, i remember thinking that maybe i had been too judgmental all along, that maybe there was more to things, and maybe he understood her and cared for her, at least more than the others at her funeral.

i've never seen him since then. a few years later he got caught smuggling drugs into the united states (my uncle got caught at the same time for dealing, and went to a different prison. they had been friends for a long time, and it was all part of the same thing), i think, and went to jail for a while. i heard that he had some kind of major heart attack as well. i don't think any of the other kids have ever seen him either. what is that? my mother only had one other relationship besides the one with my father, my father had many, but of all of them, it seems we've never really maintained relationships with any of these other families. i don't like that sort of thing. it's like if you're going to try to put families together, it shouldn't be fake. there can't ever have been much to it if the other members of the families don't bond.

i wonder sometimes if the problems i've had breaking up with certain people has been about leftover guilt about hurting my mother. when someone cries, and seems to feel a lot of pain, and/or seems to really need my presence, i find it hard to leave. i become confused as to what i really want, and i often can't go through with it. is it because i figured out years later that she really did love me, and carried on the way she did, was so upset, because she really cared about me. i just wonder about it. but i think it was right for me to leave, even if my father cared less. there was something in me that i couldn't control, maybe self-destructiveness, and i needed space. maybe that's why i was attracted to living with my father. and even now, i can see that jamie really cared, and gk, but that it seems natural that people will only be able to take so much. they are human, and can't handle living with such self-destructiveness. it eventually outweighs what is good. maybe my mother just didn't know how to get through. i think i made communication difficult. maybe that's why now it's so important to me not to gloss over certain things in important relationships. maybe it's part of why honesty is so important.

she did make comments about my weight, and from the time i was a child i think she did try to control my portions, but i was always just not delicate enough. my body measurements would be smaller than most people would expect. i just had that look of not being small. when i was about 7 - 10, she gave me a little booklet containing caloric values of foods, and ideal weights for heights. i went on my first diet after that. about 700 calories per day. the weights were lower than what is currently accepted as healthy by the medical profession. the thing is, what i've discovered is that when it comes to people's reactions to me, i think i come across as more attractive when my weight is lower than what is currently accepted as healthy. i look better to myself when i'm technically underweight. i guess it's partly my body type, and it's partly societal conditioning, but if what people find attractive is not considered medically healthy or is not easily achievable for you, what do you do? i think that if you can't find anything within yourself to fall back on, or anything to do that feels fulfilling to you, that you find interesting, then you are shit out of luck. you'll be tossed around by what people think, you'll lurch from place to place, never feeling secure, never feeling you have any worth, never feeling desirable or wanted.

i think that if i could have been exceptionally beautiful that she may have felt happier in life. instead, i was a reminder of a mistake. she should have stayed free. she did occasionally comment that we'd all drive her to the crazy farm one day, but she didn't really complain. she did so much, she attended to so much.

my mother did yoga, maybe off and on, that seemed to be her preferred type of exercise. i tried it, too, and picked it up easily.

she made us go to church. she considered herself catholic. i felt guilty about it, but i hated going to church. in those days, i didn't question things much, though.

i don't mind at all that she wanted us to have some sort of sense of mystery and magic about life. being realistic is all well and good, but it can get a bit monotonous. and there *is* some kind of mystery and magic in life. why is there *anything*? and the complex organization of things, which we just shrug off and take for granted.. i don't know, maybe it can all be explained, but that doesn't make it not awesome. even if it seems impersonal or cruel.

i think a lot of females have sort of thought of me as not having any maternal instincts, and they have a kind of feeling of superiority. i think they misunderstand to some extent, though. i have this fear of becoming involved in the lives of new, unjaded beings. i have this fear of making things worse for them somehow, of making the world seem unsafe. i think if i was forced to look after a baby or small child, there would be no way i could ignore the child, and i'd feel a need to be so extremely sensitive and gentle. i would try to comfort it, and keep it as comfortable as possible, and that i might be more empathetic than most of those with more pronounced maternal instincts. i'd feel a need to try to 'help' in whatever ways i could, to the extent that i think i'd be overly concerned about way too much. but i have these issues. i can't seem to help picturing myself in the baby's position, and imagining that i just can't get away from something/someone i don't like, but having no real way of communicating it. i also have other fears. for as long as i can remember i've had issues with nonsexual touching. i hid it for years and years, and gave the impression of being normal about it, but i can't seem to help seeing all touching as sexual, and feeling revulsion with some people touching me. i'd just be afraid that somehow these issues would surface with a baby. i have never had any desire to hold a baby, and in the few instances where it's sort of been forced upon me, i've always felt extremely uncomfortable. i also have this issue i think about teenage boys. i think if i had a child that grew to be a teenager, i might be unable to control having sexual feelings. i wonder if this somehow relates to my father's behaviour with me, and with his mother's behaviour with him. she never remarried or even dated after his father's death, and the way she seemed to worship my father might show that she shifted certain feelings onto him to some extent, and that somehow this kind of thing gets transferred from generation to generation if there isn't something to break the cycle. of course, i could be completely out of line. anyway, i won't be transferring it.

i think my mother was a fairly good example for many aspects of mothering. i think she was really good at paying attention to detail, and to trying to round out our experiences and learning.

i started having problems with food when i moved in with my father. that's when the compulsive eating started, and that's when i started to become 'obsessed'. and i wonder if the obsession started in part because my mother was no longer providing the things i took for granted, the caring, the structure and guidance i needed, because she was angry with me, and in addition my father's life was so busy he couldn't pay much attention to me and i projected my feelings of loss, my loneliness and need for attention, in an extreme sort of way. i tried to be calm and rational when speaking to my mother, but i know that can seem patronizing or condescending when a person is upset. i even understood that to some extent. but *she* chose my father at one point, didn't she? maybe she was older and wiser now, but couldn't she see that a child may not know all that much about life, and that if *she* herself could be so attracted to my father as to marry him and have four kids with him, then maybe there was something in his personality that drew people to him? is it reasonable to expect that even a child who has heard the fighting will really understand what side to take? maybe kids are more worldly-wise these days, but back then, i know i felt a restraint and pressure living in her house, and maybe it was related to being afraid of her boyfriend, and maybe it was related to feeling that i wasn't anything special amongst my siblings and that i couldn't live out her dreams.

after all the fighting between my parents and then the stuff between my mother and me, i think i learned a kind of pacifism and acceptance. that you just can't help how other people feel, and it doesn't help to scream and yell and criticize, and in fact those things just make everything worse.

did my mother eat when everyone left the house? did i witness this sort of behaviour when i was young? as i got older, the few times i was left alone in the house, i would guiltily start checking out what food i could nibble. it was my *first* instinct. but since i was very rarely alone, it didn't occur often. i also remember sneaking cookies at my grandparents' place. but when i moved in with my father, there was no one else around. i could eat an entire packet of cookies at once, and no one would complain. so maybe my behaviour occurred in part because i was alone, and there was no one taking care of me in the ways i'd always taken for granted, but it seems to me that maybe i was always something of a time bomb, and that as soon as i had independence, i might self-destruct.

just before i left canada for good, i was waiting for the men to come and pick up the furniture i sold them. i wanted to know what the last song i'd hear at random would be on the radio/cd player before they took it away. i turned it on, spun the dial and heard:

(KATE BUSH
THIS WOMAN'S WORK)

Oh, darling, make it go away.
Just make it go away now.

i turned the radio off, and the men came and took all the stuff away, and i left for australia with one suitcase and a backpack. i don't think i believe in sentimentalizing things, or having these kinds of regrets, but when i've heard this song through the years, the part that seems to make me feel emotional is:

give me these moments back
give them back to me

and i know that i may experience it in a way not intended by the song, but i think whatever a person gets out of a song is valid to that person. those words make me think of the time just after my mother died, when i felt so much for my siblings, when i was so acutely aware of how special they were, how i was awakened or just so aware compared with before. and then that helped me to interpret future experiences in my life, to really see them, appreciate them, to hold on to those moments, and when i hear those lyrics, it all runs together, a river of images of my life, the important moments, and sometimes the sadness is just so immense, and i feel i cannot support it, it will pull me under, and i want the moments back, i want another chance to *really* appreciate them, or do more with them, but i know there's no going back, and i have to let things go, and know those moments are still there, in memory, part of me, and all my new experiences are filtered through those moments and sometimes i can connect it all in simulflow, for a moment, or sometimes i can focus on individual moments.

as i grew older, and understood more about what went into keeping order in a home without anyone noticing the efforts, i would sometimes have fantasies that i could have helped her in some way if she had lived. i think the old hurts were maybe mending a little, slowly. things would never be innocent or perfect, but i couldn't help thinking that maybe there could have been some way to help her. i guess now all that can be done is for me to try to figure out how to help myself. i lost her at age 13, not when she died 3 years later, and there was a hole, not having her made a difference.

attention to detail. i think that i absorbed a lot. i took it for granted at the time, but now i understand all the effort. i understand what housecleaning and planning had to be done to keep the sort of order she kept. i understand all the planning that went into meals, special occasions, etc. she was always thinking of us. i understand the thought, the caring that went into everything. always. if she had any indulgences, i can't really think they were so much.

how horrifying it is to see the walls between you and another, and to feel awkward, to know that your intent doesn't count and that everything you try to say, your every gesture will somehow be wrong. to see no way of overcoming the walls, to feel powerless, helpless. i know what that is now, and i hate that she had to go through it. at the same time, i wonder how it could have been prevented. there may have been ways to keep it all quiet, considerate, but there may have been no way of disguising that we were very different people, and there may have been no way of reconciling those differences. but is that part of why it all seems hopeless to me now when it comes to other people? is it because she died, and i could never work things out with her? and so i make it just as final with all others i know? but sometimes i think what i'm doing is demonstrating sympathy for her, or empathy. she could die without her children saying more, knowing more, doing more, she could disappear, and no one cried out that it was tragic, no one threw themselves screaming on her coffin, they all meekly accepted. of course, that is the reasonable, rational thing to do, but why must social manners and considerations be so fucking powerful? and so i know what it is to be forgotten, while i'm still alive. was that her life? she seemed to have a lot more contacts than me.

maybe i represent some aspect of her, in a way, in addition to all i am in myself, some aspect of her that wanted to walk away from it all, the family chosen too young, when she didn't know herself enough yet, when she wasn't assertive enough. and maybe i'm not living in the way she would have wanted, maybe my life, my existence is not exactly what she would have wanted, but there is romance to it, and adventure, and i have been able to travel a bit, and i will be able to travel still more. if i want to. and maybe the others, those with more formed personalities, more distinct personalities, maybe either they or their sprogs will live other dreams of hers, or live them in more detail and depth, because she's left a deep imprint, something that will extend far into the future, something that's hard to pinpoint consciously, and i wish i could do a better job. but maybe for now i'm the one most like holly golightly, at least closer, i've had more romances, in my own way, maybe i haven't lived in a sophisticated or an elegant way, but i've gone for the unusual, i've risked so much that no one will ever know. i've been fearless in ways maybe no one will ever understand, because they don't understand me. i've said the shocking thing, so many times, or the scary thing, the awkward thing, the thing that people normally want to hide. and because things don't last, because of the way i walk away, the way i hurt the precious ones because i need to remain distinct, i need to know more, i can't succumb to the pressures that seem to want me to betray myself into not risking more. i think people assume that my feelings don't go very deep, but i think they're wrong. it's just so difficult to know how to contain it all within such a weak, limited framework, it's so difficult to know how to express it all.

after she died, and i ran away from home for awhile and then came back after that horrendous night, and i needed something, anything to grip in life, something to keep me from being consumed by the horror of the previous months/year, i started to cook, and clean and pay attention. and all i had taken for granted, i could finally see. i fumbled, and i was broken enough already that i didn't have the energy to absorb it all quickly enough, and maybe more of how i felt was in my mind than found expression in physical reality, than in my actions and expressions, but i saw in all of them what she had seen in us. i understood, in a way, without words. and it was powerful, and it was real and i knew she loved us, because i loved all of them. and i knew she loved me. she was human, and maybe there was some disappointment that i couldn't live her dreams, but i think she did her best not to let me see it and it wasn't her fault that i absorbed it anyway, and she tried to help me remain open. to possibilities. to magic. that maybe there would be some place for me, unusual opportunities for me, something special, something that maybe neither of us could figure out yet. and in a way i like that, and don't care if it seems unrealistic or irrational. i don't care if all my hopes have been blown away by the realities of life. maybe because of her, and because of my father's irrationalities and dreams as well, i've sometimes been able to interpret life as being full of wonder and awe for me, equal to the fucking pain, at least at times. and i don't regret my life. sometimes i do, and want to just be erased, but i don't always feel that way, and life still sometimes overwhelms me and moves through me in strange ways and i want someone to know, and i want to pass it on.

i'm not sure why she and her lover bought the summer resort up in northern ontario. there was a trailer park, a marina with boats to rent, a gift shop, 5 cabins. my brothers were fishing guides. they had to collect worms and minnows for bait, and cut grass and things like that. i worked in the gift/snack shop and helped my mother clean the cabins. was it a dream of hers? i somehow doubt it. maybe it was his idea, and she thought that maybe this was an opportunity, maybe with her skill with money, her practicality, she could make it work, and make more of a future for herself and her kids than she could working as a teacher. and i remember she took an accounting course, and i think she was good at business, and i think they were doing well. but she was stuck out in the middle of nowhere. i admire that she took this risk, and at the same time, i feel for her that she was stuck out in the middle of nowhere, because i don't think it was really the right place for her. although i think she was very adaptable, and took on the challenge of trying to make it work in an admirable way.

my guess is that she wanted more in life. she was not really unhappy with us, but that she wanted something more for herself. and that her unhappiness relating to herself sometimes burst forth in ways she could not control. and when i think of the sacrifice and planning and effort, the way life thrusts things on us before we're ready, how it happens to everyone, before we know who we are, before we know what to think and sometimes our conditioning seems to force us into certain positions, and when our conditioning doesn't our circumstances do, or maybe it's a combination, i think the little grievances are minor in comparison to what she gave. i'm sorry that i've been so broken that i haven't seemed to be able to focus on that more.

i can remember her awkwardness. wanting me to make my own choices (in areas not related to my father), not sure about when i needed guidance or not, probably afraid of my rigidity.

if i have any positive qualities, i have to think that at least some of them come from her, and my father. i suppose i've focused mainly on her here and the issue of my father has to be addressed, and that in spite of all the other things i've written about him, that it's a similar case with him, that there are positive things to say, but i will just have to wait until it all forces its way out. until then, it's probably safe to assume that i have complicated feelings related to him as well, and it's not all resentment and bad associations.

maybe no one feels 'right' to me as a mate because no one has ever seen in me what she did, no one has ever loved me as much as she did. maybe i think on some level that i deserve that kind of love.

when i was about 10, i had a dream that my mother had died, and that i was reading out a very long poem about her to a large gathering of people in a large room of many levels. everyone was listening very carefully to me, and some people were crying. she died 6 years later, but i never wrote anything about her, and i doubt i will ever write anything remotely adequate. maybe one of the others will manage it some day. she deserves better than this. a lot better.

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03/12/04: I don't know why, but suddenly today i feel a need to write a few more things about my birth family.

things about my father... about how i know that if it were a question of using his mind combined with physical strength to save his children, or to handle any situation in which those he cared about or those who needed defending had only him to count on that he would fight to the death. i have never doubted that, and i've always felt that he would probably be the one to prevail if he were ever faced with that situation. i think he was probably born for such situations or tests, and in a way maybe it's somewhat sad that he's never had the chance to actually demonstrate what abilities could be brought out in him in such a situation.

he becomes emotional watching movies. i've seen him cry watching things like rocky, or stories about loyal pets. i know that when he was younger he liked to dance, and i got the impression that women often thought he was a good dancer - i think he even reminded some women of john travolta. i've seen him offer a place to stay to a guy going through a separation, and also to a battered woman. he stuck by a schizophrenic friend over the years when everyone else seemed to have forgotten about him - he would go to see him every once in a while and take him out for a game of pool, or would just stop by to visit. i saw a picture this man had drawn - i think it was a present he made for my father. it was a beautiful drawing of a naked man, a very muscular man. they had known each other as teenagers and a comment i remember my father making a lot over the years related to when this friend 'turned queer'. and i guess that way of phrasing it shows something about my father's background and prejudices, but i think that for him to stick with this friend considering that background says something important about who he was as a person. i suppose some people may wonder if my father was gay. my guess is that maybe he could have been open to trying something in the right circumstances but that he was probably more likely to be bisexual than homosexual, and i'd also guess that he was probably predominantly heterosexual.

i know i don't mention my siblings much. partly it's a privacy thing, i want to respect their privacy but partly it's because i don't have the same kinds of difficult feelings that i do toward my father at times. i cared for all of them so much, and it hurt i think that they didn't seem to understand who i was, didn't seem to see the extent to which i was suffering when i think i actually did see their problems and suffering... but it doesn't feel as unresolved for me because i think i really do see and accept why it isn't possible for them to see me, my situation. and the overwhelming wish is just for them to have happiness and fulfillment in life. i think that's the way i focus. it's not that i don't want that for my father, also, but i think that we had such a complicated relationship that it's more difficult to constantly focus that way, because certain things sometimes bring up difficult memories and associations, and i sometimes have trouble dealing and i get tossed around by the complications for a while until i re-resolve things in my mind.

one of my brothers.. watching him play sports, i'm not sure how to explain this, but while he may not always be the highest scoring member of a team, i think he'd play an extremely significant role. he always seemed to be where someone was needed. he'd seem to have an instinct for it. it's almost like he didn't really have a set position, but instinctually filled in for all the weak spots of *all* the players on the team (?) he was everywhere. and in life, i think he's similar. his personality is giving in ways that not everyone recognizes. he seems to accept everyone, forgives them their weaknesses and flaws, and unobtrusively puts the focus on the strengths. people feel comfortable with him.

one way for me to explain what went wrong with us, although it will probably be long-winded and convoluted: i remember having a discussion with his first girlfriend about sylvia plath. i was reacting irrationally, and blurted out some comments about how she was obviously fucked up or out of touch with reality, and it's interesting, because i may have been so emotional about it because at that time i wasn't able to face certain things about myself yet. at the age of 21, by the time i left home, i had read more sylvia plath, and understood better. a young writer i met at that time said i reminded him of sylvia plath and i guess by then it was something that felt like a compliment, it was pleasing to me. but back to the issue: i think my problems with my family were related to my reaction to my brother's girlfriend... i think i absorbed that my family wouldn't understand someone like sylvia plath, that they would just dismiss her the way i did way back then. and i guess i thought that if anyone might understand, maybe it would be this particular brother. but i don't think he understood the complexity of my situation and i think it hurt me.

my sister and i were probably always doomed to experience tension because of the relationship between my mother and her sister. when we became close, it was because of conscious effort on my part, and because i hung in there for a long time while she pushed me away. it was sometime after her 16th birthday that i started making a real effort to build our relationship. my father had been drunk on her birthday, and had forgotten to pick her up from where she was working. when that happened, something sort of clicked, and it was like i started to see some things more clearly.

my sister was sick as a child, and developmentally slower than the rest of us. i suspect that this was in large part due to all the fighting that was going on between my parents at the time. whatever the case, i remember my father actually ridiculing that she couldn't tell time or tie her shoelaces by a certain age. i can also remember him talking about certain favourite books of his, insinuating that if a person couldn't get the message, that person was a moron. it was just that his personality was strong, overbearing in a way. i think she felt intimidated to even try, because what if she tried and it turned out she was a moron? she never took to reading, and i think it may have been related to feeling intimidated. i think it's possible that in her case, one of the reasons for not contacting me via email even though she knows my email address could be that she doesn't want me to see spelling or grammar mistakes, or 'evidence' of the ways in which she is intellectually lacking. i think she's very intelligent, and that she has types of intelligence that i don't possess, but that it's been incredibly difficult to override those early messages. when she was 16, i consciously set out to deprogram those messages, and i did spend hours with her, sometimes on a daily basis, trying to point out her strengths, and to build her up in various ways. i let the focus be on her, and her specialness, and so in a way i set the stage for my problems to not be important, for her to be more important than me. at the time, i thought it was a good thing to do, i thought it was necessary to try to keep myself out of it as much as possible, and just do whatever i could to try to build her up.

but i see now that a more equal relationship would have had a better chance of surviving longterm, especially considering that i was not coping with my own problems very well, and that i needed a support system. but what do you do when you're actually in the situation and you can sort of instincutally see that what a person needs is to feel special, to feel important, and that your problems are so confusing and big that if you share them they will undermine the shaky first steps the other is taking? and so in the end i couldn't keep it up, because i fell apart, and my sister was given the message that no one can be counted on and maybe a lot of what i tried to impart was undermined, and in the end i felt so bad about all of it that it was harder and harder to face her, to face any of them. i just wasn't strong enough to help. i couldn't hide that i needed help. i was always sorry that i couldn't help her more, but i was also glad that she connected so well with animals, and i hope that somehow it helped her through, and that she will always have animals in her life.

when we were young, the other brother and i seemed to have some sort of shared personality traits related to responsibility and attention to detail. the other two were not as responsible as us. and so there was this sympatico, in a way, maybe a kind of respect for each other. but when i started dropping out of life, while i think he always saw me as still probably being the same underneath it all, i think he saw me as giving up, and he probably looked down on me, and was also frightened by what he saw, and more determined to never let himself go. he's had his excesses, but all things considered, he's played by the rules, and lives a very responsible life. he made it through the chaos of our upbringing, with all the irresponsible examples. my father i think would (unconsciously) seek to undermine his accomplishments by calling him cold, unemotional, etc, but i think he had to be in order to do what he had to do. and it's inaccurate to call him cold, anyway. just one example.. after my mother died, xmas time was erratic in our family, and one year when we had no real presents, this brother went out and bought all of us santa presents secretly, and wrote each of us a personalized message from santa, so that when we woke up xmas morning, there was this incredible surprise...

it feels evil to point out these various things related to my father. there are other perspectives, and i also think that all parents do and say politically incorrect things at times, they can't help it, and that some of them feel horrendous guilt about it. i think that maybe if my mother had lived, that maybe somehow there would have been more balance somehow, that she would have compensated for some of the areas in which my father was weak in parenting, maybe.

i can't see any of the members of this original family now because i wouldn't be able to stop the chain reactions, the associations, the feeling that i can't get out of a certain role. that i wouldn't be able to help feeling helpless. i'm not ok. i don't see anyone in my family causing that. i think of all of them as good people. but it's like i've experienced things in life that remind me of bulimia, in a way. it's like i'm full of experiences that would have caused most people to die by now, but somehow i can't die. i have an abnormal capacity. people can't see how full i am, so they don't understand my discomfort and can't understand why i don't reach out and spend time with my family or others i have known, but it's like it's an impossibility. in that state, you are too uncomfortable to take your own discomfort out of it. you've got to wait for digestion, or you've got to find a way to vomit. and i haven't managed either option, yet, in this sense.

i would have needed more indepth communication and sharing to be able to continue to see my family. i made some efforts, but no one was ready, and i either received silent or uncomfortable responses. i do understand that maybe if i had hung in longer, not given up, that eventually there would have been evidence of things changing, but by then i wasn't strong enough. it wasn't possible for me to wait. and so all i could do was to wish them well and pull away, possibly as a survival thing for myself, possibly in order that i could hold onto some kind of possibility of finding a personal sense of identity separate from my family of origin.

a few months before my father's second marriage, when the plans had been announced, one day my father had second thoughts and freaked out and dramatically and emotionally started telling everyone that he didn't really want to get married. i understand all of that better now, but at the time it was very stressful, and it brought up uncomfortable feelings, and he tied it all in to us again, and his unhappiness in life, and the responsibility of having to look after children. i was worried for his fiancee, and though i was extremely nervous, i made an effort to talk to her. i wanted to try to comfort her. i said that my father was immature in some ways, but i thought i made it clear that i understood that he couldn't help it, that he was an unhappy person. what happened after that is something that's always been a difficult point for me. i guess she told him about the conversation, and when he heard about it i guess i was viewed as not being understanding enough. anyway, a few months later, when i was 21 and putting in my massive effort to leave the house, when i started going out looking for a job, when i started going out more period, my father started to make certain comments. like: 'pull up the ladder, jack, *i'm* alright', and the biblical quote about noticing the mote in someone else's eye but not the fucking stick in your own, or something along those lines.

and i guess that has always hurt a lot. it was just little nasty asides, nothing direct, and never an explanation, but my guess is that it was related to my comments to my stepmother. i didn't think i approached her in a judgmental way, i was distressed, i was worried for her distress, and she and i weren't close, but it seemed like a situation to me where i wanted to try to help her.

but again the whole situation ends up being about how i am not understanding enough, about how only my father's problems are important. and if he wanted me to move out, if he wanted me to take responsibility for my life, if he understood how much pain i was in and how difficult it was and how i was 'hypnotizing' myself every night to be able to do this, and how i wasn't blaming anyone in the family, how could he try to make me feel bad about myself at a time like that? it's like he wanted me to fail, to teach me a lesson, or something.

and i know that's not really true. it was just a symptom of his own unresolved insecurities and issues with me, with everyone, and he didn't see what effect it could have on the present. he hadn't understood what i'd gone through that had caused me not to take 'responsibility' for my life, and he didn't understand how much effort i'd put into trying to take responsibility or into seeing everybody's side, including his, and how i understood that things were very, very hard for him.

an example.. on the xmas we were all waiting for the subway, and my sister got too close to the edge, and he called her a 'stupid cunt', i can explain where that came from, i feel i understand. it was a stressful year. the year before, my mother had died. we were going for dinner at my grandfather's place. my grandparents had never approved of him, and he and my mother had ended up divorced. and recently, he had lost his licence for drunk driving (he got caught 3 times in a very short time) and he had had an accident that left his skull fractured, and the results of that caused him to lose credibility at work and to be unable to command the kinds of salaries he had in the past. for the first time ever, he couldn't get self- esteem in the same ways. add to that the burden of parenting without a second parent, and the fact that our circumstances caused us to have to live in an apartment building rather than a house for the first time ever, and i can imagine it was very difficult to face my grandfather at the 'mansion'. i don't remember the conversation that night, but knowing my grandfather, although he is a 'nice' person, he has a way of making sure people see his views about work and success. we had never had to take public transport before. anyway, the stress of that night was probably unbearable, and my father probably felt very alone and misunderstood, and he probably had serious self-esteem issues. and when my sister went near the train maybe it was about a few different things: an exaggerated sense of his responsibilities, he had to make sure his kids didn't hurt themselves, but also, he did love her and didn't want anything to happen to her, and the way all the stress probably came out was to snap something that would further isolate him and reinforce a feeling of aloneness and low self-esteem. maybe he also felt guilt because part of him probably wished he didn't have the responsibility of kids.

i think he needed help. he always seemed to be able to find females who were impressed by him and attracted to him and possibly impressed by the fact that he was able to take care of 4 kids when other men would have abandoned them, but i don't think any of these women were equipped to really help him, and i think all of them needed help themselves. another issue is that i think it would have been better for each of them to learn to see their own problems as significant as his. but stripping it all away, i think the issue is that he needed some kind of help that just wasn't available to him. if he had understood my problems, and if he had been able to get help for his own problems, i think he would have approached things differently. i know a few times he tried to get help, but i think he ran into something similar as i did when trying to talk about bulimia - no one knew what to do with the info he gave them. and i sympathize. he had an incredible amount of responsibility, and yet he was overwhelmed with depression and unresolved conflicts and insecurities from his past.

and again, i do see him as a compassionate, giving person. in spite of depression, a vital, alive person. he could be funny, he wasn't a snob, and in some senses he liked to spoil us or do things for us, like drive us places or share what resources he had with us. and again i need to reiterate that while it may be evident i still carry scars and write this stiffly, i think that if i have any positive qualities at all that at least some of them had to have been related to his contributions.

what i don't think comes across in what i've written is all the little individual efforts he put in. it seems like i'm unaware of how often he consciously tried to help or of his various efforts in different areas to do the responsible thing, or basic things about his personality, how he tried to show understanding and open- mindedness, how he tried to be supportive of whatever we decided we wanted to do in life, with no snobbishness.. also it seems like i'm unaware of his sense of humour, and how he often took on the job of lightening things up or directing things when everyone was lost, or how he tried to make things better in his own way. i'm still messing this up, not getting it into words. i think it is unfair that i focus on so much of what went wrong without putting enough into describing what was good.

i'm sorry that i keep bringing up all of this mess. i feel like my brain inevitably seems to revert to patterns that don't seem to be beneficial to anyone. i apologize to everyone involved. i don't want to hurt anyone. i hope you understand that it feels like something that is out of my control, i feel like an invalid who's lost control of bladder and bowels, and i feel ashamed.

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08/12/04: i've been thinking that things are way out of balance and so i'm going to try to address it if i can. it's disturbing to me that i write about all sorts of little incidents that don't give enough of the overall picture, and that i seem to overlook my own ugliness.

i realized later that when i wrote the other day that i forgot to mention that my father had given up smoking after smoking for over 30 (maybe 40) years, and that he had smoked 3 packs a day for probably most of it. he also gave up drinking in 1989. i don't know if he's kept both up, but when i still had contact with him he was still keeping things up. (the last time i saw my father was in 1996, and that was by accident. i think i talked to him on the phone in 1998, but am not sure if that's when all contact stopped altogether.)

there are various things i've done in my life that i feel ashamed about. one relates to an abused wife that my father let stay with us for a couple of months. this was during the first episode i had of not leaving the house for half a year. i couldn't take myself out of it. i was panicked about the idea of having an outsider in the house, although i understood the gravity of the situation (without knowing any details), and that my father was doing a good thing. for the first month or more, we only had minimal contact. this was during one of my major weightloss/exercise efforts. at the same time, i was doing correspondence courses that would allow me to catch up so that i could start school in the fall. c. went out most nights with friends, and i think she drank a lot. she slept on our sofa. i don't remember seeing her much during the day, so she may have gone out with friends during the day as well. she had a very shiny, expensive- looking red sportscar-convertible, and i guess this was a source of independence for her.

i was too shy to talk to her, almost to the point of panic, and for a long time i think i tried to just give her space. at the end of the second month, my family was about to become the brady bunch and move in with my father's new girlfriend and her two kids in the beaches section of toronto. my father and the others left early, and sort of left me to deal with all the odds and ends, all the cleaning, etc, and it was not a trivial job. it seemed like i was always getting stuck with that sort of thing every time we moved. i ended up packing a huge amount of stuff. anyway, i'm getting off track. what happened was that i started to see that i might possibly have some time to myself, and it was like i really wanted it. i had been cleaning up after everyone, washing all the dishes, making sure everyone had healthy meals, special things for special occasions, i did laundry, etc, all year, and i guess i sort of started to look forward to the idea of having the last 3 weeks on my own.

i was starting to feel good about myself. i had lost a lot of weight, i was fairly fit, i was working toward going back to school, and it seemed like all choices were still possible with regards to my future. i felt hopeful. part of what happened next was a communication problem. my father didn't say anything to me or to c. about what was supposed to happen next.

i didn't think c. liked me. also, i didn't understand her personality. there were all these wine bottles in the trash, and she seemed a bit like an adolescent who just wanted to talk to and socialize with friends. sometimes i thought she was kind of rude to me. i realize that i may have come across as snooty or judgmental in part because of how panicked i was by her presence, and possibly also because i didn't know enough about life and different people's situations yet, and so i don't blame her.

i don't even remember how the big showdown occurred, exactly. i remember hearing her talking on the phone to friends, and that maybe something she said bothered me. i have to admit that peter was some influence. i remember that he had commented on her car, admiring it, and i think i realized that in order to get to drive the thing, he'd probably come on to her, and i think it's quite possible that i reacted in a jealous and mean way. i didn't want peter forever, i was sure of that. i knew he was a flirt and that he was the type to always have at least a few different women on the side, but at the time, something was going on between us that was extremely unusual and important to me, and i wanted him to myself for that time.

i asked her to leave. she asked where she was supposed to go. i said that she seemed to be talking on the phone or going out all the time with friends, that she should ask one of them. i said i felt that she was taking advantage of my father's hospitality (!! - yikes, i do feel sorry about that). she said that one day i'd understand what i was doing and feel very sorry about it. i do.

if she had stayed, she would have had to figure out where to go within 3 weeks. she had already been with us for more than a month. it was summer and she at least had a car. that doesn't excuse my behaviour.

anyway, she left that day, and i didn't ever hear what happened. the next 3 weeks were among the best in my life, but maybe they came at too high a price. it was almost like i needed that time away from family, to focus, to feel free, to actually enjoy life. and then when i moved back in with my family, it all fell apart and i lost it all, but it's like i will remember that 3 weeks all my life. it's like i really needed it.

later, my father would brag to others about how i stood up to this woman and turfed her, and it was like i felt so embarrassed. i *never* felt proud of what i did, and i didn't feel 'justified'. i had acted in a kind of rage and ignorance.

one thing that occurs to me is that i was doing pretty much to her what my father had done to me the day after my 16th birthday - he showed absolutely no compassion for my situation or understanding of me as a person when he told me i had half an hour to get the fuck out of the house. i had nowhere to go, but maybe he thought i had friends. i had the bf who was always trying to get me drunk so he could have sex with me, and i wanted to get away from him. maybe c.'s situation was similar. maybe in her distress she was reaching out to people who couldn't really help her and she felt very alone and isolated. i am truly sorry, and i wonder what happened to her. it *is* an extremely ugly thing for me to have sent her away like that, just so that i could have the house to myself, and so that i could have peter over. maybe in some weird way i was also acting out my issues with my father - making a kind of statement about how he could help others in distress, but not his own daughter. i'm sorry if i involved c. in my messed up issues relating to my father.

a year later, when the brady bunch situation didn't work out and we were all living in an apartment, one night there was a knock on the door. one of my brothers answered (i think we were the only two home). a battered woman who was afraid asked if she could stay with us for the night. she had two small children or one small child with her. my brother came to discuss it with me. and at first, the old panic, a stranger in the place, i am not even going outside at all, i can't deal with this. and i wanted to say no. but my brother wanted to let her stay, and i started to get far enough outside my own panic to see that he was right, that it was the only thing to do. and i tried to be nice to her after that, but i was afraid she saw me as phony. anyway, she stayed the night and we didn't really hear from her again. it shocks me now that i didn't try to call an abused woman's shelter or anything, or try to talk to her more. i know that now i would. i'm still embarrassed about that, but i think at least it was better than saying no and shutting her out that night. she left in the morning, and i don't know what happened. i remember asking her a few questions in the morning before she left, mostly about if there was anything i could get her (like food) if she wanted a shower, if she wanted to use the phone, or things along those lines.

another abused woman i encountered was an english teacher who was a friend of my father's girlfriend in the brady bunch situation. i know that my father had recounted the whole situation with c. to her, and in class she had asked me in front of the class what i would do if i were in a situation where my partner hit me. as usual, i wasn't able to articulate my thoughts on the spot. anxiety got in the way, and also, the complexity of the answer. i hesitantly said i'd leave - that was probably accurate because my experience to date was that i was not hesitant to break up with boyfriends when i felt they weren't right for me - and couldn't figure out how to articulate the rest. i could understand how someone could stay, i could understand there being complex emotional reasons behind it. i could also see how i had complex emotional needs and responses, and might stay in a different situation that others would leave. but i couldn't figure out how to say it, and i've always wondered if she thought i judged her situation.

when i had lived away from home for 6 months, one person i met was a young writer. we worked together as wait staff at a holiday resort until i left 11 days later. we exchanged a few letters and when i had come crawling home, i think i had written to him that there would be no parents in the house for a few weeks because they had gone on to winnipeg and my siblings and i were to clean up the house before the lease expired. one day (i was not expecting this *at all*), he just showed up in toronto and asked if he could stay. this was at the time i had just learned how to vomit for the first time, and i was badly out of control. i was eating all the food in the house, leaving almost nothing for anyone else. my siblings were undergoing a kind of trauma or shake up with my father moving to winnipeg, because a couple of them had formed close friendships and didn't want to move, and were now facing the idea of living on their own in toronto and continuing their studies. anyway, they were uncomfortable with the writer's presence, and i knew they wanted me to ask him to leave. i felt a lot of pressure, and at the same time, i was falling apart. my big effort to be independent had failed, and i was crawling home, gaining weight, and i was totally out of control. i felt like i had died. i felt suicidal. i asked him to leave, and he was distressed, not knowing where to go. i was firm. he called someone up, and left. i don't know if the right thing to do was to face my siblings and say he needed a place to stay. i definitely handled it all badly, and i am sorry about it.

at roughly the same time, there was another thing that i feel ashamed about, or bad about. i had just come crawling back to toronto, and seen jamie for the last time - back then i had a crush on him but he didn't know, and i was seeing him for what i thought was the last time. on the subway on the way back, there was a good- looking guy who was sort of flirting with me, and who followed me when i got off my bus. he was very nice, and seemed very intelligent, and i liked him, we sort of clicked and the attention i was receiving helped me to deal with the loss of jamie. we exchanged numbers. when he called me, we arranged a date, and we talked about various things, and i liked him, felt attracted to him, but i started to feel scared, because i felt like such a loser. he seemed successful in life, like he had his shit together. i was dropping out yet again, and i was so out of control with food that i was scared i was gaining weight rapidly and i felt disgusting, and i was getting to the state where i didn't want anyone to see me, i was going back into hibernation mode and didn't know if i'd be able to get out. i eventually cancelled our date and stopped conversation because of what was going on in my life, but i was always afraid that he thought it was because he was black and that it would be something that would make him cynical. if my communication skills were better, or if i could have been more open about my situation, maybe both people in the above situations wouldn't have been as disappointed in me, and maybe i could have got to know them better.

a few years later, after i had been hospitalized, i let down a few of the people i had met in the hospital. one was my roommate in the hospital. she was trying hard to build a support system, and she wanted to befriend me and hang out, and i eventually just became too reclusive for it to be possible. another woman was an epileptic who had just had a miscarriage and wanted me to go on the bus with her for her doctor's appointment. she was afraid of having a seizure on the bus with no one to look after her - it had happened in the past. and i wouldn't go with her, although i was supposed to be her friend. i was freaked, i just couldn't handle going outside.

which brings me back to a couple of years earlier when my stepmother was leaving winnipeg for calgary and wanted to say good-bye - i wouldn't open my apartment door to say good-bye. i think she thought i was mad at her for leaving, or trying to punish her, but if that was the case it was unconscious on my part. i was just paralyzed. i couldn't deal with opening the door. i was in a kind of panicked state. i had no self-esteem, and couldn't make myself open the door. i tried to wish her well through the door, and say no, i'm not mad at you, i just can't deal with opening the door. i understood she needed support at the time, and i hated the idea that it seemed like i was being negative or trying to make her feel bad about moving. (she is another person i've let down in my writing because i've only mentioned a couple of small incidents when there was a lot more to our relationship.)

on to another friend from the hospital. he and i had tried dating and it didn't work out and we hadn't spoken in some time. then he phoned me one day and said he'd tried to kill himself and ended up with paralysis in one arm/hand. he said he really needed to see me. i said i couldn't deal with leaving the house. he asked if he could come to my place, and i said no. and i know that part of it at the time was a conscious feeling that i just couldn't get involved. that i wasn't strong enough to deal with it. i didn't want him to see me the way i was, out of control. i didn't think i could cope. with him, i didn't think i could ever cope with seeing him again. this is another thing i'm very sorry about.

that kind of thing was so common with my family and special or important occasions that it's difficult to isolate any one incident. a lot of it led to me feeling so bad about myself that i think it's yet another significant part of becoming permanently suicidal.

something else, related to my roommate from the hospital. her 14- year-old son had a crush on me and at first had thought i was about 16 when i was actually 24. his crush didn't go away when he knew my real age. we probably ended up spending more time together than the roommate and i did. it was sort of encouraged by his family. i think they wouldn't have minded if i had relieved him of his virginity. but i didn't. what i did do wasn't so innocent, though. i was sort of like my dad, i guess, and spoke with j. a lot about sex, and realized i felt attracted to him. eventually i thought it was 'wrong' and i stopped seeing him altogether.

i once came on to a married man. he was someone i had had sex with once or twice in the past. he was known as a slut. i liked the girl he married. one night at a party, he seemed very depressed, and i had the feeling it was related to the trip he said his wife had taken. it's possible they were having problems. we were both drinking, and we flirted with each other. i'm not sure, but i think while we were playing cards with some others, and i fondled his leg under the table. then i went upstairs to the bathroom and had almost forgotten about what i had done when i saw him there in the hallway. he came toward me and kissed me. it was a really great kiss, but things didn't go further. we stopped, and went downstairs. i've never seen him since that time. i drunkenly 'bragged' about the incident to some girls one night, but that's not the way i feel about it. i feel bad about it, bad enough that i've never done something like that again.

jim l. i treated you horribly. i should have just left you alone. you were so lonely, and i handled everything all wrong, and made everything worse. you're probably exceptionally lucky that i didn't pursue you with more force. i really liked you, though, and i could easily see myself getting drawn in, trying to draw you in.

ok, i'm starting to remember so many things that it would take a very long time to write them all down. what i'm trying to say is that i think that a lot of what i've done could be interpreted in ways such that i think i'd seem an extremely ugly person, or at the very least a person so immature that i'm a danger to others. my way of trying to protect others has often been to isolate myself, but i still manage to do some damage at times.

not to mention the emotional abuse i inflict at times. when i lose my temper, and say certain things, i usually try to apologize as soon as i can and try to explain that the other person doesn't deserve it. and i feel that it's just one more reason to hate myself, that i can't change no matter how i try, i will never seem to have control, and it's better for everyone if i kill myself or at the very least stay away.

is it like i'm 'confessing' my sins because i think i'm going to die soon?

it could go on and on. i'm remembering so many things. if i've hurt you, i'm sorry. and i wonder if i just seem like someone who wants to make excuses for herself, find excuses for her behaviour so that it seems i'm not really sorry and that i don't want to take responsiblity for any of it. and i don't know if i can really see myself, i don't know how objective i am. but i think if i've hurt anyone and they wanted an acknowledgement that i would give it, that i'd try to help if i could. and that if it seemed like i was trying to evade responsibility, that maybe it could be pointed out to me and maybe then i'd see it.

i think that what i'm trying to say is that i understand communication is complex and that i have probably been hurt by those who never intended to hurt me, and that i have also hurt others that i wouldn't have wanted to hurt. and if i try to understand and forgive others, would they try to understand and forgive me?

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