The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

bring me the blood of the outlanders

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I live with it everyday, the fear that my daughter might have a long list of reasons not to love me when she gets older. It is only rational, given that my own mother and I have a difficult relationship and have always struggled to like one another, but try as I might to ensure that I do not repeat her mistakes, my own humanity will make it impossible to come out shining.

Like many people today, I have issues. They are not as severe as some, and worse than others, but they leave me feeling fairly bruised on the best of days. I have the obsessive compulsive need for a pristine home, but not overly so. It pops up a few times a week, with me seething in an armchair about the crumbs I see on the floor, or the scuff marks on the wall by the door. The fury drills a hole into my head, and I will always make a move to fix it, except I am usually grounded by the onset of ‘what’s the point of anything’ thinking. This would be my depressive label shrieking for attention, battling for top spot in a veritable menu of psychological appetizers. You’ll just have to clean it up tomorrow! No one but you notices the filth and they think you’re crazy for caring about it! You should be caring about things that actually matter and the fact that you don’t means you’re useless! We’re all going to die, someday. Somehow, all that noise in my head keeps me seated in the chair, glazed over and slack-jawed until my head begins to taunt me in a different way: anxiety. This is the unabashed frienemy who sticks by my side and holds my hand, squeezing it roughly when I try to give my attention to other issues. Anxiety has found a way to go to bed next to me and come along into the shower. It is the most intrusive brute of the bunch. On more festive occasions, it brings along it’s big, stupid brother, the panic attack, which barges through without waiting for the candles to blown or the cake to be cut, and I am left weak-kneed and ashamed for being in its company. I never get to decide if it comes or stays. It makes me physically sick, it makes me hate who I am. This is what has lead me to becoming a virtual recluse, a twenty-first century part-time agoraphobe, a lady in a house with a bunch of old dreams left to gather dust under the bed.

With the awareness comes the need for blame, because I wasn’t born with these labels and the source of them is near. Years of therapy and a dash of good sense tells me this. I became this person, I learned the habits and the flaws, and I was shown how to be neurotic and unhappy. I was taught how to manipulate to quiet the beasts inside, how to get what I need even if it is only a short-term relief. I was coached on critiquing other people if it made me feel better about myself in some way, and how to pull someone’s good humour off of them, like a cloth from a table. I was poisoned with it, through breast-feeding and evening dinners, just as I was infected with irrational fear and green eyes. It was all water from the same well.

I was taught to loathe myself, just as much as I taught that I am the only person who matters. A person gets confused after years of that kind of learning.

I’m sure my mother meant well, but those good intentions don’t undo the programming. I live with the consequences of her bad judgments everyday, afraid to take my life back even when I know it’s the only way to be happy. I am terrified about what I will feel if I try to break out of the cage, even though I know the chances of flying are in my favour. Something keeps me inside; caged bird singing for supper.

There are days of clarity and determination. I have that in me too, but more often than not I am waiting for the sun to go down on another day, so that I can rest easy knowing that the expectations are over until it rises again.

She likes to tell me I had so much promise, that I could have been anything, but now I am ‘nothing’. She used to tell me I was ‘almost’ as pretty as my sister, if only my skin and weight weren’t such a glaring issue. She would buy me pretty things, only to break them if I didn’t sing sweetly enough. Lose the weight, here’s a donut. A kiss and a kick. I never stayed down for long, though. I began to give it back, because that’s what the warrior spirit I was born with elects that I do when it is able to overcome the other noises. I became a nemesis in her own clothing, a face like hers that gave it all back and then some. I learned to shout as loud as she did, and I stood in front of her to egg her on because it felt good to see her frustration. I became the wickedness.

Today, things are strange and confusing. I visit my mother voluntarily, and cringe most of the time I’m with her. I call her on the phone to chat, feeling my blood boil at the sound of her voice, especially when she tells me the same story more than once, or when she relates a tale to me that I actually told her, but she’s reinvented it, herself in the starring role. It’s part of her compulsive lying, part of her need to be the star. I snark with my sisters on the phone about what a horrible woman she is, both of them agreeing, but then the conversation turns to what to get her for Christmas, or when will there be a family dinner. I hate her and love her, but like never comes into it. I get confused.

My mother has always fancied herself a victim, and she taught me to be one. Everyone knows that a victim is the most violent of all other labels.

The greatest injustice is the paralytic lifestyle, the feeling that I can’t do anything different than what I do, which is to ruminate in solitude. I see life outside the windows, and on a good day, I go out into it, but on the bad ones, it all falls apart and I am awash with labels. I feel unworthy of love, because the love that I seek was never available to me when I needed it most. I am suspicious and nervous of anyone who looks to give me a smile or a quick embrace. I do not feel as though I am deserving of praise, even though I covet it. Freedom from it all makes my blood pump and my stomach churn. It’s a bizarre thing, knowing you are giving in to a life you don’t want.

I sometimes want to give up, to crumple in a corner and declare myself insane, but I know I’m not. The awareness tells me this. Mostly, I feel like a failure, despite the fact that I rarely try. I write myself off before I get a chance to fumble. It saves time, I think. Then, I shake my head, knowing I am being weak for letting myself accept the title. It isn’t very warrior-like, is it?

Some of it is genetics, surely, but a lot of it is the result of enduring periodic emotional stabbings at the hands of the person who was supposed to love me the most. She still denies ever wielding the bloody knife, though, and either I will have to accept this about her, or I will have to move on.

Moving on, though, appears to be the biggest problem I own these days. It’s the heaviest weight I’ve ever known.